Public Lending Right exists in many countries around the world. It is predicated upon the proposition that offering books for loan in libraries will negatively affect sales of those books in the normal marketplace and therefore there needs to be some kind of payment for authors and creators to compensate for that loss of sales. In some countries, publishers also receive a payment.
Hoepli spoke powerfully about the IPA’s support for PLR schemes in those countries where our local members want them, and likened that support to IPA’s strong ethical position on issues like demanding that AI platforms seek consent, give credit and offer appropriate compensation to creators and publishers for the use of their work when ingested into the platforms’ large language models.
Other speakers at this year’s conference discussed topics such ‘Fair compensation, human creativity and cultural diversity’, ‘Transparency: distribution, data and AI’ and ‘The use of PLR for cultural or social purposes’.
There was a touching tribute to two of PLR’s most stalwart and passionate champions — Maureen Duffy and Jim Parker — both of whom sadly died recently. The next PLRI Conference will be in 2028.
Read the report issued by the PLR International Conference here.