PLR in Estonia

estonia

Legal Status: Copyright Act (1992; PLR included in December 1999, enforced in January, 2000) and supplemented by decrees passed 2003-05. The Act gives authors a right to receive equitable remuneration for loans of their works by public libraries.

The system started in March 2004.

Under the Act eligibility is extended to authors and rightsholders who are citizens or permanent residents of Estonia; books first published in Estonia; books to be protected according to international agreements. Government decree further defined eligible authors as:

authors of the text: authors, translators, editors;
authors of the visual form: graphic designers/illustrators, photographers;
audiovisual and phonogram authors via collective management organisations;
rightsholders: publishers, heirs etc.

and libraries as:

Public libraries i.e. libraries of counties, cities, towns and smaller administrative units (576 in Estonia, appr 12 million loans annually).

Remuneration is calculated on the basis of a statistical sample of electronically registered loans representing around 12 % of the total number of loans.

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.

Calculation

Each author`s share is calculated on the basis of:

number of loans;
volume of illustrations in each book;
number of authors/translators/illustrators of each book.

Payments are made annually by 1 July:

An upper limit was set to PLR payments in 2005 equivalent of 4 average monthly salaries of the previous year according to national official statistics.

Funding: Government has provided

2003: 600 000 Crowns
2004: 1 000 000 Crowns
2005: 2 500 000 Crowns
2006: 2 500 000 Crowns
2007: 2 650 000 Crowns

Funding is annually negotiated with the Ministry of Culture.

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, Union of Graphical Designers. The Foundation manages the PLR and Reprographic Rights remuneration systems in Estonia. The Foundation has a board o five members - representatives of the Writers`Union, Publishers`Association, Union of Graphical Designers, Union of Librarians and the Ministry of Culture.

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

(Updated April 2008)