CAL is often asked by members why they get a payment from the Public Lending Right (PLR) or Educational Lending Right (ELR) schemes, but don't receive a payment from CAL for copying of the same work.

Payments from CAL and the PLR and ELR schemes aim to do quite different things and are administered by separate organisations. CAL is a not-for-profit company that licenses organisations to copy the works of the authors, journalists, visual artists and publishers it represents. CAL, on behalf of its members, negotiates copying licence agreements and then collects and distributes the licence fees. These fees are for the copying of works, and if CAL finds that your work has been copied then you are eligible to claim from CAL's distributions.

In contrast, PLR and ELR are Australian Government cultural programs administered by the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. They provide payments to compensate authors and publishers for the loss of potential sales income due to their books being available for use for free from public and educational lending libraries, and are not copyright payments.

The works most commonly found by CAL to be copied are school text books (which are photocopied rather than borrowed).

For more information on PLR and ELR click here.

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