PLR in Luxembourg

luxembourg

The legal foundation of public lending right in Luxemburg was introduced in 2001 as a new copyright act1 abolished the outdated law from 19722 ; the latter did not rule lending rights at all. But the newly introduced article 65 only stated that authors and performers are entitled to an equitable remuneration, which is to be paid by public libraries, abandoning all further details to a government regulation (règlement grand-ducal). By that time, LUXORR was not yet set up, and as far as we know, no efforts were undertaken to push the government for regulatory action. It might be interesting to stress out that according to the Luxemburgish tradition, the Ministry of the Economy is in charge of copyright issues.

One of the first undertakings and initiatives of LUXORR, since its creation, was to urge the Luxemburgish government to elaborate all necessary regulations in order to permit a concrete application of the copyright act, as almost all regulations mentioned in this act were lacking. Even today, six years after the promulgation of the law, numerous government regulations still have to be drafted. Fortunately, a regulation on PLR3 has been adopted on January 8th 2007 and published on January 25th 2007. Thus an usable PLR legislation exists in Luxemburg now. But PLR did not really start on a valuable basis in Luxemburg.

Indeed, despite LUXORR being one of the main instigators of the PLR regulation, we have to regret not having been consulted during the elaboration of the drafting, and discovered its content just like any other citizen by reading the Official Journal (Mémorial). More generally, we have the impression that the regulation has been taken without a large consultation of the concerned institutions. The copyright commission (commission des droits d’auteurs) whose legal mission specifically is to assist the Minister in copyright issues, and which is composed of representatives of all involved bodies, unfortunately was not yet operative, and still isn’t.

The satisfaction for finally having a PLR regulation thus unfortunately is darkened by the poor quality of this legislation.

The “equitable remuneration” is due by the State or the districts (commune) for public libraries, and by the library itself for private libraries. It is not subject to any negotiation but fixed to a yearly lump sum of 2 Euros payable per user borrowing at least one item (books, newspapers, periodicals, electronic media) during the year.

The regulation stipulates that the remuneration is to be collected by the officially recognized Reproduction Rights Organisations. The law thus requires compulsory collective management or all PLR rights.

At current state, only two RROs are likely to participate to the collect, i.e. LUXORR for written and pictural works, and SACEMLUX for musical works. Due to the low revenues to be expected, the creation of a separate PLR entity is not a convenient solution. Therefore, it is probable that one of both RROs will collect the remuneration and, after deducing a handling fee, will continue part of it to the other RRO. Although no final agreement has been negotiated, the relationship between LUXORR and SACEMLUX feels way more collaborative than competitive, which makes us hope that we can join our efforts in order to take most possible out of the existing regulation.

The beneficiaries of the remuneration are, according to the regulation, the artists and performers; publishers are thus basically excluded, which is contrary to the global LUXORR philosophy considering equally the authors and the publishers’ commitment and investment in the genesis of a work, and might thus be source of discussions. For the final distribution of the collected money to authors and performers, the regulation provides no tangible rules are provided, except for the rule saying that the author and the performer of a work have to equitably share half of the remuneration.

Concerning more particularly the distribution LUXORR will do to the author we represent, no final solution as yet been adopted. It will essentially depend on the available data whether we will be able to implement a meticulous ‘per loan’ calculation or a more summary approach, such as a ‘per book’ calculation or even more estimative approaches. The limited human and financial means will probably also dictate the choice, however the limited number of eligible authors will also simplify the proceeding, as no remuneration has to be paid by now to foreign authors.

A main hint in implementing the PLR regulation will be the limited available data. First meetings with the national library (Bibliothèque Nationale) have shown that only some major libraries are linked together in a powerful network able to deliver precise and tailored data. Although there is an abstract legal obligation to deliver to the RROs all data necessary to compute the PLR remuneration due, minor libraries will probably not be able to gather this information in their computer system or will even not have any computer system at all. An estimative approach will thus be unavoidable, although the regulation clearly favours an accurate distribution.

As we were told, the requirements of the Luxemburgish authority for data privacy (Commission Nationale pour la Protection des Données) will further limit the available data, because all information on loaned books will have to be anonymous even in the library’s computer system. This is particularly annoying, as the PLR remuneration is calculated on the number of individual persons doing at least one annual loan.

The main regret about the current PLR legislation is the limited number of libraries obliged to financially participate. Due to its small size, Luxemburg only counts a limited number of libraries. The 2007 regulation excludes all school libraries, as well as all academic and research libraries. Another regulation excludes even more libraries from the payment obligation, without any specific justification. Finally, the PLR remuneration will essentially be due by the National Library and some local district libraries (bibliothèque communale).

All the eligible libraries have been contacted and first payments will be made during 2008 for the loans made during the year 2007.

By now very few local authors are represented within the LUXORR structure (by opposition the publisher’s, who are broadly represented); the PLR remuneration might reveal to be a magnet for attracting more authors to LUXORR.

Despite all it’s defaults, one advantage of the current system is that once it is set up and data collection has become routine, the administrative overhead will be very limited, as the calculation method is clearly fixed and leaves no room for negotiation and discussions.

1 Mémorial A N° 50, 30.4.2001, p. 1041.

2 Loi du 29 mars 1972 sur le droit d’auteur ; Mémorial A n°23, 12.4.1972, 809.

3 Règlement grand-ducal du 8 janvier 2007 relatif à la rémunération équitable pour prêt public ; Mémorial A n° 3, 25.1.2007, p. 29.

(updated May 2008)