Copyright term, film labeling, and film preservation legislation : hearings before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, on H.R. 989, H.R. 1248, and H.R. 1734 ... June 1 and July 13, 1995 (1996)

420 Mr. Karjala. Well, Mr. Hoke started off with a question that started off more or less addressed to me. I was going to make a quick response. Mr. MOORHEAD. Go ahead. Mr. Karjala. Mr. Hoke said that we had abandoned, or he personally at least had abandoned, the incentive theory, as the current term is already, if I understood him correctly, too long. I'm not here arguing against the current term. There are lots of reasons why we adopted the current term and lots of arguments against it, but I do think it's important to focus on this bill, which effects a further extension of the copyright period. As Professor Reichman said, there are many ways we might consider how to promote and stimulate innovation in the 21st century, and I think that's going to be a continuing topic. Some of us may be back talking with some of you in the future on that. But on the limited topic of this extension, I think we should have a clean reason in mind of why are we going forward. What is going to be the benefit from this extension? And if it's not going to be an incentive to the creation of new valuable works, what is it? I haven't heard anything. Mr. Hoke. Well, what I — just if I may respond very briefly, Mr. Chairman — it is because that property that was created, that intellectual property has value, and we're saying it used to only have the value of the life-plus-50; now it will have the value of the lifeplus-70. As you heard, I raised the question as to why life-plus-70. I mean, I think these are arbitrary numbers. I thought that my colleague from Virginia's reasons for not making it in perpetuity were novel, but probably not as persuasive as the reasons that you don't want to make a perpetual right because, in fact, at some point you do chill the use of that information. But I don't think there's anything magical about life-plus-70 or life-plus-50, but I think it's a sham to try to hang on the theory that we're creating incentives. Now Mr. Jones and nobody that's writing music today is going to be having a greater incentive because they've got an extra 20 years of copjrright for their heirs. That's ridiculous and we ought not to engage in that kind of intellectual buffoonery. But I do think it's very easy to justify the additional time by saying, look, this was valuable when it was created and it's purely arbitrary that we're saying it's no longer valuable at the end of 50 years past the death of an author. So that's the reason. Mr. MoORHEAD. Well, thank you. I just had one question here I wanted to ask. I understand that an amendment of mine is being offered by somebody else because I'm not there in one of the other committees. But this is a complicated area; there's no question about it. And the rights are balanced in a number of different directions. There's no question but what conditions have changed. The average motion picture now, if you put it on the market, unless it reaches $50 million, it's going to lose money, at least in the whole market. A lot of their hope for profit usually rests in what may be sold years later in European markets or wherever. One reason for raising the amount of money that goes for works made for hire is that in Europe they have a little different system than we have, but I think it was pointed out by Ambassador Barshefsky — she said that the reason for extending the copyright