Copyright Licence for Local Governments

In the Local Government sector – where exchanging and retaining information about current and historical events is critical – it’s easy to breach copyright laws by inadvertently copying and sharing content without permission. Most text and visual works are covered by copyright. If your employees copy and share text and/or images that were created by others, they’ll usually need permission from the copyright owner to do so.

Text and images protected by copyright may include:

news and magazine articles
journal articles
books
conference papers, research reports
website content

Research conducted by independent market research agency FiftyFive5* shows that:

2 out of 3 white collar workers access published content in their role which is often downloaded, copied and shared
56% of white-collar workers use GenAI tools
58% copy + pasting news items into AI prompts
57% of employees believe their organisation should do more to be copyright compliant
505m potential copyright infringements happen each year in Australian businesses

Councils are not defined or referred to as being under the Crown within the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). As a result, they are not covered by the existing statutory licence arrangements in place under s183(5) between Copyright Agency and the Commonwealth, and the States/Territories. Councils are thus required to obtain a licence or permission to copy and share information.

Our Annual Copyright Licence for Local Government is a blanket licence that protects Australian Councils from the risk of copyright infringement by providing your employees with rights to:

Upload articles from Australian newspaper publishers into AI tools or use them as prompts
copy, share and store third-party text and images within your organisation, and
share selected content externally.

Adhere to AI tools terms and conditions

AI tools have terms and conditions requiring you to hold a licence for any third-party material that is input whether by cutting and pasting or uploading documents. Holding a Copyright Agency Annual Business Licence gives your organisation the required permission to use content from Australian newspaper publishers in GenAI tools and applications.

What is a blanket copyright licence?

A blanket copyright licence enables Councils to obtain one licence agreement to cover multiple works, removing the need for you to obtain individual clearances from rightsholders for most common workplace activities like making digital copies, digital storage of copies on servers or devices, printing, scanning and photocopying, as well as using Australian newspaper articles in prompts for AI tools and sharing those outputs with colleagues**.

Copyright Agency has arrangements with other licensing organisations internationally. This means the content represented by those international organisations is included within our blanket copyright licence**.

Key benefits to your business

Speed and efficiency

Covers most common workflow activities, including use of Australian newspaper articles in AI tool prompts
Fits with ESG frameworks

Copyright licensing promotes good governance in business practices
Flexibility

One licence covers copyright material from millions of sources
Peace of mind

Avoid litigation, costly infringement claims and reputational risk
Learning and innovation

We provide copyright training and an online Knowledge Hub

About the Annual Copyright Licence

Your licence:

Covers your entire Council for copying and internal sharing rights for digital, online and hard copy resources, including newspapers, magazines, journals, books and other published works.
Provides rights to use Australian newspaper articles in GenAI tools. Staff can upload or input articles as prompts, and share GenAI-generated outputs internally or externally, including on websites and social media**.
External communication rights for Australian newspaper articles – email externally; post to websites, extranets and social media; use in annual reports and submissions.
Complements the Downstream Licence provided by media monitoring organisations. The annual licence provides additional rights to your Downstream Licence and covers newspaper content not received via a media monitoring organisation and copying directly from websites.
Saves you from having to negotiate licence fees with individual copyright owners. A single, cost-effective annual licence allows your employees to copy and share content from millions of sources.
Use third-party materials in all structured and unstructured staff training activities and programmes.
Regulatory approval and compliance requires evidence from published sources in many industries. A copyright licence covers the making of copies, providing them to regulators or regulatory advisors and the storage of copies as a record.
Provides real compliance. Relying on fair dealing and library exceptions leaves considerable copyright compliance gaps and gives a false sense of compliance.
Reduces your risk of being brought into copyright dispute. Avoid potential litigation expenses. FiftyFive5* research identified 124 potential copyright violations per employee each year.
Reputation management. With increased use of Generative AI and associated governance concerns, ethical AI use reinforces your reputation as a responsible and forward-thinking Council.