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[The prepared statement of Ms. Barrett follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mary Ellin Barrett, Daughter of Irving Berlin
First I want to thank Representative Carlos Moorhead for introducing H.R. 989, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995 AJl children of authors, not to mention authors themselves, should be enormously grateful to him.
Obviously I, and those I presume to speak for, have a personal stake here and that basically is what I'm going to talk about ... the question of what is fair and right for the creative people of this country, and their heirs
Because of my father's long life and young beginnings, his songs most notably "Alexander's Ragtime Band" began falling into the public domain more than a decade ago, before he himself died. .At that time his daughters were in their forties and fifties and his grandchildren (all but one) in their teens and twenties. Every year now more of those songs he hoped to leave as a legacy to those children and grandchildren become public property The past ten years have seen the loss of, among others, "When I Lost You". "When The Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam"'. "'Play A Simple Melody". "I Love A Piano ', "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", "You'd Be Surprised", all still money makers. There is also "Oh How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning ' which, like all my father's wanime army show songs belongs to the God Bless America Fund. (But that is a whole other story, the rich royalties he has given^way to his country) Next year "All By Myself, "Everybody Step", "Say It With Music" will go. and so it will continue year by year
Yet the basic principal of copyright duration is that protection should exist for the life of the author and two succeeding generations My father began young but had his children relatively late something that is happening more and more today 75 years from registration of pre1978 works our situation doesn't come close to offering that traditional protection. Nor, given today's life expectancy, does "'life plus 50 years" give proper coverage.
So authors and their families will indeed suffer if works fall into the public domain while still commercially viable Someone not the public will be making money out of another person's property And there are many families much more at risk than the heirs of Irving Berlin those whose catalo2ues are more concentrated in time, with a smaller number of huae continuinsj hits