During 2024, the UK’s Design and Artists Copyright Society, DACS, celebrates forty years of operations. DACS is a not-for-profit-share rights management organisation that champions, protects and manages the intellectual property rights of visual creators, to maximise royalty income paid by users of their work. DACS currently has over 180,000 members worldwide, to whom £240 million has been distributed since 1984: a remarkable milestone. And a tribute to DACS’s enduring belief in the power and value of collectivist self-help – especially given its idealistic origins, which were starkly at odds with the then government’s prevailing ideology of individualism.
DACS originated in the late 1970s. Following Pablo Picasso’s death in 1973, his son Claude Picasso (mother Françoise Gilot) established, in France, the Picasso Administration,to look after his father’s copyright and other legal matters. By 1978, Claude was concerned that his father’s works were the subject of substantial unauthorised reproduction and merchandising, beyond France. The UK then had no organisation dedicated to enforcing violations of artists’ copyrights – except perhaps a newly formed entity: Artlaw Services (AS).
AS was being funded by the three arts councils in Great Britain to operate, in effect, as a national law centre for visual creators, providing free legal advice and help, education and knowledge transfer. Claude worked with AS over the next few years, eventually seed-funding a new separate organisation solely dedicated to artists’ copyright enforcement: DACS.
Formed by a group of UK artists and art lawyers (from AS), DACS’ aims were to support artists by managing their copyright, to collect royalties owed for use of their work, and to campaign for the Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) to be introduced into UK law. UK artists (and their estates after death) were invited to become members of DACS, on payment of a £15 annual subscription. Notable first members included: Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Alexis Hunter, Eduardo Paolozzi, David Shepherd and Joe Tilson.
DACS initially modelled itself on numerous protection and collecting societies that had been formed decades earlier in other creative fields worldwide. In the UK’s music industry, for example, there was the Performing Rights Society (PRS), the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS); plus hundreds of sister organisations abroad (e.g. the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers – ASCAP – and Broadcast Music Inc. – BMI). These collective societies were created by owners of musical and sound-recording copyrights and performing rights, to ensure that all methods and outlets of recorded music manufacture, reproduction, distribution, performance and retailing were known to the societies. These societies enforced the payment of licence fees/royalties/dues to their members, for what would otherwise be unlawful economic abuse of copyright owners’ rights. The effectiveness and efficiency of such collective enforcement work, carried out by experts employed full-time by such societies, was then and continues to be, far more feasible and cost-effective than being attempted by one lone copyright owner. The livelihood of all creators of musical/sound recording or dramatic works would be decimated without the successful work of such societies.
DACS soon became a member of the international network of copyright collecting societies for all creators, through membership of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC). DACS made reciprocal arrangements with visual creators’ collecting societies in other countries, offering services to UK-based artists in: France, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, (then) West Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, Sweden and the then USSR. In these ways, non-UK artists/estates became DACS members, notably: Max Beckman, Rembrandt Bugatti, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dali, Maurits Escher, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Fernand Leger, Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerrit Rietveld, Victor Vasarely and Andy Warhol.
In 1993, DACS was instrumental in launching “The Artists’ Campaign for Droit de Suite”, aimed at convincing UK legislators to enact an artist’s resale royalty right into intellectual property law. Such a right existed throughout most of mainland Europe, since its enactment in France as ‘droit de suite’ (right to follow) in 1920. The campaign also sought to influence legislators in the newly created EU, with a view to enacting an EU-wide scheme (that would apply to the UK as an EU member state).
In 2001, DACS launched its third annual ‘Payback’ scheme, inviting visual creators to apply for their share of £300,000, payable to them if their works had been used by television broadcasters, or had been reproduced in books, magazines or journals during 2000. DACS had negotiated on behalf of visual creators with major UK broadcasters and publishers, who had agreed to pay DACS annual blanket licence fees to compensate the creators of visual images for unlicensed uses of their works. DACS’ annual Payback scheme continues today.
DACS contributed to the UK government’s drafting of legislation implementing the EU’s Directive (legal requirement) that all member states introduced artist’s resale right/droit de suite into their own domestic law by 2006. After a year-long media campaign on behalf of UK art market professionals opposing its introduction, and a media campaign (including UK Government lobbying) led by DACS on behalf of UK artists supporting its introduction, on 14 February 2006 the UK’s Artists’ Resale Right (ARR) Regulations came into operation. Accordingly, DACS amended its original mission from campaigning for the introduction of ARR into UK law, to collecting and distributing artists’ ARR payments – to date, £100 million has been collected and paid out since 2006.
Key features of the EU’s artists’ resale royalty right scheme, as implemented by UK law, are that resales between two private people are excluded, thus applying only to resales involving at least one art market professional (seller/buyer or their agent). Art market professionals must pay ARR royalties directly to an artists’ collecting society, which relays them to members. Artists cannot claim their ARR royalties directly, and so need to register with an ARR collecting society. Royalties of artists who have not registered with a collecting society are automatically paid by art market professionals to DACS. UK’s ARR regulations continue to operate post-Brexit.
A key provision of the UK’s ARR Regulations empowers artists collecting societies, if necessary, to enforce payment by defaulters. Most art market professionals have so far cooperated with DACS to comply with their legal requirements under ARR – with one notable exception. In 2022 DACS saw no alternative to filing a lawsuit against a London-based dealer, for repeatedly failing to provide information on sales of artists’ works on which resale royalties were payable, despite requests to do so since 2006. Eventually the dealer settled the matter out of court to DACS’s satisfaction.
In 2017 DACS addressed the social network revolution of the previous two decades of technological innovation and exponential growth, which had been embraced by visual creators. DACS published online its collection of practical queries, helpfully answered in plain language, which are still valid today. A key learning point for artists is always to read terms and conditions (T&Cs) before signing up to any social media platform, and consider not signing up if there are unacceptable provisions.
DACS tackles the common problem of artists’ images being taken down by platforms unilaterally and without notice. Such censorship is often unpredictable and erratic, usually caused by algorithms programmed to target classes of unacceptable material, rather than assessing specific images. DACS urges artists to be mindful that ‘whilst social-media platforms can be a cost-effective way of promoting your work, in making your images accessible you are increasing opportunities for it to copied and used by others without your permission – also known as copyright infringement’.
DACS understandably focuses its advice on copyright, explaining that by accepting T&Cs artists grant a copyright licence to platforms to display their content and make it accessible by users anywhere worldwide. DACS warns that doing so means that artists are also agreeing that anything published on the platform is ‘sub-licensable, meaning the platform can authorise another company to use your work … and your content is usually available for free, meaning you won’t receive any royalties for the content you publish on the platform …and some platforms give their other users permission to access or display your work, which means they can replicate it in their personalised dashboards, or share it on other social media platforms and web applications.’
DACS offers artists useful tips to help protect images of their work posted on social media platforms: ‘use the copyright symbol © with your name and the year of creation next to your work (to inform people that you are the copyright holder and encourage them to seek permission if they wish to reproduce it); consider adding watermarks to your images; share only low resolution images; only post what’s necessary to promote your style and range of work and link your images back to your website where you control the terms and conditions; keep track of the images you publish and on what social-media platforms you have published them on (this may help you in the event of an infringement)’.
In 2018 the results of a year-long research project funded by DACS, and jointly conducted by Oxford University’s Internet Institute and The Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s body for data science and artificial intelligence research), were published: ‘The Art Market 2.0: Blockchain and Financialisaton in Visual Arts’. Based on a wide range of interviews with experts in art and finance and blockchain technology, and artists and patrons and academics, the aim of this research was to offer artists, practitioners, lawmakers, business people and patrons ‘a better understanding of both the present state of the art market and how it could be changed and shaped by blockchain technologies, as well as how the future of blockchain will be shaped by art’. The report explained and described ‘the benefits of introducing digital ledger technologies to the UK art market, with the proposed potential for a soaring increase in art market liquidity and value’. It made clear the opportunities and risks facing artists in an increasingly digital world, and was an important step in understanding how technology can potentially support the aspirations of artists and consolidate the UK’s unique position in the art world.
In 2024, DACS is working alongside writers, directors, and performers to campaign for the introduction of a legal requirement, whereby technology manufacturers pay royalties for authors’ works shared on their devices. And DACS is taking the lead on ensuring that visual artists are legally protected, as generative AI continues to develop new ways of appropriating their works.
© Henry Lydiate 2024