. CEDRO is a non-profit association of authors and publishers. It was created in 1987 and was authorized to act as an RRO by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1988, but it was only in 1993 that we had our first collection.

. CEDRO has individual members: both authors (writers, translators and journalists) and publishers of books, periodicals and sheet music can become members of CEDRO by signing the mandate contract. Visual artists cannot be members of CEDRO; the Spanish collecting society in that field is VEGAP.
 
. Among the exceptions to the exclusive right of reproduction established by the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, there is the exception of private copying: copies for private use can be made without the previous rightsholders’ authorisation, and are thus remunerated via an equipment levy, currently posed on photocopiers, multifunctional devices, and scanners. CEDRO collects this levy from importers and distributors of this equipment on behalf of rightsholders in books and certain kinds of periodicals copied in Spain.

. Apart from the equipment levy, CEDRO operates a voluntary license system on behalf of its members (and the rightholders represented by foreign RROs with whom we have a bilateral agreement), authorizing copies that are not private and thus require previous consent to be made: copies that are made for collective use, copies made for profit or with a price, copies made in establishments offering a reprographic service to the public, etc. Copyshops, Universities, libraries, and businesses are among users of CEDRO’s licenses.

. CEDRO’s distribution system is an “objective availability” type system. In this system all the books available in the market are allocated a certain amount of money in the distribution: the rationale behind this is that since all the books can be photocopied for private purposes, it can be assumed that they probably will at one time or another.

. Our distribution is a title specific distribution based on a statistical survey: this means that money is allocated to individual works, but this is not done according to the real extent in which each specific work has been exactly photocopied, but according to the results of our study. In the case of books, money is allocated to each of them according to two criteria: their price and their subject.

. the authors/publishers split is 55%/45%. This is established in the Spanish Intellectual Property Law. Out of the authors’ share, CEDRO transfers to VEGAP 11% corresponding to visual artists.

. CEDRO pays royalties directly to individual rightsholders, both authors and publishers.

. The Governing bodies of CEDRO are:

. the General Assembly of Members

. the Board of Directors, formed by 13 publishers and 12 authors

. the General Manager, supported by a staff of 40 members, working in two offices (headquarters in Madrid and a delegation for Catalonia in Barcelona).(know more about our staff members here)