The Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) and The Society of Authors (SoA) in the UK are calling for the Digital Economy Bill to be amended to extend Public Lending Right to remote offsite ebook lending.
The way consumers access books is increasingly changing as technology offers new ways to access written works. Libraries are now lending many ebooks, with 2.3 million ebook loans being made in the UK last year alone.
However, authors are not being remunerated for those loans despite the Government having committed in principle as long ago as March 2013 (in the Government Response to the Independent Review of E-Lending in Public Libraries in England) to extend PLR payments to ebooks when a suitable opportunity arose.
IAF supports its members, ALCS and the SoA, in their campaign asking the Government to address this problem and to develop a fairer PLR system that reflects modern media and compensates writers when their work is borrowed in line with traditional book borrowing.