The CHAIRMAN. That was the only weakness.

Mr. SCHULMAN. He should have a right to protect his rights. Now, the question arose in that respect as to what protection a licensee would have against a double sale. When we think of real estate again, we find that that has already been the subject of experiment. If I buy a piece of real estate in New York, I take my deed and record it. I am the record owner. If you want to know whether I own the property, you go down there and look at the deed. Now, if I come to you and say I will sell you a piece of property in New York City, before you buy it you go to the register's office and look up the record to see if I am the owner.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Right on that particular point, you would take care of that proposition. We all know throughout the States any recorded instrument of that character is notice to the world of the transaction.

Mr. SCHULMAN. Yes.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. How would you handle that in connection with copyright?

Mr. SCHULMAN. In the same identical fashion.

The CHAIRMAN. In the Copyright Department by registering the copyright.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Suppose a man in California has a song and assigns or conveys an interest in the copyright, there would be an instrument of that character recorded here?

Mr. SCHULMAN. In the Copyright Office, and if you wanted to know whether John Smith had anything he could sell, write to the register of copyrights. That is true in patents. There is a provision for recording assignments and licenses of patents.

The CHAIRMAN. Right.

Mr. SCHULMAN. So that is notice; therefore, the purchaser, if he is assigning the license for a patent license, can only protect himself by filing it with the register of patents, and that is notice to the entire world that the author has granted him those specific rights.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. This may be a strange subject the gentleman is discussing, but I have had difficulties in the past throughout my congressional district, violations of the law in respect to use of copyrighted music by the motion-picture men. In fact, they become very angry when some inspector drops in and advises them they have been playing copyrighted music, to take out a license and pay the fee required by law. The next thing they receive a notice from some attorney that they have been penalized so much, and they had better pay that immediately or else they will be haled into Federal court. What is the gentleman's opinion concerning a proposition of that character? Would there not be the same difficulty by having the transaction we have just mentioned recorded here in the Capital in the Copyright Office? I do not know whether I have made myself clear.

The CHAIRMAN. You are not the only Congressman who has had that difficulty.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. When I came to Congress 10 years ago, I had some ideas in my head of remedying that situation, which later was cleared up to a certain extent by a gentleman who appeared before this committee. It has not been entirely removed. I am not going

to assist in the sponsoring of anything in legislation that will work hardships of that character if it can be avoided.

Mr. SCHULMAN. That is all true, but let us look at it this way. I think the chief difficulty we have been suffering from with respect to copyright of material has been a misunderstanding of the copyright and the right to copyright on it. I venture to submit that even the Congress that drew the previous copyright bill did not take into consideration the value which is incorporated in a copyright. It has always been in my mind that they treated it as a sort of indefinite thing and not as a piece of property. The result is that someone in your constituency or in some other congressional district never realizes that somebody owns a piece of property and they, perhaps innocently, misappropriate that piece of property. On the other hand, he appropriates it to-day if he plays it without due authority.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. I agree with you that in all probability if your statement were embodied into the statutory law of this country it would probably clear up a lot of misunderstandings which now exist. The CHAIRMAN. The previous statement that you made could easily be clarified if you will remember one thought. There are thousands of musical composers who compose music and, to make a livelihood, they have the right to collect royalties on their music. Now, if each author had to go around-let us take motion pictures as you did all over the United States and find out who was using that music, he could not afford it. He does not know whether Tom Jones, of Arizona, or Tom Smith, of New Mexico, is using his music. So they have formed an organization and this organization acts squarely and fairly to every motion-picture industry in the United States alike by giving them not only all the music that each American author and composer has composed, but all the European composers, and they charge them 10 cents for a seat so that in any of your American picture houses in your congressional district, if there are 200 seats, he pays a royalty per year of $20, and that gives him the permission to use all the music of the American composers and of the European composers. This $20 is deposited in a fund and is divided in proportion to a man's musical ability on a pro rata basis as royalties to the American composer as well as the foreign composer.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. I understand your statement, and I will admit they have one of the tightest organizations in the country.

The CHAIRMAN. I will call attention that I expect to have this organization called on a hearing, and I am inviting them for next week or 10 days from now, the 15th of February. There are a lot of other things we may ask this organization when they come here which need investigation, and I shall give you the privilege of asking any questions or any member of the committee.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. I thank you, and I have no desire to delay the hearing, but I have had these objections made to me many times. We have so many snoopers around.

The CHAIRMAN. You have no objection to have every man pay his proper royalty to the geniuses in our country who utilize their minds to entertain other people, but you object to the methods utilized in raising that money?

Mr. UNDERWOOD. I am objecting to the methods, I will say, without expressing myself on the other proposition at this time.

Mr. SCHULMAN. That is not a question of law but a question of enforcement of it. But it occurs to me in listening to the chairman and the Congressmen discuss the thing, that that situation could not possibly be made worse by the embodiment in the law of this principle, that the author is the owner of the copyright. As a matter of fact, it might even help the situation in that there would not be this group because of the indefiniteness of the present position.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. I agree with the gentleman in the main that it would clarify the proposition.

Mr. SCHULMAN. Leaving with the committee that thought, the fact that copyright is property to be treated as other property, I wish to point out one or two things in the present law which seem to me could be corrected were a new bill to be drawn. In the first place, the present law has in it a provision that a mechanical company can obtain an enforced license upon the payment of the royalty of 2 cents per piece or per instrument. It has always seemed to me to be terribly unfair and contrary to our American principles of individual rights to property. In other words, if I have a lease or if I have a piece of real estate, and I like to think in terms of real estate because our whole law of property goes back to real estate law, now, if I own a piece of real estate, you can not come in and say that I must sell it at so much or that you have the right to occupy it upon paying me so much. I do not think that Congress or any legislature of this country would say that the landlord of real estate must, except in case of emergency such as we had in the emergency rent laws, rent it out at a particular price. The law says that is a question for bargaining between the owner of the real estate and the man who wants to occupy it. So I say why are they segregating the mechanical manufacturers to give them an enforced license? In other words, you say to Mr. Romberg: "Here is 2 cents for that." You might be able to get 5 cents because your music is better than 2-cent music. On the other hand, they might be able to get it for 12 cents or 1 cent, but the law puts 2 cents in arbitrarily. The reason for that goes back to 1909 when the phonograph was a new thing and was in the course of development.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Right on that particular point, is the gentleman in accord with the law in that respect?

Mr. SCHULMAN. That it should be an enforced license?

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Yes.

Mr. SCHULMAN. No; I say that is contrary to our principle of individual bargaining.

The CHAIRMAN. So far as the record of Congress is concerned, it is the only industry in which a price-fixing has been found, and it has never been taken to the Supreme Court for a constitutional testis that right?

Mr. SCHULMAN. No; it never has been, and I say that if you are to maintain the principle of no price-fixing or individual bargaining between the owner of a piece of property and a person who wants to buy it, we must say that this provision of the copyright law, as it now exists, is in error, and the error should not be contained in the new copyright law.

The CHAIRMAN. One more question on that subject. We must also look at it, Mr. Underwood, from the standpoint of the public. Where does the public come in, in the removal of this 2 cents per disk?

Mr. SCHULMAN. The public can not be injured in the removal of that charge because, after all, there is a question of supply and demand.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, the radio has killed that.

Mr. SCHULMAN. The radio has to a great extent killed it, but even if it had not, if the author wants to give a piece of music as wide a spread of popularity as possible, he will not set a price in his own selfish interest so high that nobody will hear it. There is one of the greatest arguments for our system of individual bargaining, that a man who has something to sell, wants to sell as much as he can because it does him no good to put it on the shelf.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. May I inquire at this point from the gentleman as to his views as to why Congress would not have the same right to fix the price that a broadcasting station should charge for the use of their station as to fix the price charged on the occasion you have just mentioned?

The CHAIRMAN. They would.

Mr. SCHULMAN. I suppose they would, but I think it would be poor policy.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Are you not getting into a dangerous field of legislation?

Mr. SCHULMAN. I say take it out because we should not get into that kind of a field. Where will you draw the line? One person says of a patent the owner of the patent must license it for so much. What good is there giving him a patent if you are going to limit his right to utilize it? Or we might say that we will give a land grant to somebody provided they will sell vegetables at so much. I do not believe in that. That is not our principle of government. We say when you have a piece of property you have the right to utilize it to the fullest extent and that is the basic principle of our legislation. We will not even permit private companies to fix prices; we leave that to the general laws of commerce and the law of supply and demand.

Another point which does not appear in the law at present and which has given concern to a number of authors, musical writers, and others, is the question arising in connection with the matter of collaboration. A man collaborates on a piece of music or dramatic work or a man is a lyricist and another a music writer. It has been held that even in the latter case there is joint ownership. It is a dangerous thing because when there is joint ownership either person could dispose of the property without the consent of the

other.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Would that be true if you treated it the same as real property?

Mr. SCHULMAN. In joint ownership of real property you can not give a complete deed but you can give a lease.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Is that true generally, the statement the gentleman has made?

Mr. SCHULMAN. I think so. I am making the suggestion that this question be treated like real estate. In other words, where you have joint ownership of copyright, why not adopt the principle which applies to real estate, that is, provide for some form of partition action. That could be worked out exactly, the method, and so forth.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. In other words, to partition or dissolve their respective rights?

Mr. SCHULMAN. Yes.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. One man wants to sell it, and they can not come to a common agreement.

Mr. SCHULMAN. You would have the same problem applying to situations becoming more and more numerous. We are dealing with something that has developed so greatly in the past 10 years and will develop so much more in the next 10 years that we are making new problems.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. If the gentleman's position should be adopted, would not that follow as a natural sequence?

Mr. SCHULMAN. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Put it in the law.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Why put it in the law if it is a fundamental principle?

Mr. SCHULMAN. That is the reason we have partition acts in most States; that is, because they are statutory in most of the States. Now, I would like to suggest to the committee the considering of something in the nature of partition action with respect to copyrights. As a lawyer, I think of copyrights in terms of property, and I would like to leave that thought with the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your illuminating and enlightening remarks. I will call upon Miss Margaret Widdemer next. You might put in the record which association you represent.

Mr. SCHULMAN. I represent the Song Writers' Protective Association, an incorporated association consisting of several hundred or some 500 song composers and song writers of this country. Many of our members as individuals are also members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, but the organization itself is composed of only the song-writer element.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARGARET WIDDEMER

Miss WIDDEMER. I feel a little apologetic in talking to you when you must be so tired and about something that may seem relatively unimportant because it is not exactly necessary. You have heard about business all day and all this morning, and the thing I want to talk to you about is the fact that as long as you have your copyright law, the reputation of American writers, American scientists. American anybody who puts pen to paper will be at a discount and is at a discount everywhere but in America. The only two people who are played or heard outside of America are Eugene O'Neill and Sinclair Lewis, two great men, and the reason they are protected is that they depict Americans as neurotics and Babbits, and they are protected; but for the rest of us the copyright law for Americans in Europe, in South America, is so shaky as it stands now that there is not a publisher anywhere in England or in Europe generally who will take, as you might say, a good gamble on any of it. You know, you have been hearing all day that it is not quite fair that the Europeans have all this opportunity to come over to us and we can not go to them. Well, they not only have that but they sell about twenty times as much to us in their own country. and they go right on doing it. I have been an author and a poet