THIRD LEVEL colleges are facing a bill of almost £100,000 a year for the right of students to make photocopies from academic textbooks.
The Irish Copyright Licensing Agency (ICLA) is demanding that the colleges pay £1 per student per year for the licence to photocopy copyright material. Legal proceedings will be taken against anyone caught copying without a licenee, it warns.
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) condemned the move yesterday, saying it would place a "ridiculous" extra burden on students. The president of USI, Mr Colman Byrne, predicted the charge would be impossible to police.
Controversy arose earlier this year when the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) made a similar demand for primary schools to buy licencees for music played in the classroom.
The ICLA points out that it has already reached agreement with the authorities running primary and second level schools. At third level, it says, the new licence would allow staff, students, and librarians to make multiple copies of "limited extracts" of copyright material for the purposes of education.
The existing law limits copying to "research" and "private study" purposes, so students can only make copies for their own use.
"Since licences are now available at reasonable rates, there no excuse for copyright infringement in any Irish educational institution," an ICLA spokeswoman said.
Proceeds from the licensing fees are divided among authors and publishers, according to the association. The amount due to each is determined by survey. The ICLA is a non profit making organisation with offices in the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin.
A spokesman for UCD said he had heard nothing about the demand for copyright fees. The price quoted by the ICLA sounded expensive, he added, compared to similar arrangements operating in Britain.
The USI president said it was inevitable that if the charge was imposed, students rather than colleges would have to foot the bill. "At the moment, we're fighting to provide basic campus services such as accommodation and health care. It would be totally unjust to divert the money needed for these services to outside agencies," Mr Byrne said.
The ICLA says its licences cover not only Irish printed materials, but also materials originating in Britain and the US, as well as several European countries. Under a reciprocal agreement with its equivalent body in the US, Irish authors and publishers can benefit when their works are published in the United States.
