Research On Public Lending Right System

Public Lending Right(PLR) essentially belongs to a right of copyright owners, which is entrusted to copyright owners by law to receive payment for free public use of their works in libraries or other public institutions because of their possibly reduced royalty. By the end of2012, there are56countries that recognize PLR within the legal system and30countries have established PLRS (public lending right system). PLRS have played a positive role in allocating public resources rationally and promoting the development of culture. The outstanding achievements of civilization abroad are worth of learning. So, the research is of academic meaning and practice valuable.The whole dissertation consists of eight chapters, aiming to study the theoretical basis of PLRS, the implementation of content, historical evolution, development assessment and major state system experience and to propose legislative framework suitable for Chinese national conditions. The specific contents are as followings:The first charter is preface, composed of four parts. The preface points out the questions asking and research meaning, a synthesis of abroad and domestic research, research clue and research contents, the main research methods and innovation points.Chapter two is mainly about the summary of PLR. The dissertation considers that the connotation of PLR’s evolving reflects legal characteristics of copyright rights. But PLR has its own characteristics. There are commons and differences between PLR and other similar rights such as lending right, rental right, public performance right, copyright levy. There exist conflictions and coexistences between PLR and fair use, exhaustion of rights and the principle of public interest. The legal bases of PLR include the theoretical basis and practical basis from many aspects, among which the philosophy of law, socio-economy and culture, and provide a sufficient legitimacy for PLR legislation.Chapter three is about the contents of PLRS. The chapter elaborates the contents of PLRS such as the legislative model, the subject and object of the right, management model, the subject of obligations, right limitation and sources, calculation and distribution of compensation and so on. It is impossible that there are two countries have same PLRS completely because one country has its unique conditions.Chapter four is mainly about historical process of PLRS. The development process of PLRS included four general phases:infancy period (1883-1941), the start-up period in Northern Europe (1942-1970), the global expansion period (1971-1991) and development period under EC92/100directive (1992-present). The reason of emergence and development of PLRS included six aspects:the development of public libraries, the positive demand of writers groups, protection for the national traditional culture, strengthening trends in international copyright protection in the world, the EU expansion and the application of information technology and so on. PLRS implementation is a complex systems engineering. The development of international PLRS experience some obstacles such as legal, economic, political, cultural, social and technical factors. So it develops unbalanced in the world. The developing tendency of PLRS is copyright legislation model.Chapter five is about assessment of PLRS. The assessment report by EC and verdict by the European Court of Justice have had an important impact for integration of PLRS in EU member states. The implementation of PLRS involves various interests groups such as copyright owners, booksellers, libraries and readers. Though it is possible that PLRS brings some negative impacts to the libraries and readers, in general, it is beneficial to production, dissemination and utilization of the works, promoting the national culture and the development of cultural industry. With the development of copyright protection and information technology, PLRS has been applied in the digital environment.Chapter six is mainly about review on foreign PLRS. Reviewing PLRS of Canada and Sweden with cultural policy legislative model, Australia and New Zealand with quasi-copyright legislation model, Denmark, the UK and Germany with copyright legislation model, the chapter makes comparison between these systems and provides a good reference experience for our legislation.Chapter seven is mainly about construction of PLRS in China. It is necessarily to construct PLRS because of the following reasons. PLR legislation can help to promote the development of libraries and protect the interests of copyright owners and deepen reform of the cultural system. It is feasible for PLR legislation has already been provided with the basic in theory, policy support and reality in China. But there still exits some obstacle factors in PLR legislation. Using questionnaire survey, the research assesses the attitude and cognition towards PLR among writers, publishers and the public library staff. The results shows that there are some differences and consensus among three interest groups, reflecting that PLR awareness in general is not high and the forces of support or oppose PLR legislation is not strong enough. Legislative construction of PLR in China should take "two-steps" strategy, in which the first step is to establish the system based on the model of cultural policy, and the second is to establish the copyright-based model of the system.Chapter eight leads to the summarization. Summarizing and rethinking the above research contents, the dissertation puts forward some policy implications, points out some shortcomings and gives a prospect of future research.This dissertation is a product of the research project,"Study on Public Lending Right System (Certification Number:09CTQ005)", which is sponsored by the Social Science Foundation of China.