A Leap into the future of Taiwan Pilot PLR Era: Progression of the Inevitable

Prof. JEONG-YEOU CHIU

Graduate Institute of Library, Information and Archival Studies

National Chengchi University, Taiwan

joyo@nccu.edu.tw

1. Introduction

Public Lending Right (PLR) will be piloted in Taiwan in January of the coming year 2020. It’s has been a concerned issue in fields of Taiwan’s libraries, authors and publishing, for observing this right’s scope of application and relevant implementation regulations. At the time of planning and piloting the public lending right, the Taiwan government has referred to overseas experiences, along with considerations of Taiwan’s publishing industry and cultural policies, for generating the most adequate implementation strategies and plans. In 2016, the International Authors Forum (IAF) had persuaded countries around the world to participate in the PLR campaign and suggested each country should “get the support of prominent public figures—particularly parliamentarians who may also be writers”.[1] The active initiative and promotion of Taiwan’s Members of the Legislative Yuan (equivalent to a Parliament or Congress in other democracies) was indeed one of the key success factors of PLR movement in Taiwan. 

In May of 2019, when Taiwan’s Members of the Legislative Yuan proposed amendments of laws regarding the implementations for promoting the PLR and ensuring budgets for implementing this right or system continually, the first priority was to amend the existing regulations of the Library Law. However, because of the lack of informing and communicating in advance, this act was boycotted by part of librarians in concatenation, leading to a strong resistance. The result has caused a temporary hold of procedures of legislation or amendments. The compromise was a final verdict by the Premier of Executive Yuan for promoting and implementing this right, but adopting a pilot project with the central government special budget. Thus, a series of intensive preparations for regulating the pilot PLR scheme have been conducted by the PLR task force in the second half of this year.

2. A PLR Development’s Awkward Stage

To be honest, the library field has tended to be conservative or reserved toward the PLR issue, at least can be described as not being proactive for promoting this right. In the macro environment of tight budgets and insufficient manpower in libraries, the librarian’s criticism toward PLR has been raised. However, the major external and uncontrollable factors that hindered the promotion of PLR ideology and affected its performance and strategies, often lies in the librarian’s PLR perception and government cultural policy itself. Looking at the position of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the opinion leader of the international library field, we can see that it has been adopting a tactical but ambiguous principle of “not encouraging, not banning” toward the PLR. The IFLA asserted that if library fields in countries around the world have to participate in the PLR movement, it must be ensured that libraries should participate in discussions of relevant legislative proposals, terms and phrases of PLR legislation should be considered with caution, and funds for payments of PLR should not be taken from libraries’ budgets for the regular operations.[2] In Taiwan, it is natural and reasonable that library field attends to IFLA’s position. However, the ideal standard procedures of promoting PLR scheme ought to be (1) forming a task force for promoting PLR, (2) piloting the scheme in incumbent institutions, (3) holding a hearing, (4) developing a formal scheme, (5) deciding the scale, budgets and regulations, (6) setting up a unit for promoting and managing relevant affairs, (7) completing pre-launch procedures, (8) implementing PLR, and (9) reviewing and improving the procedures.[3] In consideration of Taiwan’s political environment, both government and parliament tend to have different procedures and strategies for promoting PLR, but in this case of  Taiwan PLR movement, it was strongly promoted by an influential member of parliament who had been concerned about this scheme. It obviously did not conform to the ideal procedures for promoting PLR. In the foreseeable future, it might not be able to avoid required steps, and it is destined to encounter various complicated situations. It seemingly accelerated the development and skipped a few steps, but could result in a scheme design that was not completely reliable and stable. At that time, we had faced a dilemma of having PLR or not.

Without a set of well and cautiously-made laws, a PLR scheme promoted and piloted by tango moves between the in-charged governmental ministries (Ministry of Education vs. Ministry of Culture) and the parliamentary supervision will encounter uncertain variables in terms of formal launch and sustainable development. However, this situation is a compromised result without other options. It is an effective temporary solution. In spite of the conflicting views, it remains the best of opportunity and timing for implementing PLR in Taiwan. In the future, the sources of law and other decisive factors will still depend on public opinions, national conditions, lawfulness, and politics. We should not be neither pessimistic nor over optimistic about all these kinds of developments.

3. The Turning Point for promoting PLR in Taiwan
It was not a coincidence for Taiwan to promote PLR. In May of 2012, the Central Government established the Ministry of Culture as “the top agency for managing, planning and implementing cultural constructions of national levels”, with a traditional role of managing the culture industry and taking care of common artist and author groups. Even though the development of the PLR scheme might not have effects of “revitalizing the publishing industry”, in terms of cultural policies, especially for taking good care of “literary writers”, PLR has become one of proactive options.

“Publishing” is still an important factor in cultural construction developments. As a governmental agency that manages and guides both the publishing and building of an environment for cultural creations, Ministry of Culture ever proposed several revitalizing plans for guiding or assisting the publishing industry, such as “VAT deduction for books”, or “Fixed Book Price” system, etc., but most of these controversial proposals have never be put into implementation yet. The implementation of PLR will undoubtedly leverage or make up policy gaps of publishing in cultural industries.

The key factors of proclamation of PLR in Taiwan are derived from two impact assessment reports conducted by Prof. Jeong-Yeou Chiu and published by Ministry of Culture in 2016 and 2018, that is, “Impact Assessment Study of Fixed Book Price System on the Publishing Industry”, and “A Study on Legal Process, Implementation Mechanism, and Benefit Assessment of Promoting PLR in Taiwan” respectively. These two official reports had different research goals, but both suggested that in additional to revitalizing the publishing industry, the government should improve the outcomes of implementing cultural policies in the publishing industry and provide clear and definite policy indicators.

The study of 2018 assessment report was the first government document regarding PLR scheme after almost twenty years of multiple urges and appeals from scholars and publishers. This report provided suggestions on pilot scale, budget audit, mechanism and work flows for implementing PLR in Taiwan. In addition, it clearly set the library printed books loan-based system as the priority, that is, payment based on a rate-per-loan, as the model reference of remuneration. Focusing on loan behaviors, not merely on library collection identities, is in accordance with the fair and justice principle of user charge. The additional advantage is that PLR scheme can generate ranking records of library loans, useful to reading promotion and study of library collection development policy. In this 2018 PLR report, nevertheless the automation systems in Taiwan’s public libraries are also investigated for understanding the ability and quality of bibliography management, system operations and performances in public libraries, as the reference of implementation and design of PLR scheme.

In this Taiwan PLR movement, except for urges and efforts from the influential members of parliament, the government Ministers and the 2018 PLR report, the voices of writers and writer groups had been weak; instead, enthusiastic publishers had played a key role in concatenating around, and calling for Taiwan parliament members, press media and government’s attention to PLR issues and needs, as an indispensable force to the success. Although PLR does not necessarily apply to publishers, with a consideration of principles and sources of law regarding PLR around the world, and a close look at relations among Taiwan’s cultural policies, appeals of the publishing industry, and industry needs, the PLR scheme of Taiwan will include two main rightsholders, i.e. publishers, along with authors/writers. Taiwan publishing industry has been positive toward the implementation of PLR, hoping to help authors/writers obtain reasonable remuneration with a policy of payment based on a rate-per-loan. In this way, it might leverage incomes and improve tense relationships between publishers and libraries. Practically speaking, without valuable support of publishers, voices might be too weak to promote PLR. In Taiwan, writer/author communities tend to have a looser organization than publisher communities; with assistance of publishers, the efficiency of implementing PLR could be enhanced.

4. The Pilot Stage of PLR: Lists of important standards and scope of application

In additions to making sure the two remunerated groups are authors (including co-authors, and in a broad sense including photographers, illustrators, narrators, writers, reporter and recorders specified on copyright pages) and publishers, the pilot PLR in Taiwan will exclude translation works at the pilot project. The pilot PLR only have being implemented in printed collection loan systems of the two large national metropolis public libraries (eg. National Public Information Library, and National Taiwan Library). The remuneration for a single loan is three NT dollars (about 78.6 pence); the fee-splitting is 70% for authors and 30% for publishers. The Ministry of Education, not Ministry of Culture is in charge of the overall PLR budgeting for this pilot stage.

As to the administrative design of the system, the pilot scale and scope of application are decided in PLR Consultation Meetings of Ministry of Culture; details are implemented by the PLR task force hosted by Ministry of Education. Since it is still at the stage of preliminary design and the PLR will be piloted in January of 2020 onwards, it is mechanically designed as a post-registry system; after the total number of library loans in the two libraries during the whole year of 2020 is announced, all registrations should be completed during the first half of year 2021, and remuneration will be granted after that. Currently, there is no deadline for the PLR pilot project, but waiting for a success and assessment of the pilot if it will lead Taiwan to a formal PLR implementation.

At a time of going to pilot the PLR in Taiwan, controversies and disputes regarding PLR planning rise easily, including definition of terms. For example, should it be termed as “compensation” or “remuneration”? This involves the PLR principle and sources of law. The goal of the pilot PLR is to find insufficiencies of implementing and planning of the system, and the amount of remuneration is a less major issue at the pilot stage. The issue we should attend to is how to supervise the implementation of this pilot system, diagnose and respond to problems. It is expected that the Taiwan PLR will be soon applied to the other large public libraries as samples in order to approach a comprehensive loan-based PLR scheme. In addition, it is also expected to further understand issues regarding needs of relevant stakeholders. For example, should translators be remunerated? Other issues include helping missing authors to register, supporting author groups, advancing library collection policies and bibliography management functions through implementation of PLR. It is also expected to reveal an ideal government policy on culture and publishing industry in Taiwan.

5. Conclusions

Many countries have implemented PLR, obtained insights and realized values of PLR in cultural and publishing policies. Now Taiwan has launched the planning of a pilot PLR, it is hoped that in the near future through co-operations among the publishing industry, the library field, and the government, more clear and active measures will be adopted. However, for the time being many challenges regarding the PLR in Taiwan are awaiting.

(1) What is the duration of the pilot stage? One year, or three year? Or it will be terminated after the pilot stage?

(2) During the pilot and planning stage, how to distribute responsibilities and tasks between Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education? If the PLR is formally implemented in the future, which will be the major supervision agency? So far there has been no consensus.

(3) Are the national libraries that have implemented the pilot PLR will logically be the management units and executive units when the PLR is formally implemented in the future?

Librarians are book lovers and bibliophiles themselves, and tend to be friends keenly appreciative of authors’ talents. We look forward a smooth promotion of PLR in Taiwan. We would like to see a PLR prototype be generated during the pilot stage, and furthermore a consensus among the public should be achieved steps by steps. The principle of PLR scheme is respecting creators and balancing social justice. PLR is not irrational or harmful, but an honorable mark of library glory. It is hoped that through a considerate policy, concepts and opinions of both the publishing industry and authors could be clearly revealed. It is also expected that through the active and practical positions of libraries, old bias, passive and conservative attitudes toward PLR could be eliminated. It is hoped that the public and each field should attend to the interdependent relationships between publishing markets and libraries. In this way, natures of author groups might be enhanced, and the organizational operations of existing author groups could be strengthened, for coping with a coming era of digital reading environments. We should fight for benefiting authors and the publishing industry, along with honoring human rights in a digital era. In this way, the PLR in Taiwan will be significantly the number one of Asia.

  Note: This paper presented at 13^th PLR International Conference, London. 2019

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[1]International Authors Forum and International PLR Network, “Key Points to Remember for PLR Campaigns,” Public Lending Right (PLR): An Introductory Guide, 2016. https://www.internationalauthors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/PLRI-Introductory-guide-Sept-2018.pdf

[2]IFLA, “A Position on Public Lending Right (2016),” https://www.ifla.org/publications/the-ifla-position-on-public-lending-right--2016-.

[3]Ministry of Culture, A Study on Legal Process, Implementation Mechanism, and Benefit Assessment of Promoting PLR in Taiwan. Hosted by Jeong-yeou Chiu, etc., June, 2019.