PLR in Estonia

estonia

Legal Status

PLR was included in the 1992 Copyright Act in December 1999. This was enforced in January 2000 and supplemented by decrees passed 2003-09. The Act gives authors a right to receive equitable remuneration for loans of their works by public libraries.

The system started in March 2004.

Remuneration is calculated on the basis of a statistical sample of electronically registered loans representing around 50% of the total number of remunerable loans.

From 2009 funding is allocated as follows: 60% to authors, 30% to translators and 10% to designers and illustrators.

Application process

Authors and rightsholders must claim PLR submitting applications and listing their publications. This can be done either in a handwritten form or electronically via AHF's website http://www.ahf.ee.

Payments

Made annually by 1 July.

An upper limit was set for PLR payments in 2005 equivalent to four average monthly salaries from the previous year according to national official statistics.

Funding

Funding is negotiated annually with the Ministry of Culture. In previous years the government has provided:

2004: €63,912
2005: €159,779
2006: €159,779
2007: €169,366
2008: €183,867
2009: €134,214
2010: €121,432
2011: €120,420

Administration

PLR is run by an independent, non-profit making foundation called AHF (Autorihüvitusfond) (Authors' Remuneration Fund).

It was founded in January 2004 by the Writers' Union, Publishers' Association, and the Union of Graphical Designers. The Foundation manages the PLR and Reprographic Rights remuneration systems in Estonia.

Administrative costs are up to 15% of the annual budget.

Current Trents

Since 2008 funding has decreased by 35% while the number of applicants has risen by 19%. Thus the median payment has decreased by 44% and the number of applicants receiving less than €10 has increased by 59% (27% of PLR receivers in 2011). There is no lower limit to payments. The upper limit had to be applied to one author in 2009 and 2010. In 2011 noone reached the upper limit. Some major changes in calculation introduced in 2009 give priority to creators of original text and visual form - the 60/30/10 division works in favour of authors. Illustrators benefit from reducing the share for a book’s cover design by 60%.

(Updated may 2012)