PLR in Norway

norway

The Norwegian PLR system emerged in 1947, as the Government's response to an initiative taken by The Norwegian Association of Fiction Writers (Norsk Forfatterforening). Through the new Act on Public and School libraries in 1947 it was decided to establish a Remuneration Fund for Norwegian authors. In the fiscal year 1949-50 35,000 Norwegian Crowns were allocated to the new Authors Fund to help compensate for the ‘damage’ the authors felt they suffered as a result of the impact on their sales of public lending.

The present scheme is regulated by the Law on Public Lending of 1987, and ensures remuneration for works published in Norway and available for public lending. The scheme is part of the Norwegian cultural policy on literature, language and artists. The Law on Public Lending states that remuneration be calculated by multiplying a specific agreed rate for each lending unit by the number of lending units in publicly-owned Norwegian libraries. Lending units include books, electronic media, sheet music etc. Library statistics covering both public, school, research, special and prison libraries are collected annually from electronic data provided by the libraries.

The price per lending unit is decided through negotiations between the Government and an elected committee representing qualified rights holders’ organisations. There are also talks to agree which categories of media the remuneration is to be calculated from. Negotiations have been conducted since 1978, and agreements are subject to acceptance by Stortinget (the Norwegian Parliament). The remuneration is paid collectively to 16 funds managed by the rights holders' organizations, according to agreement between the organisations. The funds are allocated mainly for distribution as scholarships and grants. Any qualified rights holder is eligible to apply independently of organizational affiliation.

The present agreement on PLR remuneration between the Government and the 23 rights holders’ organisations covers the period 2005-2007. As a point of departure the parties agree that the Norwegian scheme for PLR remuneration concords with the EEA obligations given in COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property.

Should the issue come under scrutiny effecting disruption of that legal condition, the parties agree that the present agreement be terminated, and that the parties in that eventuality freely may discuss the new situation. The parties are presently engaged in negotiations towards a new agreement to take effect from 2008.

The PLR remuneration scheme enjoys broad political support, and is an important part of Norwegian cultural policy relating to artists and literature. This policy also includes a purchasing programme for contemporary fiction and non-fiction managed by the Arts Council Norway (totalling 10.3 mill euro), exempting books from VAT, and exempting the book trade from certain parts of the competition act allowing publishers and book sellers to fix book retail prices. These measures constitute an elaborate scheme providing Norwegian readers with a rich supply of literature.

The handlings of work in electronic format has previously been treated in seminars and will be further examined. In line with the EU Infosoc directive, which was implemented in the Norwegian Copyright act in 2005, the libraries may digitalize their collections. Further detailed regulations pertaining to this issue will probably be implemented before the Paris conference and more information may be given there.

The present agreement covers the period 2005-07, and the price paid per unit is NOK 1,605 in 2005, NOK 1,655 in 2006, raised to NOK 1,71 in 2007. There has been a steady increase of the state remuneration for public lending over the past two decades, from approx. NOK 13 million in 1983, through NOK 38 million in 1993 to NOK 72,2 million (approx. 8,9 million euro) in 2007. The increase results from growth both of stock and of unit price. Negotiations on 2007 will be concerned i.a with the development of the price per lending unit in the agreement period.

(updated May 2008)