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)

274 Mr. MOORHEAD. Well, thank you very much. Opponents of copyright term extension point out that there are a number of benefits to the public domain that will be lost or postponed as a result of this legislation. How do you respond? Is there any public benefit in extending the copyright? Mr. Jones. I'm sorry, I didn't get the question. Mr. MooRHEAD. Opponents say that term extension will deprive the general public of certain of their benefits or at least postpone them, as a result of this legislation. How do you respond and is there any public benefit in extending the copyright? Mr. Jones. Well, the public benefit is cop3rrighted works usually are more available. The cost to the public stays exactly the same, and, also, it allows the estates to be involved in receiving the benefits of what the creators have left as their legacy, but the public I think will get more efficient programming possibilities and have access to people that are really concerned with all of the accouterments that it takes to make a piece of music become exposed and to grow. To me, copyright is in many ways like creative real estate, and it depends on — depending on the song — ^you were speaking about economics earlier. When we did the album "Thriller," the song, the value of the songs on that album to the various songwriters — there were nine songs in that. The songs were worth about $1.6 million each in terms of just each individual writer. That's just with one album. Mr. MooRHEAD. One of the things that people have been concerned about was that our works in Europe are not protected for the same length of time as we would protect the works of European authors in the United States. Is this a substantial economic switch as far as we're concerned? As far as the balance of trade, does it give the Europeans and other nations a big advantage of us Mr. Jones. A tremendous advantage. I'd cite examples. When records in America like "Thus Spracht Zarathustra," Richard Strauss was adapted because my teacher always told me that the melody is what lingers on, and that's always the power of a song. Even though they changed the rh3d:hms throughout the ages, when "Spracht Zarathustra" was released as a single in the United States, it was public domain. And when it was released in Europe, they still had to pay the estate of the Strauss estate for that particular piece. They have a tremendous edge on us. I lived in Europe for a while. I was a member of SACEM. It's a sister of ASCAP, and BM is the sister agency of BMI. Michel LeGrande is one of my closest friends, and I'm embarrassed to have a conversation with him about our various setups. Mr. MOORHEAD. A while ago, the discussion centered on what the benefit would be for us in taxes, but there is also a benefit, is there not — as we bring more money into the United States, it percolates down in jobs and in investment, and so forth. So whether it gets into taxes or not, we have a real benefit in money coming into our country instead of going out, as it does with the purchase of so many foreign cars and the foreign equipment, and so forth. We need something to balance it.