Revised: 2007-09-18

Rights and why they are important

Freelance journalists own whatever they create, whether they have been commissioned or whether they have offered work "on spec" or from stock. Freelances have two kinds of rights in their work: copyright and moral rights.

Copyright

Under UK law, and specifically the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (see the link below), copyright is the intellectual property right that authors have in the work they have created. "Authors" in this case includes photographers, cartoonists, illustrators and other creators as well as writers. Copyright protects against the use of the work without the author's permission and entitles the author to benefit from that work.

Under UK law employees do not own copyright (see also shift payments and copyright).

Copyright applies just as much to the internet as anywhere else.

Freelances - hold on to your rights

Copyright is a valuable asset. If you own the rights in your work you are in a position to make money from it through, for example, syndication - for the rest of your life (and your heirs can benefit from it for a further 70 years).

In general it is a good idea to have a discussion of what rights you will licence when you are commissioned, as part of your negotiation over fees: see "Negotiating fees" (linked below).

The Creators' Copyright Coalition Commission/Confirmation of Sale form (available from the Freelance Office and www.londonfreelance.org/forms) lists a range of rights you might license to a client. Ticking the appropriate boxes on the form will make it clear to you and your client just what you have agreed.

If you actually agree to assign all rights, the price should be high - more than four times the fee for a normal licence, and much more if you already have reason to suspect your work will be sold on. The man (not a journalist) who sold video of suspected bombers being arrested in London in July 2005 to ITN and the Daily Mail for £60,000 thought it was a good price - until he realised how much they had made from syndicating it. He is now a convert to retaining rights.

Instead of assigning rights, a freelance is generally recommended to accept a basic fee for the first use (for example in a magazine or newspaper) and sell the publisher additional licences for other specific uses for agreed fees or percentages for each medium. Each constitutes a separate usage of the work.

Resisting rights grabs

Media companies often ask freelances to "assign" (hand over) all their rights, usually citing as a reason the advent of electronic media. Their aim is to acquire 100 per cent of any on-sales, in traditional media as well as electronic, so your work can be sold to other publications without any reference (or payment) to you.

Try to resist this. Many freelances, individually or in groups, have successfully done so. Retaining copyright is more than just a principle - material may be sold on to other publications or electronic media, sometimes for fees that are far greater than the original commission. See "Show me the money" (linked below).

Retaining rights can also be important to a freelance in maintaining their reputation - and without a reputation a freelance has no work and no sources. Anyone who has assigned all rights in their work may find it showing up in places that harm their reputation. A freelance may have promised a band that their interview will not appear in a particular tabloid. They may want to maintain a reputation for independence by stopping their work appearing in PR material, and will want to respect the NUJ Code of Conduct by preventing its use in advertising.

Respect must be mutual

Freelances, like staff, should ensure that they do not breach the rights of other authors (including illustrators and cartoonists or photographers). Remember too that much software, including fonts, is subject to copyright. Politely resist any suggestion from commissioners (who may know no better) that you breach this.

Photocopying etc

Writers and photographers are entitled to extra money from companies and organisations that photocopy the work. To be sure of receiving this, and other payments for such "secondary uses" UK freelances need to register with ALCS (for book and magazine writers) and/or DACS (for photographers, illustrators, etc). See the links below. How these payments generally work is that libraries, press offices and others who do bulk copying pay a licence fee to the collecting society. This arranges a survey of a sample of licensees, to work out statistically how to distribute it. Efforts continue to deliver the share of this money due to newspapers' contributors.

These "collecting societies" also distribute money collected for secondary uses in other countries - including, for example, Public Lending Right (see below) from Germany and the Netherlands.

DACS assumes a licence to collect and distributes certain payments to photographers, illustrators and cartoonists who are NUJ members, unless they opt out. Any who want to do so should contact the Freelance Office.

Public Lending Right

Book authors, illustrators and translators are also entitled to payments for lending of their work by libraries. UK law says you are entitled to Public Lending Right payments because you are the author. PLR is quite separate from copyright. The payments are calculated from a survey of selected libraries, extrapolated statistically. To be sure of receiving this money, authors should register with Public Lending Right UK (see the link below).

Fair dealing

UK law defines a strictly limited number of ways that works can be used without the author's permission or payment to them, such as including them in exam questions. These uses are called "fair dealing" - the equivalent exceptions in US law are called "fair use". See the consolidated version of the Act (linked below) for details.

Finding out more about copyright

For more information on copyright and how the NUJ has been tackling this thorny problem, see the NUJ publication Battling for Copyright, free to NUJ members from the Freelance Office. Training on copyright is now available from the NUJ Training Department, with input from Thompsons' copyright lawyer and examination of several interesting case studies.

Generally useful links: