Copy, Right with CLA

Our position in the creative industry’s ecosystem allows us to deliver the revenues we generate (via the sale of our products) back to the creators and rightsholders, ensuring more work is created in the future.

We will continue to enhance the way we work and the impact we have. Below sets out what we have done and where we are going as an organisation.

Where our revenues go

Our organisation currently has four members:

  • The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), represents the rights of authors.
  • The Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS), represents the rights of publishers.
  • The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), looks after the rights of visual artists.
  • PICSEL, looks after the rights of visual artists.

We collect information about the licensed content users copy so that we can pay royalties to these organisations and international partners, who then distribute the money to their members, including authors, visual artists, and publishers.

To learn more about our distribution model and our most recent annual distributions, please refer to our Distribution Model Report.

Charitable & community

In 2019, CLA agreed a ‘Policy for Undistributed Amounts’. From 2020 onwards, any monies that are over three years old and relating to non-UK rightsholders, but that we are unable to distribute, may be reallocated to our members for distribution or added to our Development Fund.

The Development Fund supports good causes in the creative industries and assists in developing collective licensing overseas. Since 2020 CLA has donated to a number of different charities and full details of our charitable donations are included in the Annual Transparency Report.

The donations have been very gratefully received.

Listening Books simply could not continue to deliver the wonderful benefits of reading via the spoken word without such generosity. We particularly appreciate your support at this challenging time, when our audiobook service has become more vital than ever for our members

Listening Books Logo
William Dee
Chief Executive, Listening Books

The donation will make such a big difference to the work we do. We are coming to the end of the 2019-20 cycle of Scholarships, and the timing of this donation will allow us to start planning for 2020-21 with fresh ambition

Reading List Foundation logo
Alan Terry and Trustees
Reading List Foundation

Thank you for your very generous donation to our charity. This will have an enormous effect on our work and enable us to continue our projects in prisons and schools whilst also improving and expanding our reach

Give A Book Logo
Sarah Moorehead
Chair of Trustees, Give A Book

Your support is very much appreciated and will be put to very good use as we deliver our work nationally. The pandemic has hit us hard financially, like so many charities, but the need for our programmes is seeing heightened demand and impact as is reading more generally

The Reading Agency Logo
Karen Napier
Chief Executive, The Reading Agency

Community activity

Each year our people volunteer to take part in community activity that has a positive and responsible impact on the communities in which we work, while also being a great benefit to staff and their well-being.

Over recent years, teams from our offices in Edinburgh and London, together with some of our field-based workers, have taken time out to support charitable organisations working on local environmental projects.

In the last 3 years, our people have helped:

2021 – Tree Time, Edinburgh and KIDS, London

2019 – Gorgie Farm, Edinburgh and Trees for Cities, London

2018 – Edinburgh Botanic Gardens and Vauxhall City Farm, London

2017 – Marine Conservation Society and Dulwich Park, London

Staff organised fundraising events

CLA Sports Day and Bake Sale held in Greenwich Park raised £210 for Team Phoenix Foundation in 2021

Initiatives

Bursaries

We are delighted to be launching the CLA bursary programme.

Check out our live bursaries

Principles for Copyright and Generative AI

With the interests of creators and rightsholders at the forefront, CLA has developed a set of principles to help ensure that generative AI is developed safely, ethically and legally.

Useful links

Corporate documents

- Transparency reports
- Corporate govenance
- Membership documents

Work for us

Find out more about CLA and check out our latest vacancies

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