Copyright: Irish Copyright Licensing Agency

The Irish Copyright Licensing Agency (ICLA) is a licensing body under part 149 of the Copyright Act 2000, where a licensing agency is defined as a body whose main objective is the granting of licenses that allow for the undertaking of actions that otherwise would be prohibited under copyright law. 

The ICLA's role is to provide, for a fee, licenses to schools, business, institutions etc. to use copyrighted work in a more expansive way than could be done otherwise. With this license, institutes can provide their staff with the ability to share copied versions of copyrighted material with students to the degree stated in the licensing subscription.

It must be noted that this only applies to material that the institute owns either through owning a copy of the item or a subscription to a database that holds the item. 

Under no circumstances other than the exceptions mentioned under what to copy, can a entire work be copied. 

None of the licensed work should end up in the hands of third parties, either by direct contact or placing it in an online repository. 

There should only be enough copies for each student in the course of study and two for each lecturer.

The ICLA also has an excluded works list that states which works do not fall under the license.   

The copied work must also have a sufficient citation of the work the extract is copied from. 

Accessible Copies

The ICLA license allows for the full copying of a work into a different form for any student who has disabilities that would affect them in studying the work e.g. visual impairment. 

The license allows for instutions to wholesale copying of one work into an accessible form. 

This can include alterations to make it easy for this person. 

However this comes with the caveat that this copy is only for the use of that impaired person and that there is no outside copies that have accessible options on them. 

The 2019 act has updated the provisions of the educational exceptions to include: 

• That both copying and communicating the copy falls under the exceptions for education produced by the act.
• The replacement of reproduction rather than reprographing of documents including digital forms of copying. 
• Provisions for distance learning that allows the institution to communicate works of importance to distance students. Those students are allowed to make copies of those works. 
• That as long as a sufficient acknowledgement is given copies can be made of works available through the internet.  

• Check permissions of works

  Though this is intended for the British license, it will also allow you to check to see if a work falls under the ICLA license, as the works that the two licenses cover are nearly identical.

• ICLA License

  Full text of the ICLA license.

• ICLA Licenses

  Here you can check if you need a license and what licenses the ICLA provide.

• List of excluded works

  List of works that the license does not apply to.

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