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should not be surprising. What we now have is at least 15 European countries, i.e., the European Community, imposing that rule as of July 1, 1995, although some member sutes may take a while to implement the requirements of the Directive on Term. Thus, if the United States does not go to the longer term, copyright owners will be denied money that they otherwise would be entitled to receive.
One must also factor in what will be the cost of extending the term in the United States since this is the largest market for U.S. works. Unfortunately, there are no meaningful statistics to assist in determining the cost of extending the term and the benefits to be gained. Thus, on a pure economics analysis, at this point it would be difficult to support H.R.989. Congress could, to lessen the economic impact, adopt the rule of the shorter term, i.e., make the availability of extended term depend on reciprocity. This would be most helpfiil in the case of sound recordings where the U.S. extended term would be 45 years longer than the international norm.
On the issue of the constitutionality of the term of protection. Congress decided in 1976 that life plus 50 years met the Constitutional requiremem of 'limited times." If life plus 50, which is a very long time, is constimtional, life plus 70 would seem to be constitutional. The question that we don't face here is what is the limit on "limited times?'
The major poiius that lead the Copyright Office to support H.R. 989 are 1) the need to harmonize copyright terms throughout the world and the acceptance that life plus 70 will sometime in the future become the ituemational norm and 2) as a leading creator and exporter of copyrighted works, the United States should not wait imtil it is forced to increase the term, rather it should set an example for other countries.
While the Copyright Office generally supports H.R. 989, we do oppose adding ten years to the term of the unpublished works covered by 17 U.S.C. 303. We believe there is also a question as to who the beneficiary of the extra 20 years should be especially in cases where there is no existing termination right. We also condition our support on working out solutions for libraries and educational instiwtions
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