PLR in Italy

italy

Full implementation of the Lending Right Directive in Italy is not yet fully completed. In order to pay for PLR, a fund has been created by the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2006 and it consists of 2,2 million euros for 2007 and 3 million euros for 2008 and subsequent years. Payments are to be distributed by the Societa Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE).

By a decree of June 18, 2007 the Italian Ministry of Culture determined that payments should be distributed among the various categories of rightsholders as follows:

printed copies of works (sheet music excluded): 50% to authors and 50% to publishers;
phonograms and videograms: 60% to be equally shared between authors and publishers, 40% to be equally shared between producers and artists/interpreters.

By a further decree of December 10, 2007, after an investigation undertaken in public libraries, the Ministry determined that funding should be divided among the different categories of media as follows:

printed copies of the works and audiobooks: 83%;
phonograms: 5%;
videograms: 12%.

AIE, the main Italian publishers’ association, has approached the Ministry for permission to recover from SIAE the whole share of the PLR funding allocated to publishers in order to use it for social and cultural purposes. AIE has been mandated by its members to propose this. AIE is also requesting that SIAE should not be responsible for distribution of the publishers’ share of PLR. However, the law states that SIAE should distribute payments to ALL rightsholders, publishers and authors. And it is SIAE that is to conduct a survey of book lending in Italian public libraries and will therefore have all the loans data, including the names of the book publishers and the fees due to them.

(updated october 2008)