From nrusingh_99@yahoo.com Sun Sep 29 11:43:47 2002
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 06:05:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: nrusingh dash 
To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ac.in
Cc: india-lis@infoserv.inist.fr
Subject: [Lis-forum] IRRO - a new organisaiton in the world of copyright

IRRO - a new organisaiton in the world of copyright.

Govt. to set up Reprographic Rights Organisation.

Every time a student walks into a photocopying booth
to get  a book copied cover to cover, a law is being
violated. Authors and publishers are losing out. But
what happens when books are unavailable or expensive?
There is a way out:
The right to photocopy portions of a book for a fee.
The Government has, under copyright law, taken the
step of setting up an Indian Reprographic Rights
Organisation (IRRO).
As per international norms, photocopying ^Ö or to use
industry jargon ^Ö reprography, is permissible in
limited quantities, that is a certain percentage of
the book can be photocopied but a license fee must be
paid to the copyright holder, that is the author or
the publisher. However it is physically inconceivable
for the student or an institution to go about finding
the copyright holder. To make matters simpler, the
global practice is to set up a collective licensing
agency. So institutions can pay fee, as stipulated by
the agency, which in turn passes it on to the
publisher or author.
India, which boasts a publishing industry with an
annual turnover of around Rs.7,000 crore, did not have
any such licensing agency. Though a need has been
felt, given the losses publishing houses incur due to
the problem of illegal photocopying. The Indian
Copyright Act, allows for the creation of such an
agency. To fill this need, certain individuals like
president Emeritus of one of the domestic
associations, FIP (Federation of Indian Publishers)
and president of AGI (Author Guild of India) have
formed a collective copyright licensing agency, the
Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation (IRRO). The
IRRO claims that FIP members have given it their
mandate. However, in reality, publishing houses like
Tata McGraw Hill, Macmillian India, Bharti Bhavan, who
are the members of FIP, chose to come together with
publishers like Elsevier Science, Pearson Education,
John Wiley Sons, Springer ^Ö Verlag to form a licensing
agency, the Copyright Clearing Agency of India.
Despite problems, the government recognised the IRRO
as the organisation to give licences.

Note : for detailed report pl. refer the Economic
Times, Sunday 11 August 2002.


Nrusingh Kumar Dash
Librarian
B K BirlaCentre for Education
Shirgaon-Gahunje
Maval
Pune-410506



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