Untitled Document

oslo 2003 conference

report

The 5th International PLR Conference took place in Oslo, 10 – 12 September 2004. The Conference was a joint production, organised by the Royal Ministry of Cultural and Church Affairs, Norwegian Writers for Children and the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association.

Seventeen countries sent delegates to the Conference, including (for the first time) representatives from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; and, also for the first time at these PLR conferences, a speaker from the European Commission attended.

The conference programme included news of several new developments in the PLR arena. Principal among these were reports on the passing of PLR legislation in the three Baltic countries and on progress towards the establishment of working PLR systems. The EU Lending Right Directive of 1992 requires Member States to recognise a copyright-based lending right for authors and, of the ten new states joining the EU in May 2004, most progress in implementing the Directive has been made by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Indeed, the Lithuanians reported that they had completed their first payment distribution. All three countries have chosen a loans-based system of payment calculation.

There were also presentations by Florence-Marie Piriou of SOFIA setting out the details of the proposed PLR system to be introduced in France following the passing of PLR legislation earlier in 2003; by Dick Van Ryckeghem of the Flemish Culture Ministry describing the new PLR system for Flemish authors; by Alan Andries of the European Commission setting out the Commission’s position regarding those existing EU states that have not yet fully implemented the PLR provisions of the 1992 Directive; and by Irmgard Schmitt of VG-Wort on the challenges for PLR presented by the new technologies in libraries.

With so many encouraging developments the atmosphere at the conference was generally upbeat. Jim Parker, in his paper on the choices open to countries considering the establishment of PLR, estimated that the number of countries that had recognised authors’ lending rights in their legislation had risen to 34, and of these 17 had set up working PLR systems. A seminar providing an introduction to the principles and practice of PLR was being organised for European states preparing for PLR and would be held in London in October. Already authors’ organisations from 24 countries had registered.

There was much enthusiasm for the two-yearly PLR conferences to continue to meet, and it was provisionally agreed that the next conference might take place in Germany in 2005.