Amounts distributed

Authors are paid for their work

The remunerations that Reprobel collects are not a type of tax. The collected amounts go to the authors and publishers as remuneration for the use of their work.

Authors earn a living from the sale of their work. If that work is used without any remuneration being paid for it, something is wrong. After all, you like to be paid for the job you do, don’t you?
The remunerations also make authors less dependent on government subsidies, for example.

Strict rules of conduct

The distribution of copyrights is not done in an arbitrary or secretive fashion. The government imposes strict rules of conduct:

• for reprography after deduction of the operating costs 50% of the amounts collected by Reprobel go to the authors and 50% to the publishers;
• for public lending right remuneration after deduction of the operating costs 70% goes to the authors and 30% to the publishers;
• the management costs of Reprobel are low;
• the internal distribution regulations of Reprobel are approved by the government;
• the general assembly of Reprobel oversees fair distribution;
• Reprobel sets a limited amount of the remunerations aside as reserves and distributes them after a couple of years in full;
• via the Inspection Department for companies and via the Minister – the government is able to monitor the distribution and can intervene as needed.

Cost-conscious management

The general assembly of Reprobel consists of representatives of authors and publishers. They have every interest in seeing to it that the management costs of Reprobel are kept under control. This way, more money goes to the rights holders.
All interest on the amounts collected is distributed among the authors and publishers. Therefore, Reprobel has nothing to gain itself by delaying payment to the rights holders.

The distribution among authors in practice

The Board of Authors of Reprobel distributes the remunerations for the authors. These are remunerations collected in Belgium as well as remunerations transferred by foreign sister organisations. Twice a year, the amounts are released.

Step 1: based on research, the amount allocated to each category of works is determined in an objective and transparent way:

• photographs
• other visual works
• journalistic texts
• educational and scientific texts
• literary texts
• other texts

Step 2: A portion is reserved for foreign authors and at the explicit request of the government, a small amount is reserved for late claims or minor corrections. After a couple of years, these amounts are also distributed in full.

Step 3: Authors are generally members of authors’ society: Assucopie, KVBKB, Sabam, Sacd, Jam, Scam, Sofam or Vewa. The weight that they represent in each category (specialisation, number of members, number of works declared) determines the amount that each of the copyright management companies receives.

Step 4: The copyright management companies transfer the remunerations to their members. For the copyright management companies the same strict rules of conduct apply as for Reprobel. In this way, the remunerations effectively reach those who are entitled to them.