REVISION OF COPYRIGHT LAWS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1936 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met at 10:15 a. m., Hon. William I. Sirovich (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order, please. Mr. Buck, have you concluded the statement that you want to make? Are you ready to subject yourself to cross-examination by any member of this committee? Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman, I am here to be examined by any member of the committee. STATEMENT OF GENE BUCK, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, AUTHORS, AND PUBLISHERS Mr. LANHAM. Mr. Chairman, may I ask Mr. Buck a question here before he proceeds? In looking over the Duffy bill I find reference to some things that have evidently been invented since our last hearings on copyright. The terms are not readily intelligible to me in their full connotation. I would like to call your attention to two little passages in this Duffy bill in order that you may give the committee, if you can, the information. Personally, I have no such information and I think the committee should have it. On page 4 of the Duffy bill, subsection (f), I find this language: To communicate the copyrighted work to the public by radio broadcasting, radio facsimile, wired radio, telephony, television, or other means of transmission. We have all heard of television; it is just around the corner. I have some conception of what telephony would be. But these statements as to radio facsimile and wired radio to me do not mean anything in particular, and I would like to know the significance of those. Then, on page 6, subsection (o) reads: Works prepared especially for radio broadcasting, or for recording by means of electrical or mechanical transcription, including programs and continuities, insofar as they embody original work of authorship. The implication seems to be there that there will be radio broadcasting from discs or something of that kind. I, of course, am familiar with the compulsory license fee in the law with reference to discs. I would like to know if this means that broadcasting will assume the disc presentation feature, and authors and composers will thereby be restricted to the compensation that they would get at present under a compulsory license feature. I would like to have these terms, "wired radio", and "radio facsimile", and so forth, explained, as to what is the significance of those, and then, what is the interpretation of this subsection (i) on page 6. Mr. Buck. Mr. Lanham, if you will recall yesterday in the course of my remarks I made a direct reference to the Power Trust. The creators of this Nation are particularly disturbed by the feature of the bill concerning which you have just now questioned me than any other feature. Most of you must be cognizant that in recent years the creators are tangled up in this mechanical age. This disturbs us. Nothing in this bill disturbs us more. Out of the laboratory have come many inventions. While radio is here, this thing called "wired radio" is a thing unto itself. Mr. LANHAM. What is that? Mr. Buck. "Wired radio", sir: It is at the present time operating in the city of Cleveland. They will license to citizens a set and rent a set to you at your home whereon you will receive a program that will come to you over power wires, by the telephone or the electric-light wires. What these men are doing is eliminating advertising. The spent millions of dollars in experiment. You will pay $5, or $10, or $15 a month for service charge. An attachment will be put in the home whereon you will receive news reports, music, stock quotations, and so forth, without a word of advertising in it. The basis of that operation, naturally, from what we have learned from radio, will be music. If it necessitates 70 percent use of music to conduct a broadcasting station, there is no reason to suppose that in wired radio, which is not taken out of the ether and the waves in the air, but comes to you from a central studio, music will not dominate that the same way. Mr. LANHAM. The transmission is by wire? Mr. Buck. The transmission is by wire. What does that mean? In the back of this is the North American Co. It is a holding company of numerous power companies. It is my opinion that they are liable to be eminently successful, because there are millions of people in this country kicking on the quality of advertising that you get with the reception of the artists. Mr. LANHAM. May I ask a question right there? I understand that in most of these foreign countries where broadcasting is controlled by the government, those programs are free of commercial advertising and the government itself charges the listener on his set a certain fee. Mr. BUCK. That is true, sir. We are the only country in the world where radio is supported by the advertiser. Mr. LANHAM. May I ask, incidentally, there, because I think it is of importance, in those countries where the Government controls broadcasting and has no remuneration from advertising but gets its pay from the license that it gives to a man to have a radio, how do authors and composers from the standpoint of their remuneration compare with authors and composers in America? Mr. Buck. The facts are that although the radio operation in this country is sustained by the advertising and millions and millions of dollars are being paid, we derive less than the composers and authors of foreign countries where they are being paid by the Government or the company that is set up. American composers and authors receive less money with these tremendous expenditures for time and artists and orchestras for the use of their works than they receive in England or any country in Europe where the nation does not permit advertising. I would like to get back to where the composer and author are affected by the wired wireless, the question you addressed to me. Mr. LANHAM. Wired radio. Mr. Buck. At the present time wired radio is conducting its operations through phonograph records and transcriptions. What does that mean? There is a very subtle clause in this bill: The auditory reception of any copyrighted work by the use of a radio receiving set, wired radio, or other receiving, reproducing, or distributing apparatus, or the performance, other than by broadcasting, of any copyrighted work by a coinoperated machine or machine mechanically or electrically operated or by means of a disc, record, perforated roll, or film, manufactured by or with the consent of the copyright owner or any one claiming under him That is exempt from copyright control, according to this bill. If you will recall, yesterday with all the force I possessed I attached the 2-cent compulsory license provision, and I cited the example of Deems Taylor here, the distinguished composer, who wrote "Peter Ibbetsen", two grand operas, and numerous fine works, a man who has spent his life in music. A grand opera may get about six or eight performances a year, and it may have taken Taylor 2 years to write it. According to the act of 1909, under which we are laboring now, Taylor has no right to bargain with the mechanical companies to mechanically reproduce "Peter Ibbetsen." It is taken for 2 cents. Taylor gets a half a cent. If Edna St. Vincent Milay was a collaborator, she gets a half a cent; and his publisher gets a half a cent. He has no right to bargain. Mr. LANHAM. In broadcasting over the air where the broadcasting is by a record, the authors and composers, I presume, are protected by the fees that you charge for their dissemination of copyrighted music. Mr. Buck. By the public performing rights. Mr. LANHAM. Yes. Mr. BUCK. But, Mr. Lanham, what we are disturbed about is this new feature of this bill. To my mind, undoubtedly it will be eminently successful. This is coming to the home, and it is coming to the home by a transcription or a phonograph record. And according to the act of 1909 we are limited to 2 cents. What happens? If you look up the debates and discussions, the 2-cent clause in the act of 1909 was specifically for a home, a phonograph record. It was for a home the family or the friends that come in. Mr. LANHAM. But this is a new development. Mr. Buck. This is a new development. The CHAIRMAN. May I ask one question apropos of that? The CHAIRMAN. The constitutional privilege under which authors and composers work, since you are talking of the compulsory license of the 2 cents, is this, that Congress shall have the power to promote the useful arts and the sciences by securing to every author and every inventor for a limited number of years the exclusive right to his writings and discoveries. For the life of me I could never under stand how in 1909 when Congress passed that compulsory license of 2 cents, it could be doing otherwise than violating the exclusive privilege which the Constitution gives to the author. Mr. Buck. You are right, sir. The CHAIRMAN. We have never allowed the inventor or anyone else ever to have the compulsory license forced upon them. Mr. Buck. Never. The CHAIRMAN. In the hearings our committee had in an investigation of pooling of patents and cross licensing, I specifically asked the presidents of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., of the Western Electric Co., the General Electric Co., Westinghouse, R. C. A., and other great corporate interests if they would be in favor of a compulsory license for patents, and every one of them is opposed to it. All the lawyers in the patent division of the American Bar Association are opposed to compulsory license. I cannot for the life of me see why we should have a compulsory license compelling every author and composer to take 2 cents for his composition when placed on the back of a phonograph record, where 1 cent goes to the publisher and 1 cent goes to the composer. Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman, it goes further than that. When Mr. Taylor has his opera, and if the Victor Co. or the Brunswick Co. or any other phonograph company desires to reproduce the products of his brain-it is much deeper than that-Taylor could not go to the Victor Co. and give them the exclusive right. Mr. LANHAM. A license when it is once released is universal. Mr. Buck. The minute Taylor releases to Victor the right to reproduce through mechanical means this opera, according to the act of 1909, all the recording companies in the United States are permitted to take it at the same price-2 cents. There has never been any law in the history of this country anythink like it. Now, what has happened here? Under this Duffy amendment it goes further than that, much further than that, because, gentlemen, do not think this is just with wired wireless; do not think this is just for the home. The hotels, the restaurants, the barrooms, the taverns that Mr. O'Malley discusses, are going to take this thing and are going to have this outlet. Mr. LANHAM. May I ask you a question pursuing this a little further? I understand that wired radio would subject you to the compulsory license feature Mr. Buck. That is the crux of it. Mr. LANHAM (continuing). And give you the same consideration you would get now under those circumstances. There are two or three possible different effects of that that I would like to have you discuss. Of course, you would be deprived of any right of free contract or bargaining. Mr. Buck. That is right. Mr. LANHAM. Would not that have this result? Would it not be in a way a threat or a menace to the broadcasting companies to broadcast over the air? Mr. Buck. Directly. Mr. LANHAM. And would it not also have the effect of putting out of employment if the performance were given by disc or record musi cians and artists who appear now before the broadcasting companies and get their means of livelihood from that source? Mr. Buck. Yes, sir. The Federation of Labor stands with this society because they are in the same boat. Naturally, since the invention of these amazing things that have come out of the laboratory and the exploitation of music and entertainment through mechanical means and devices-take the picture houses of this country: The pits are empty outside of the major cities, because the producer of motion pictures in Hollywood put on the film everything, even in the news reels and the educational features. A man conducting a picture house does not have to have a living musician in the pit. Undoubtedy there have been thousands and thousands of musicians who have spent their lives in the American Federation of Musicians, thrown out of work. Mr. LANHAM. If wired radio should supersede radio by air, they would also be taken out of that work? Mr. Buck. Broadcasting in its operations tonight, with 600 stations outside of the chains, will undoubtedly find about 300 of those stations utilizing some kind of an orchestra. The great N. B. C. and Columbia chains and the major stations utilize magnificent orchestras in numerous studios. But what happens here with wired wireless? They will engage Whiteman, they will engage Stokowski, they will engage possibly Kossouvetsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They will engage Rudy Vallee, who was here yesterday; and in one disk, one record, or on one central spot through these power wires-and what is wired wireless? The basic fundamental principle involved in wired wireless is to sell more power either through the electric light wires or the telephone wires. Mr. LANHAM. Is that in vogue now in this country? Mr. Buck. It is in actual practice today, gentlemen. I know there are 5,000 sets in operation in the city of Cleveland. Mr. DUNN. Some in Pittsburgh, too. Mr. Buck. They intend to extend this to every city in the United States. It is intensely interesting. It eliminates all static. It is a clear reception. There is no advertising; you do not have to listen to some of this "blah" to get some of this fine stuff that we get on the air. What we are disturbed about with the 2-cent mechanical provisions that these gentlemen, according to this Duffy Act, can take our works for 2 cents, and a man can sit in a central studio in New York or Washington or any major city and play a work on a mechanical reproduction for 2 cents throughout the entire country. That is what disturbs us on that. Mr. LANHAM. What is radio facsimile? That is a new term to me. Mr. Buck. The principle is this: As you gentlemen know, there are so many wave lengths in the air. If Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Romberg, or any of these men broadcast, it goes through the antenna over the broadcasting station, hits these waves, away she goes and hits your home. But this is a different technique. This is a technique by utilizing methods that have come out of the development of the laboratories only as applied to a telephone wire. For instance, if your broadcast from Washington tonight a speech, outside of this area this speech is carried throughout this area by remote control over telephone wires to other stations. That is what you call "chain broadcasting." |