PLR in Poland

poland

As a Member State, Poland has an obligation to implement the 1992 Lending Right Directive and set up a PLR scheme. This has not happened.

As provided by Article 5.3 of the 1992 Directive on Rental and Lending Right, Member States may exempt certain categories of establishments from the payment of PLR remuneration. This exemption has been incorporated into Article 28 of the Polish Copyright Act which provides, that:

“Libraries, archives and schools shall be allowed:

to provide free access to copies of disseminated works within the scope of their statutory objectives,
to make or order preparation of copies of disseminated works, in order to supplement, preserve or protect their collections,
to provide their resources for exploratory or cognitive purposes with the use of informatic system terminals (terminal) within the territory thereof.”

As a result PLR is not payable in Poland for use of authors’ works in the libraries, archives and schools covered by the legislation. The main reasons for this were: providing access to culture and the costs of a PLR system to the State budget.

(Updated November 2008)