Collective rights management, Books in Print, Arrow+ & Piracy in Flanders:

The way forward

Vilnius, 30 August 2011

Kurt Van Damme

Managing Director LibriusPresident Reprobel

Outline

• I. The RRO & CMO landscape in Belgium

• II. Librius as part of the Boek.be alliance

• III. Boekenbank: the Flemish BiP database

• IV. Librius: the way forward

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I. The RRO & CMO landscape in Belgium (1) 3

- Copyright protection

- Exclusive rights v. statutory exceptions

- Legal v. voluntary licenses (individual, collective & extended collective)

- RRO’s (Reproproghapic Rights Organisations) v. CMO’s (Collective Management Organisations)

- Reprobel is the only Belgian RRO (Reproduction rights organisation), Librius is one of whole series of CMO’s

- Reprobel collects and distributes reprography levies (2010 turnover: € 23.25M) and public lending remunerations (2010 turnover: € 1.75M)

- Board members consist of authors’ and publishers’ CMO’s (Collective Management Organisations, 14 in all), with rotating presidency

- Layered distribution: Primary (statutory: 50/50), Secundary (in Authors & Publishers Colleges, among CMO’s) and Tertiary (within each CMO)

I. The RRO & CMO landscape in Belgium (2) 4

-Ongoing negotiations with Eurimag re: new device levy tariffs

-Official survey on copying and printing behavior

-Auvibel (CMO) collects and distributes private copy levies (2010 turnover: € 20M)

-Copyright exception for digital copy (1998) and intranet transmission (2005) for educational & scientific purposes exists, but no remuneration yet

-2005 legislation aimed at transposing 2001 Directive not yet entered into force – effects on both reprography and private copy !

-Effects of the PADAWAN ruling: illegal behaviour ruled out of PC & Repro Exc.?

-New Reprobel presidency (2010): focus shift (WG Communication, Lobby & Strategy, new offices, website & logo, KPMG support for data, Whyte Corporate Affairs support for lobbying, Information & Communication Officer, …)

II. Librius as part of the Boek.be alliance 5

- Librius is the CMO of the Flemish book publishers- 2010 turnover and distribution: € 3M (varies between 2.5 & 4M p.a.)

- Librius is part of the Boek.be alliance though legally independent- Boek.be is the umbrella organisation of the Flemish book trade

- Boek.be provides central services: promotion, Knowledge Center, innovation (e.g. VEP, e-boek.org, Knooppunt) & IT- Boek.be represents Flemish publishers (VUV, Librius), booksellers (VVB) and importers/distributors (VBI)

- integrated vision on the Flemish book market & value chain!

- All under one roof: “Huis van het Boek” (“House of the Book”) in Antwerp, where the Flemish Authors Association (VAV) rents offices as well

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III. Boekenbank: the Flemish BiP database (1) 9

- Established in 2000 by Boek.be- Comprehensive for all books published or distributed in Flanders since 1997 – includes info on commercial availability- Separate legal body within Boek.be structure: Meta4books- Both Boek.be & Librius CEO are board members (integrated)

- Title information uploaded by publishers & distributors- Title information can be consulted by booksellers, libraries, schools & general public- Boekenbank doubles as book ordering platform for booksellers (‘Open Market Module’ for English titles)- Boekenbank also doubles as ISBN agency for Flanders & Brussels (Dutch ISBN agency subsidiary)- Books can be purchased by libraries (new project: BIBBANK – collection building) as well as by the general public (delivered at local bookseller)- Performant search engine: AquaBrowser

- Long standing exchange agreement with BIBNET (Flemish libraries): enhancing title metadata in exchange for fast pre-catalogue info

III. Boekenbank: the Flemish BiP database (2) 10

- Membership fee for publishers/distribitors: turn-over based (all retail chains, incl. import funds): standard rate from € 270 to € 9,000 for VUV/VBI members; from € 400 to € 13,500 for non VUV/VBI members) - legal deposit is free additional service!

- Membership fee for booksellers: turn-over based; standard rate from € 250 to € 8,500 for VVB members & from € 400 tot € 13,000 for non-VVB members)

- Additional services (use of cover DB & web services) charged extra

Tariff Boekenbank members Non-BB members

  (21/19 % VAT excl.) (21/19 % VAT excl.)

Per title (VUV members)

€ 8.35 € 11.40

Per title (non-VUV members)

€ 15.13 € 20.65

One-off titles (NTHL) € 57.88 € 57.88 

- ISBN Tariffs Flanders:

III. Boekenbank: the Flemish BiP database (3) 11

- Boekenbank is currently being audited with an aim of rebuilding it (previous revision: 2008)

- Transitition from manifestation to work level- New metadata standards: Onix 3.0, Onix for RRO’s, …- Ordering platform will be split off DB- Arrow+ & ISTC combined in one joined project (!) – Meta4Books is the ISTC agency for Flanders & Holland- Boek.be is the Arrow+ contracting partner for Belgium, along with SACD/SCAM (CMO French language authors) for the French speaking part of the country- Arrow+ kick-off meeting (Antwerp Book Fair): November 8, 2011- Complicated political situation & structure in Belgium- Resources are completly different in Flanders & Wallonia

- Boekenbank services for Librius:- title data export for distribution of levies & remunerations- title data export for anti-piracy purposes (SINBAD)- promotion tool (e.g. “De keuze van 11.11.11”)

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IV. Librius: the way forward14

- Librius established in 2001 (as ‘Ruit’)- Only dealt with distribution of reprography and public lending remunerations until 2011- Board (10) comprised equally of general, educational & STM publishers- Distribution mainly title based; as of 2011: 20% turnover based- A transformation in waves:

- wave 1 (2008-2010): distribution of arrears (both at Reprobel and Librius level)

- wave 2 (Q1 2011): name & statutes change -) exclusive rights management made possible- wave 3 (Q3 2011): new public website: www.librius.com- wave 4 (Q1 2012): LIBRA – new member application

- Exclusive rights management:- SINBAD, the anti-piracy webcrawler for books- ongoing negotiations with newspaper CMO re: digital re-use of newspaper clippings

- FUTURE: - rights clearance center for the Flemish book trade - rights management under Arrow+ & collective licensing - collective licensing for digital re-use of books/snippets?

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abuse@rapidshare.com

abuse@megaupload.com

dmca@megavideo.com

legal@snapdrive.net

support@divshare.com

NTD

SINBAD test results Poland

• 1 scan based on 30 sample titles (July 2011):– Polish authors (e.g. W. Cejrowski, M. Gretkowska, A. Sapkowski ...)– Polish translations (e.g. J.K. Rowling, D. Brown, S. Meyer, S. King ...)

• Results:– infringing files found for 20 of the 30 titles: 805 files in all

• Chomikuj.pl:– Polish anti-piracy office (FOTA) is working on a collaboration protocol

for removal of infringing content– However takedown of infringing content (especially “pull”) isn’t the

best course of action (too much illegal content, very time-consuming and a lot of manual interventions)

– Prime candidate for removal of entire website by hosting provider (Texas, USA)

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SINBAD full results Flanders

• Results: 29,000 files (!) (July 2011)– Comic books: 10,154 files– Books: 19,064 files

• eBook piracy is most definitely a problem– Cf. Flemish movies and TV shows: 12,000 links in total in 2010

• Trends:– Comics and best sellers (local & international) are the most popular– Lots of “multi-packs” (1 file/link containing 100s or 1000s of books)– Files containing entire repertoire of well-known authors

• “Boekenplank”:– Site offering thousands of e-books, neatly arranged by author and/or

genre– Since site only offered infringing content: removal of the whole site

rather than notice and takedown– After warning letter was sent to site operator, he removed the entire site

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More? 27

Librius: kurt.vandamme@librius.com

Boekenbank: annika.buysse@boek.be tine.philips@boek.be

Boek.be Knowledge Center: jef.maes@boek.be