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)

291 vested private interests. Europeans have long followed a different copyright philosophy based on notions of so-called natural rights rather than economic efficiency and overall social progress. We should not abandon what has worked for us so well in the past simply to imitate an untried European model that will provide an economic bonanza to the owners of a relatively small number of very old cop3n-ights at a cost of taking crucial building blocks out of the hands of current authors. We must ask whether we really wish to remake our cultural industries in the image of Europe. We should not make the mistake of viewing the extension proposals as an us-against-them conflict between Europe and America. This, in fact, is not a conflict between Europe and the United States. The real conflict in both places is between the interest of the public in a richer public domain and the desires of copyright owners, who incidentally may or may not be related to the authors in question, to control the economic exploitation of the works that remain in their hands. That Europe has resolved the conflict in one way does not mean that we should blindly follow suit. Our written testimony details the deficiencies of the arguments offered in support of this extension legislation. The proposed extension would supply no additional incentives to the creation of new works and it, obviously, supplies no incentive to the creation of works already in existence. Moreover, the notion that copyright is supposed to be a welfare system to two generations of descendants has never been a part of American copyright philosophy, nor has anyone made any showing, in fact, that life plus 50 years is insufficient to sustain a revenue stream through two generations. In addition, so-called harmonization with European law would, in any event, not be achieved by this legislation, even with respect to length of term, much less with respect to other fundamental differences like moral rights and fair use. Nor is the so-called unequal treatment of U.S. copjrright owners in Europe a ground for mimicking a bad European move that favors the owners of a few old, but economically valuable, copyrights over the interests of the general public. It is not unfair that a work enter the public 50 years after the death of the author. Rather, that's an integral part of the social bargain on which our highly successful system has always been based. In fact, the works in question here, which were produced in the 1920's and 1930's, have already received one 19-year extension from the original 56-year term promised to their authors. After suppl5dng a royalty stream for such a long time, now 75 years, these old works should be available as bases on which current authors can continue to create culturally and economically valuable products. We already have a balance of public and private interests that protects works of authorship for a very long time. As I said earlier, there's no tension here between Europe and America. The tension is between the heirs and assignees of copyrights in old works versus the interests of today's general public in freer competition, lower prices, and a greater supply of new work. Europe has resolved the tension in favor of the owners of old copyrights; we should rather favor the general public. Thank you.