Its primary goal is to oversee collective licensing in the UK for book, journal, magazine and website copying.
PLS distributed over £34m to publishers from collective licensing in 2017–18, and they work to encourage innovation and good practice in rights management, whether that is in print or online.
A committee was formed, chaired by Mr Justice Whitford, on Copyright and Design Law and asked to investigate the situation.
[citation needed] Later that year, the Publishers' Association (PA) convened a Committee chaired by Lord Wolfenden, formerly Vice Chancellor of Reading University and Director of the British Museum, to look at the implementation of the Whitford proposals on licensing.
And at an early stage, the Music Publishers Association and the Composers Guild withdrew from the Wolfenden Committee.
In England and Wales, however, long arguments persisted that all their multiple copying was legal because it did not represent substantial parts of works.
Lord Wolfenden bowed out of the scene and leading copyright lawyer Denis de Freitas was asked to work on the structure of the licensing agency.
Publishers wanted there to be an agency, but authors insisted a forceful language from the President, Lord Willis, that all their payments must go through ALCS.
Setting up a licensing structure on the publishing side had been met by loans from the PA and PPA.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 was a landmark and demonstrated the wisdom of having put the societies and licensing agency in place.
Important to the success of PLS have been the avoidance by the principles (ALPSP, PA, & PPA) of any attempt to undermine each other's position and their willingness to consult with publishers to ensure that the various proposals were acceptable.