ARR: UK seeks evidence from the art trade

On behalf of the British government, the Intellectual Property Office is currently conducting an open consultation, "Artist’s Resale Right: Evidence Gathering", the details of which you can peruse at your leisure here.  The main body of the text reads as follows:

The Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) entitles authors of original works of art (including paintings, engravings, sculpture and ceramics) to a royalty each time one of their works is resold through an auction house or art market professional. 

We are interested in evidence relating to: 

the scale and cost of administering the Right and the impact this has on art businesses [issues touched upon in relation to ARR in Australia in our previous blogpost, here] 

the numbers of artists who are benefiting from the Right, particularly at the lower threshold [ditto] 

Information received through this exercise will contribute to a periodic review at an EU level, which is likely to take place in 2015 [It would be good to know if other EU Member States are also conducting their own evidence-gathering exercises. Can readers let us know if they come across any?]. 

Art dealers, galleries and auction houses are invited to complete the online questionnaire below as part of that evidence-gathering exercise [in other words, this is not for artists -- or lawyers, it seems, but ...]. 

We will also be seeking information from the Artists’ Collecting Society and Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), who are the collecting societies through whom artists receive the royalty payment [... presumably the opinions of artists are collectively harvested via these bodies alone]. 

We intend to publish a report of the findings in September 2014. 

Frequently asked questions on ARR are answered on the website of DACS.

Grateful thanks to Chris Torrero for drawing this to our attention!