Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman testified March 4 in opposition to the Copyright Reform Act of l993 (HR 897).
In his statement to the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and Judicial Administration, the Librarian said the proposed legislation would "sever the 123-year-old link between the Library and the Copyright Office ... and would seriously harm the unique abililty that the Library of Congress has to collect and preserve unpublished works -- television programs, musical scores, architectural drawings, photographs for future generations. The bill's impact on the Library's future acquisition of books and other published materials, while less predictable, would probably involve considerably higher costs to the Library and the taxpayer."
The bill has been introduced by the Subcommittee Chairman, Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N.J.), who, with Barney Frank (D-Mass.), introduced the House version of the bill on Feb. 16. Sponsors of the Senate version (S. 373) are Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). Sen. DeConcini is chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks.
The Library will be responding further, in writing, to the questions of Chairman Hughes and other members of the intellectual property subcommittee regarding the bill.
The proposed legislation would make the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee, remove the Librarian's authority over Copyright Office regulations and staff, eliminate the Copyright Royalty Tribunal and transfer its functions to the Copyright Office, and eliminate two of three statutory incentives to publishers and creators to apply for copyright registration. The two incentives are:
* The requirement (17 U.S.C., Section 411) that copyright owners of U.S. works must apply for copyright registration before filing a copyright infringement action. (Under the Berne Implementation Act of 1988, Berne Convention works, other than those of U.S. origin, were exempted from this requirement.)
* The requirement (17 U.S.C., Section 412) that to be eligible for statutory damages and an award of attorneys' fees, generally a work must be registered before it is infringed.
The proposed legislation would leave intact a third statutory registration incentive -- Section 410(c) that states that a certificate of copyright registration obtained within five years of a work's publication serves as prima facie evidence of a protected work, making it easier to obtain injunctive relief in a copyright infringement case. The bill does not affect the mandatory deposit requirement of Section 407.
In 1992 more than 85 percent of the books added to the Library's collections by way of Copyright acquisitions were registered, more than 90 percent of the motion pictures acquired were registered, and nearly 94 percent of the copyrighted sound recordings acquired were registered.
For every 10,000 titles not acquired through voluntary deposits, the Library estimates that it would have to spend at least $1.1 million to obtain works through mandatory deposit, not counting the Justice Department cost of enforcement. In his testimony, Ralph Oman, the Register of Copyrights, said, "Last year, nearly 650,000 works were received through the registration system. Each of these, whether published or unpublished, was available for the Library to add to its permanent collection. The value of the materials transferred to the Library from the copyright system, conservatively estimated, exceeded $12 million."
Some of the Library's treasures acquired through voluntary registration include Martha Graham dances captured on videotape, a vast collection of television and radio programs, unpublished photographs of Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, and original music scores such as the works of Scott Joplin.
The Library also exchanges copyright duplicates to acquire other valuable materials, such as publications of Taiwan's once outlawed Democratic Progressive Party and a complete set of publications of the European Space Agency.