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The Honorable Carlos Moorhead July 11, 1995 Page 2
statutory exemptions that are too restrictive to address the preservation problem.
Term extension exacerbates the problem libraries face when trying to decide if they may legally save a deteriorating work. Legislation that expands copyright protection for twenty years leaves preservationists exposed to claims of infringement for a longer period. That is unfair to the dedicated researchers in our nation's libraries and is contrary to the goal of maintaining the rich array of information accessible to our scholars, youths and others for education and research. A balance should be struck in this legislation which ensures that libraries may lawfully and cost-effectively protect important cultural resources, no matter the format in which they are stored or the period for which they are copyrighted.
• Extension of the copyright term would preclude access to material of little or no commercial value but of potentially critical importance to students and scholars.
Under current copyright law, nonprofit libraries are permitted to make certain copyrighted materials available to students and researchers without prior permission of the author or payment of a royalty. 17 U.S.C. Sections 107, 108 and 109. The number of copies that may be made and how they may be distributed between and among libraries, however, is narrowly circumscribed in statute.
Although institutions and researchers can seek out the authors of individual copyrighted works and negotiate for academic or other non-commercial use, that process is often prohibitively time consuming and expensive. Broad academic dissemination and use of works is thus dependent on inclusion of those works in the public domain. Term extension effectively restricts access to works for several decades, regardless of the commercial value of those materials.
While the intent of H.R. 989 is to grant economically viable copyrighted works additional time to earn value in the marketplace, it sweeps too broadly. We feel at a minimum that the bill should be modified to assure that students and scholars have unfettered access to research resources which are not being commercially exploited and which have no recognizable market value.
Clearly, Mr. Chairman, the genius of our copyright law is that it has succeeded in balancing the intellectual property rights of authors, publishers and owners with society's need for