15.05.17

Senator the Hon Mitch Fifield Minister for Arts

Dear Senator Fifield

Recently the UK Parliament passed the Digital Economy Act 2017 which extended the UK Public Lending Right scheme to include remote loans of ebooks and digital audio books from public libraries. The new arrangements will take effect in 2018.

On behalf of our members, writers and illustrators across Australia, we urge you to similarly extend the PLR and ELR scheme here.

At a time when ebook and eaudio lending is rapidly growing across the world, it is now essential that a writer’s PLR payments include copies of their books loaned in a digital format. Today’s libraries offer access to thousands of ebooks and eAudio books and those thousands of free loans are not caught by the current PLR and ELR schemes, despite the clear policy intention that the scheme ought to compensate creators for the loss of income caused by these loans.

This issue has widespread support across the industry, but despite considerable discussion, Digital Lending Rights have still not been established in Australia. We call on your government to effect this change by updating the Public Lending Right Act 1985.

We would welcome an opportunity to talk further about this should you require information from our members or further industry feedback.

Yours sincerely

Juliet Rogers CEO