The Association of Romanian Publishers (AER) announced on Friday that it will challenge the sanction decided by the Competition Council in the case of the Bookster library and will continue to monitor and request the responsible institutions to penalize piracy and copyright infringement.
The Competition Council sanctioned six companies active on the book supply market, as well as the Association of Romanian Publishers (AER) with fines totaling approximately 1.2 million euros for participating in an anti-competitive agreement. The Romanian Publishers Association was fined 115,696 lei. The six companies and the profile association are accused of having coordinated their commercial strategies and limited book sales to the entities that managed the Bookster library in the period 2017-2020.
The Editors’ Association informed in a press release that it took note “with disappointment” of the Competition Council’s decision, noting that its actions “have always been public” and are part of “attempts to prevent various forms of piracy and copyright infringement”.
In addition, AER accuses the Competition Council of “ignoring public information available right from the start of the investigation”, including the fact that the entity that submitted the complaint was already sued in court in 2019 for acts of unfair competition by ten AER member publishing houses.
“Bookster was established in 2013, without the necessary legal forms, but it created a whole system of subterfuges by which it first declared itself a public library with free access (false, companies pay contracts of around 50 euros per year for each employee), then ‘private law library’, and now ‘intermediation platform’, all in order not to recognize the legal rental nature of the services provided, according to Directive 2006/115/EC, and not to pay the copyright related to the book rental activity” , explained AER.
According to the association, the publishing houses, through the AER, summoned Bookster, in June 2017, through a law firm, “to stop the illegal practices, which directly harm” the authors of the rented works.
“This is the moment when, according to the Competition Council, the so-called ‘cartel’ was born for which ten publishing houses were investigated, so that in the end only four were considered guilty, to which the Council added two bookstore chains. The investigation was launched in May 2021, and the documents collected, in September 2021, from the publishing houses were studied by the investigation team of the Competition Council until May 2024, when the report was issued which is the basis of the decision announced on August 21, 2024. Report that does not contain proof of any agreement between publishing houses to no longer coordinately deliver books to Bookster and of any smear campaign against it. In fact, Bookster had constant commercial relations with many of the incriminated publishing houses, and the latter delivered books even on the basis of requests on which there was the explicit mention ‘Bookster order'”, the press release states.
AER also stated that the report drawn up by the investigation team of the Competition Council “found only public actions taken by the Romanian Publishers Association, but chose to subject them to an unproven and alleged anti-competitive behavior”.
Thus, AER officially contacted public institutions in Romania “to obtain Bookster’s compliance with the provisions of the copyright law”, which requires obtaining a license for book rental activities.
Among the institutions contacted are: the Ministry of Culture, the Romanian Copyright Office, the National Library of Romania, the CopyRo Collective Copyright Management Society. The following were contacted from abroad: the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), the International Federation of Collective Management Organizations (IFRRO).
“The operation of Bookster (which uses several names: Education Association for All Children, Development Consulting SRL, TCE Delivering Happiness SRL, Bookster Experience SRL, Prometheus Association – Education and Personal Development, Booklover Library – Book Lovers Association, Prometheus Library – Prometheus Association Education and Personal Development, Bookuria Library – Bookuria Library Foundation, “I care” Foundation Library, to list only a few of them) has already been brought to the attention of international bodies, with consequences that we hope to see as soon as possible”, a transmitted AER.
According to the association, on June 18, the prime minister and three ministers would have received a written message from the International Federation of Collective Management Bodies urging them to “take urgent measures in the matter of Bookster’s non-compliance” with the legislation on the right to public loans.
“The Romanian Office for Copyrights (ORDA) received the mission to respond to this message and we request ORDA to inform the public about the status of this effort”, the press release also states.
Humanitas manager also slams fine
The philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu, director of the Humanitas publishing house, publishes in HotNews his reaction to the Competition Council’s decision to fine several publishing houses in Romania with 1.2 million euros. For Humanitas, the fine was 400,000 euros, “a death blow”. He says that the book market in Romania is the most modest in the whole of Europe, and Romania, despite the slogan “Educated Romania” for which he voted for Klaus Iohannis, is the most uneducated country in the EU.
“It could be that the global fine of around 1.2 million euros given to the book system in our country will bring to the ground “an industry” which, anyway – in a country where 42% of Romanians are functionally illiterate, and 11 million (over 55% of the country’s population) have not read a single book in the last year – they are struggling. Could this be the purpose in the world of an institution whose purpose is to keep an eye on the balance of the various markets that make up the country’s economy?“, states Liiceanu.
” (…) Starting from the investigation launched by you, which, as far as we are concerned, ended, after the first shout, with the hallucinatory fine of 400,000 euros! (for a publishing house from Romania, this is a mortal blow), to search for the good hidden in it. What a wonderful opportunity, I said to myself, that here, after 34 years since Humanitas was born, I am forced to take stock of these years lived in a non-stop rush. And I will do it in front of you, thanking you for helping me stop for a moment from the panting of life,” Liiceanu stated, adding: ” I can only thank you for this assessment that you gave me on the occasion of your investigation. You offered me, for the price of 400,000 euros, the opportunity to end my life’s race reconciled with myself. It’s not a small thing. You made me know that I didn’t live in vain.”
He said he cannot understand what Humanitas is guilty of. “I couldn’t find out what exactly we were guilty of. Why did we find ourselves in front of your judgement, ladies and gentlemen, councilors from the Competition Council?”