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)

229 V guess Louisa May Alcott's been dead longer than that. So, no, they really don't have to. But I think there's a lot of documentary films — I know that the film that Ken Burns did about the Civil War, where a lot of the footage came from material in the public domain that was in the collections in the Library — I'm talking about those kinds of works where there could be a down side caused by the extension of the copyright term. Mr. Hoke. Has anybody calculated on the up side to the holders of the copyright what the additional 20 years means in terms of dollars? Ms. Peters. Somebody in their testimony has that. Mr. Lehman. I don't think we have a figure within the administration, but I'm sure that an estimate could be developed if you're willing to spend taxpayer money or other resources to have economists work on it. Nevertheless I think we can take judicial notice of the fact that the period that we're talking about going to in the fairly near future is a period in which U.S. commercial copyrighted works exploded onto the international scene in a very big way. So there is very little question that very large sums of money will be flowing into the U.S. economy. You mention, winners and losers? In many ways, Congress in its struggle to try to balance the books of the Federal Government is going to be a winner because, without increasing a single tax rate, there's going to be considerable additional growth in the GDP as a result of this bill. Keep in mind that copyright-based industries are one of the biggest U.S. industries, I think about the second biggest exporting industry in the United States, and there will be tax paid on this revenue that's flowing into the country. Mr. Hoke. How much are we talking about? Ms. Barshefsky. If I may — if I may comment, sir Mr. Hoke. Please. Ms. Barshefsky. In my testimony I've indicated that, based on estimates from ASCAP with respect to the music industry, one of the music-collecting societies, that works that would otherwise have not — that some $14 million annually in revenue would be received as a result of the term extension. The Motion Picture Association estimates that in the earlier years additional term extension would result in relatively minor revenue additions, a million dollars by the year 2000. But as you go out to 2010, 2020, the numbers rise very dramatically to between $160 million and $200 million annually. Mr. Hoke. Well, I appreciate that. I don't know how, Mr. Lehman, you can extrapolate that as having some sort of material effect on our GDP that's over $6 trillion. You're talking about a $14 million addition. I'm not — am I missing something here? Mr. Lehman. Well, those were figures from two industry trade associations from ASCAP, a performing arts society, which has annual revenues of perhaps, a half a billion dollars, and from the motion picture industry, which is a big industry, and has revenues of perhaps $10 billion. In total, I think the copyright industries are well over $200 billion. So that's why I say, to really have an accurate study, you would have to get some Ph.D. economists and really do an extensive analysis. But our view is that we can take judicial