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)

357 Why? It should enable these authors and artists, but not corporate entities, to use income streams to help their longer-lived progeny. In Nashville, we see many cases, like those we heard about this morning, in which the children of successful country music writers literally depend on the royalties from evergreen musical works. It seems unfair that persons unconnected with the creation of these works can profit from them, while the author's longer-lived progeny, direct progeny, get nothing. Ironically, I believe that the case for life-plus-70 is much stronger in the United States than in the European Union. For all their lofty talk about authors' rights, the real beneficiaries of life-plus70 over there will almost always be publishers as assignees of copyrights and not authors and artists. All the literature agrees on this point. Over here, instead, Congress has already enacted the principle of termination of transfers in section 203 of the copyright law, and that principle can insure that authors and their heirs actually obtain the benefits of extended protection. However, the termination right is imperfectly implemented in the statute as it stands, and the principle has further suffered at the hands of the courts, as in the Mills Music case for example. So, I believe Congress should not lengthen the basic term to lifeplus-70 without closing these loopholes, including the big one through which producers of derivative works now escape. True, the derivative work holder should not be subject to termination, I fully agree, with that because the derivative work holder invests a lot to make the film or the adaptation and he or she pays the author once for the privilege. But the derivative work holder should not be exempt from the principle of periodic renegotiation in order to take into account changing circumstances and the demands of equity. I call to your attention that in the restoration of foreign copyrights provisions, which this Congress just enacted, there is a provision looking to renegotiation for equitable compensation of existing derivative works. I believe that sets a good precedent for what we're talking about here. My remarks so far should help to demonstrate that copyright laws today are not about natural rights, as the Europeans like to think, nor are they strictly about incentives to create, as we like to pretend, either. Copyright laws are really about cultural policy, and it is our policy in the United States to give less than natural rights thinking would have us give, which is perpetual protection and quite a bit more than pure incentives theory would justify. Why do we do this? We do this because we all benefit culturally from the contributions of artists and authors, and, also, because we are lucky enough at the moment to benefit from the positive terms of trade our cultural and technical products enjoy in the international market place. But let us not exaggerate or fool ourselves. Talents abound in the world at large. There will be other fashion trends and innovation cycles. There will be new musical groups like the Beatles and fine computer programs designed in Italy, Japan or Malaysia that will adversely affect our balance of trade under the rule of national treatment. If we are not careful, if we get too far ahead of the