What is Public Lending Right?
Public Lending is the non-commercial lending of books and other works by libraries to the public. The Public Lending Right (PLR) gives authors (and other rightsholders) the right to receive payment for the lending of works by libraries. About thirty-five countries have active PLR systems - these are mostly in Europe (through the EU Rental and Lending Directive), plus Australia, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.
While PLR traditionally applies to physical books in public libraries, other types of works can be included in PLR schemes (e.g. audiobooks, ebooks, journals, music, film, software, comics and board games), as well as other types of libraries (e.g. academic, school and special libraries). Schemes vary in terms of who qualifies for payments (e.g. authors, publishers, illustrators, translators, or writers in a specific language), and how payments are calculated (e.g. based on loans data, stock data, number of library members or a sample survey of libraries).
PLR is mostly funded by directly governments (national or regional), and in some cases by individual libraries. Funding criteria can vary, for example, it is based on a fixed amount determined by the ministry, a percentage of the annual library acquisitions budget, or data collected from libraries. Payments are mostly administered by collective management organizations, or in some cases by a government agency or writers’ organization. In some countries, minimum and maximum payment thresholds apply.
PLR is not required under any international treaty or copyright convention. In Europe, PLR was introduced into European law through the 1992 Rental and Lending Directive (codified in 2006) - for this reason, most countries with PLR schemes are located in Europe. No country outside the EU sphere is obliged to introduce PLR.
For those countries that have PLR, there are three legal approaches: include in the copyright system (the principal EU approach), include in national cultural policy (the Canadian approach), or enact specific PLR legislation that mandates PLR payments to rightsholders under a compulsory licensing scheme (the Australian approach). The different legal approaches have different consequences, for example, under copyright rules authors in most other countries would also be entitled to receive payments (under the principle known as national treatment), whereas a cultural support scheme can be targeted at supporting local authors, languages or particular genres such as fiction, poetry or children’s books.
When PLR was discussed at WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in the 1990’s, Member States rejected PLR because of the financial burdens it would place on library systems in developing countries. Concern was also expressed about the principle of national treatment - countries with large amounts of translated works could be forced to distribute most PLR payments to authors outside the country.
What is EIFL’s position on Public Lending Right?
- EIFL does not support legal restrictions on the lending of books by libraries, because public lending is essential to culture, education, employment, health and social inclusion.
- In particular, PLR creates challenges in developing countries. It poses a risk to free public lending services, often fragile library budgets, and government budgets that would ultimately bear the costs of establishing the PLR scheme and financing the payments. For this reason, PLR should not be established in countries designated by the World Bank as low or low-middle income.
- If a PLR scheme is to be established, it should be done under national cultural policy. It should not be established under the copyright system to avoid the scenario of developing countries having to send royalty payments to rightsholders in the global north.
- To support local authors and publishers, instead of creating a new mechanism (PLR), governments in developing countries should strengthen the existing mechanism: libraries. For example, it could allocate a budget for public libraries to purchase works by local authors that would directly support local authors and publishers. By investing in libraries, governments are investing in authors, literacy, education and development.