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)

282 made to the European Community and the way in which the European Community has structured its provisions of Berne in regard to this new copyright procedure. However, within the European Community works-for-hire, if they exist at all — I've done some research on this — suggest to me that cinematic works in England and France, and so forth, are protected for 50 years. The United States, actually with its current legislation, protects works-for-hire for 75 years. It is in excess of the European Community. I see no point in extending protection of works-for-hire to 95 years, given that there is no European precedent for the 95-year figure. It seems to me that we're sort of moving too fast in an escalation of term extensions that do not need any further escalation. One of our concerns is, again, speaking in kind of a disinterested way — in other words, we're not copyright holders; we have no financial interest in the proposed legislation, but we are users of copyrighted material, and there is some question about the impact this will have on the public domain. You'll hear extensively, I think, more about theories of copyright law and the delicate balance that exists between a limited monopoly which protects the copyright holder and eventual dissemination and spread of intellectual ideas to the public, which benefits the public. In this term extension, there seems to be no real impetus for creativity, which is one of the reasons that copyright protects authors, is to spur their creativity — in this particular instance, for worksfor-hire. Authors may decide to produce works to benefit their immediate heirs for several generations. A corporation does not make works with an eye to some sort of successive corporation. The motion picture industry, for example, has a very short playoff of its properties that last from 2 to 5 years. This will include theatrical revenues, sale to cable, sale to video, sale to network, and syndication. After that the film becomes part of their library of works, one of their assets. Any moneys made from a motion picture while it is in the status of an asset is pure gravy. This is not the incentive which drives the production of new works. So the logic that can be used to talk about the copyright law as a spur to creativity really does not apply at all to works made for hire. On the other hand, works that fall into the public domain become a very valuable resource for new creations, and this is an argument that's been made again, but I will give you one or two examples. I think one of the most forceful copyright holders is the Disney Corporation. Yet, a great majority of their animated films are based on stories that come from the public domain. You can go back to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Pinocchio." More recently, we have "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," and "Pocahontas." And without this kind of well of source material, a kind of cultural matrix of property that Disney very much needs, depends upon, these great animated films of the last few years would not have been made. The same thing could be said for live action films. Kenneth Brannagh has made two adaptations of Shakespeare films, "Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing." Martin Scorsese has recently adapted Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence," and Agnieszka Holland has done an adaptation of "The Secret Garden," and so on and