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trade argument is valid for life-plus-70 then maybe some day it would be valid for life-plus-90.
Mr. Becerra. We want to be sure that we are competitive in the market.
Ms. Bergman. Exactly.
As the only songwriter on this side of the table, I think there is some confusion that I hear about the way the word owner, author, artist, songwriter is being used. Sometimes they are used interchangeably here this morning. And I am sorry Mr. Valenti is not here; but, for example, the author of "The Way We Were" on the copyright form in Washington is Columbia Pictures. It is not us.
And, as he said, my husband and I and Marvin Hamlisch sat alone in a room. It was not quite the same thing as Victor Flemming and a team of directors working on a sound stage creating the whole frame of the movie.
And under that contract, Congressman Bono, because this enterprise is the author, yes, the words can be changed; yes, the music can be changed; and, yes, we don't have control because it was a work for hire.
Mr. Bono. I understand.
Mr. Becerra. Thank you very much for that.
And let me just short-circuit this. I close with just a question for Mr. Richmond. Mr. Richmond, can you tell me — again, briefly, because I know my time has expired, pretty much — what efforts have been made to protect or preserve works of less general or public recognition or less industry recognition such as some of the works done by early black filmmakers or — there is a particular film that comes to my mind, "The Salt of the Earth," which I thought was a tremendous piece; but, obviously, it was a low-budget piece that talked about a subject that may not be that appealing to the general audience.
What is the preservation board doing in regards to works which are culturally and historically important to this Nation but may not have always been considered culturally and historically important?
Mr. Richmond. Well, I think what the board is doing — the main thing they are doing is trying to get the legislation passed for the National Film Preservation Foundation, because that is the entity, working with the Nation's archives, that will focus on the preservation of films that do not have a Hollywood studio with both the economic interest and the financial capabilities of preserving it.
Many archives throughout the country do have to focus on those kinds of films. Many of the black films, films by black filmmakers that you are talking about, I know have been preserved or are waiting to be preserved at the Library of Congress, at the Southwest Film and Video Archive in Texas and at other archives throughout the country.
So the archival community certainly is aware of the importance of this. We spend a lot of time trying to acquire the footage we need on these types of films that we know are especially in danger. And we do prioritize trying to preserve them.
But it is our inability right now to stay ahead of the race against time that is really the impetus to the legislation that we have been talking about today.