Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) meaning

In legal practice, the Authors’ Licensing and collecting society (ALCS) is the UK authors’ collective management organisation that collects and distributes royalties arising from secondary uses of copyrighted works. It does not negotiate or licence primary exploitation rights (such as publication, distribution, performance or broadcast), which are dealt with under the writer’s publishing or production contract. ALCS aggregates income from statutory and voluntary licensing schemes where works already made available to the public are reused by third parties—for example, educational photocopying and scanning, press clippings, cable retransmission of television signals (including overseas retransmission of UK broadcasts), and certain private‑copying or reprographic levies from other jurisdictions. It distributes these secondary rights royalties to writers under mandates and reciprocal agreements. Public library lending is treated differently: payments for UK lending are made under the statutory Public Lending Right scheme, not by ALCS. Ireland operates its own statutory PLR scheme for Irish library lending. ALCS may, however, receive and pass on overseas PLR or other secondary payments. The term is descriptive rather than defined in statute or case law. ALCS operates as a collective management organisation regulated in the UK (including England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), with broadly consistent practical usage across the...