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the result that, as in the board game "Monopoly," the copyright goes right to the publisher without even stopping at the author.
Your laudable goal of parity for U.S. authors has thus been distorted into an involuntary subsidy for purchasers of copyright. This subsidy is the difference between the market value of the copyright in today's market and the market value of the copyright when the original contract was signed. The subsidy will be paid by authors and their families, the very people the bill is intended to help. No one has or can give you a reason why purchasers of copyright shouldn't be required to sit at the table and bargain with authors or their families for the value of the new 20 years copyright in today's market; after all, the copyright is for exploitation in today's market.
Mr. Chairman, the contracts I'm talking about could have been written as long ago as 1920, the very year commercial radio began, at a time before most talking movies, before television, before cable, before videocassettes, before audio tape cassettes, before compact discs, before computers, and before foreign markets were important. While the terms of these old contracts vary even within industries, some courts have upheld broadly drafted contracts from the 1920s and 1930s that give the purchaser of the copyright the right to release the author's work in new technological media not in existence at the time of the contract, sometimes with no payment, and always at a rate that does not reflect the current market conditions.
Most countries throughout the world, including those in Europe, do not permit assignments of rights in technologies not in existence at the time the contract was signed. By enforcing these old contracts, your goal of achieving parity between U.S. authors and European authors will not be achieved. Instead, a disparity is being perpetuated.
Moreover, in the past U.S. musicians have received very few foreign royalties, as revealed in the attached June 10th article in Billboard magazine. If that's the case now, it will be the case for the new 20 years. But this problem is hardly limited to foreign royalties. There are many well-known musicians who were forced to sell their rights for a one-time small, lump-sum. These musicians won't receive one penny if H.R. 989 passes.
Since the introduction of H.R. 989, a number of groups and individuals have had the chance to fully study the bill. They are writing to you asking that the bill be changed to vest the copyright automatically in authors. These authors make the point better than I can: their families depend upon their ability to receive royalties from their compositions. As Mr. Bono stated at the Pasadena hearing, many musicians sign contracts when they are very young, often without legal (or any) representation, without any knowledge of the copyright law, and with little experience in