DACS – The Design and Artists Copyright Society – is a not for profit organisation in the UK that collects fees for the photocopying of copyrighted material; including photographs. Each year it distributes £3 million of Payback royalties to visual artists, and if you’ve had iamges published in the UK you could well have a claim to a share of the pot. The scheme is primarily for UK based creators, but it can be worth claiming if there is no equivaent scheme in your country of residence.

Basically you need to provide details of where and when your photos have been used in the UK; in magazines, books and even on TV. Unfortunately, images published in newspapers don’t count, I’m not sure of the reason for this but perhaps someone will enlighten us in the comments section!

Sales of images  on a royalty free license cannot be claimed for as it isn’t possible to demonstrate to DACS the end use. So there’s a good argument for Rights managed licensing in the RM vs RF debate! DACS require details of three uses of your work which if you only sell via stock agencies can be tricky to provide given the stock photographer often knows little about the end uses of their work. Fortunately the guys at DACS are understanding of this and do accept stock sales records as alternative evidence provided they demonstrate the appropriate use in the UK. Here’s a useful guide from the Alamy blog on what to show DACS.

The deadline to submit a  2010 claim (for images published up until the end of 2009) is the 17th September 2010. It is possible to claim online but if you need to rely on stock sales evidence it is easier to claim using the paper form; so don’t leave it too long to get the ball rolling!

DACS payouts aren’t huge but if you’ve got a decent collection of tearsheets from the UK it is quite posible you could be entitled to anything from fifty to several hundred pounds. It is extra return on top of your licensing fees for minimal effort, and the great thing is you can claim again each year.

The DACS site is at http://www.dacs.org.uk.