Mr. Wiley and I represent the main two organizations for book publishing. I am representing the American Book Publishers Council and Mr. Wiley is representing the American Textbook Publishers Institute, and these two organizations together have memberships which represent about 95 percent of the commercially published books in the country.

We also represent a special group in the American Book Publishers Council. This is the technical, scientific and medical publishers group who have naturally a special interest in this legislation.

Now, before I get into my statement, I would like to say Mr. Wiley and I have had the privilege of conferring with Dr. Astin of the Bureau of Standards and with a member of Dr. Hollomon's legal staff, Mr. Christianson. A number of questions were clarified to our satisfaction and as a result of this conference we understand that the department will propose some changes and amendments in the bill as it now stands.

With your permission, I would like to start on page 2 now and read my formal statement with a few marginal comments.

I would like to begin by saying that we support the general purpose of the bill. It is appropriate for the Federal Government to sponsor and finance gathering, evaluation and editing of basic data in accordance with agreed national standards. We are also in accord with the general philosophy of the bill that those who make use of these special services for standard reference data should in some way contribute to the cost of disseminating this information.

I would say this should be a substantial contribution rather than a token contribution.

Although we support the general purposes of the bill, it seems to us that some of the specific provisions designed to carry out these purposes are open to question and should be examined further. Thus, the bulk of the rest of our statement will consist of raising questions which we believe the committee and the sponsors of the bill should carefully consider before placing any such program into operation. This was clarified in our conference last night and I think it was clarified somewhat in the testimony yesterday, so this misgiving is certainly on the way to being solved to our satisfaction.

Mr. DADDARIO. Well, I am pleased to hear that, Mr. Benjamin, because during the course of the testimony it seemed to me there was some definite indication as to private participation and dissemination of the material. What the process to bring it about would be was not clear, which gave us concern here in the committee. You have recognized, I think, that this was the case. I am pleased that you have had this discussion. We will also, as a committee, look at this matter very carefully. I have indicated time and time again that we are not bound to the language of this bill.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Yes. Mr. Wiley will have a little more to say to this point specifically.

Mr. WAGGONNER. Mr. Chairman, I don't believe the testimony of yesterday does any more than show that it would be possible to contract with private industry. It doesn't state any real intention of so doing. Mr. DADDARIO. If you will recall, Mr. Waggonner, during the first day of testimony Dr. Hornig made some remarks about the participation by private publishers in the dissemination of the information.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I was not able to attend the hearings yesterday, but we were assured last night that it was the intention of the Department of Commerce to bring in the private sector as much as possible in this, and we think it is possible to bring it in quite heavily.

Mr. DADDARIO. In any case, this matter which concerns you also has bothered the committee. It is something which we will direct our attention to as we discuss the bill and its terminology, in view of the testimony we have received.

Mr. BENJAMIN. We are delighted with this, Mr. Chairman, because we think not only does this prevent freezeouts that Mr. Wiley will talk about later, but also I think it would assure wider dissemination of this material, particularly abroad. Mr. Wiley will talk about that a little later. Now I would like to turn to page 3.

My second question concerns the use of the symbol or mark as provided in section 6. It raises several questions in my mind:

(a) Is it a guarantee of accuracy or authority? If so, what is the Government's responsibility and liability for the dissemination of inaccurate material?

(b) Is it a trademark? If so, is the use of a Federal trade mark legal?

(c) Does it establish a precedent for the U.S. Government "seal of approval"? If so, what implications are there with respect to other kinds and bodies of scientific information generated by or for the Government? If this is "grade A" information, is all other Government information "grade B" or ungraded?

(d) How will it psychologically affect the ranking of nonapproved data of similar or competing nature issued by private professional groups or industrial firms?

(e) Has the Bureau of Standards the best of critical evaluators in all areas of science covered by the data? In actual practice, will it not be necessary for much of the evaluation to be done for the Bureau by persons or organizations in the private sector?

While we sympathize with the implied purpose of the use of a symbol or mark, we seriously question whether it is proper for the Government to put what is in effect an official imprimatur on any kind of scientific data. Further, we question whether the use of such an imprimatur is really necessary.

This question, I must say, still remains in our mind. Hearing testimony and what I have heard about yesterday's testimony, and what Dr. Seitz said this morning, it seems to me this symbol resolves itself into a trademark. I thoroughly agree with Dr. Seitz that this is not necessary. I feel that the publication of this critical data under the auspices of the Bureau will be very well known in the scientific community, and I just do not agree that this will add or detract in the least from it. The other misgiving I have here is that this opens up the Government, and particularly the Bureau of Standards, to requests and probably valid requests for the validation of all other kinds of scientific and technical data, both from Government sources and from non-Government sources. It seems to me if the Government is ready to puts its stamp of approval on any one body of data, it has an obligation to evaluate other bodies of data and put the same stamp of approval on it. I would strongly urge that this symbol not be used,

first, because I do not think it is necessary and, second, because I think it would establish some embarrassing precedents, to say the least.

Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Seitz this morning said that when the International Critical Tables were used, it was enough to reference the information. Because the tables were of such high quality, no symbol or trademark was necessary.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I think any user of this data, anyone who is competent to use the data, will know the source of the data and its background. If not, all he would have to do is to turn to the title page of the volume or print-out or the operator of the system to know its origin and to know its dependability.

Mr. DADDARIO. In the final analysis, that is the important point. Mr. BENJAMIN. That is the very important criteria. If it comes from the U.S. Bureau of Standards, it ought to be pure, or as pure as we can make it.

I agree with Dr. Seitz' point of view on this completely.

Third, it is clear that sections 6 and 7 are intended to change existing law which prevents the copyrighting of official Government publications. We assume that this was the direct intention of the sponsors of the bill. While we can sympathize with the desire to protect the integrity of the data, we suggest that a circumvention of present law in this instance would invite many proposals and applications for similar circumventions in the in-house production of other kinds of scientific and technical information generated by Government departments and agencies. While the proposed system of Standard Reference Data will compete with only a few private publications, it is conceivable that this exemption from copyright would open the door to in-house production of similar systems of Government scientific and technical information that would widely and directly compete with publications in the private sector.

While sections 7, 8, and 9 would effectively control copying in the United States, there would be absolutely no control overy copying in foreign countries. This would, of course, be objectionable to many taxpayers. In addition, unlike copyright, which is limited to a term of years, the protection in the bill seemingly is perpetual.

I feel here it would be unfair for the U.S. Government to place. any restrictions on domestic use of materials that could be used freely in foreign countries. I will have a little more to say about this in another connection later.

On the other hand, the present bill seems to afford no protection against the use of data in mechanized information centers. It would be most unwise to allow operators of computerized systems to use the data freely while denying others the same privilege.

Finally, we venture to suggest that the production of a federally supported Standard Reference Data System by the National Academy of Sciences would be much more palatable to private publishing industry than would in-house production by the Bureau of Standards. Further, the Academy, as a contracting agency, could copyright the data and thus this highly controversial problem would be resolved.

We hope that this explanation of our views may be helpful to the subcommittee and we stand ready to cooperate further in any way which the subcommittee may desire.

If I may, I should like to go into a little more detail on the essentiality of copyright protection. I feel insofar as possible that this material, or as much of this material as possible, should be protected by copyright, and for three reasons. First, to protect the interests of the private sector, and the foreign contributors, to protect their rights in this data. I would guess, and this is a guess, from what I have heard that perhaps as much as 70 to 75 percent of the input into this system will come from the private sector or from foreign sources. It would seem to me very unfortunate, if having this input evaluated by the Bureau in this system would result in placing it in the public domain and therefore depriving the private interests and the foreign interests of protection of the input of the data.

It might indeed in some cases prevent data from being put into the system. Second, I think this copyright protection is absolutely necessary to allow for the commercial publication that has been talked about in these hearings. In the publication, particularly, of the printed handbook volumes of this, I would say that more than 50 percent of the sale of these volumes would be abroad. The foreign export market for this kind of material is absolutely essential to make publications like this commercially viable. The present bill would not give you protection from ensuing foreign sales competition on the same material. In other words, a commercial publisher who contracted to publish this could sell it only in the United States. Then he would have a most difficult problem of controlling what we call sell-around from people who print the material outside of the United States and ship it into the United States for sale. So I think international copyright is an absolute essential if you are going to have commercial publication and everyone says we want to have commercial publication, and we should have commercial publication.

Thirdly, I think the copyright is necessary for the protection of the use of the material in computer systems. It would be most unfair, I think, to allow any situation, as the present bill would allow, which would permit the operators of a large computer system to use it, but would not allow the smaller user who wanted to print it or photocopy it or something like that not to use it. The only way that I see to get protection would be to copyright the material and to follow, in the language of the bill, the recommendation of the Copyright Office that the input of this material into a computer system is indeed making a copy, and therefore the material is protected against such input without permission from the copyright owner.

I think revision of the bill before you is necessary to accomplish all three of these ends and to allow the Bureau of Standards or a prime contractor to subcontract the private production of these materials under copyrighted form. I suggest, of course, that the revisions and changes here should be drafted in consultation with the Copyright Office, not only to be sure that they are in conformity with the demands of the present law but that they might not be shot out from under in the revision of the copyright law, which is now, as you know, before the House. If I may, sir, I would like to suggest that Mr. Wiley talk about the economics of this and some of the things that were talked about in terms of how it might be done commercially in pricing et

cetera.

Mr. DADDARIO. Mr. Wiley, will you proceed?

Mr. WILEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps you and the members of your committee might ask questions of Mr. Benjamin before I move into a different area which perhaps would lead them away from their questions.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I usually disagree with Mr. Wiley and I am going to now. I think he should give his testimony.

Mr. DADDARIO. I am not necessarily going to disagree but I do think if you proceed, the subcommittee will get an impression of your joint opinion. Then we can ask questions.

Mr. WILEY. Thank you, sir. This will be even briefer than I intended because Dr. Seitz talked about some things in his testimony that I had intended to include in my statement.

He referred specifically to the historic example of the International Critical Tables published so successfully as an important contribution. He noted, perhaps, not as fully as I intended to, that funds were found in the National Research Council on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences, which undertook to negotiate a contract. Those volumes are still in demand, despite their apparent historic age. It is important to note that private funds underwrote the editorial compilation, private funds were used for the production and distribution, and that royalties have come back over the years to the National Academy.

For many years the scientific and technical book publishers have been very much concerned over what we look upon as unfair Government competition. This is a concern that we have pursued with some degrees of success but not to our satisfaction. It arises now in a much more complex and complete way because, as you gentlemen know, a very large part of the scientific and technical research being undertaken in this country is being funded with Federal funds. The percentage is astronomical. We believe that scientific and technical information which results from those efforts, insofar as this becomes publishable material, should be printed, published, and distributed in the private sector. This we believe is necessary in order to prevent what might become a Government monopoly of scientific and technical information. It is also important, from our point of view, that such information, if publishable in book form, be in the private sector in order to maximize distribution. The Superintendent of Documents, the publishing arm of the Government Printing Office, is in no position to do this, either in the domestic market or, more importantly, in the worldwide market.

The private sector procedure would then lead to some recovery of costs. This question has been raised by a member of the committee, how much of the recovery could come out in the form of royalties paid by a private publisher. It is difficult to estimate, but I think it is important to note that it would only be a small part of what might be identified as the cost of developing the information. Publishing in the private sector, as I said, will result from our point of view in saving the Government production, printing and distribution costs which otherwise would have to be funded with Federal moneys.

In referring to the Standard Reference Data Program, I do not disagree with Dr. Seitz, except I want to clarify one matter and that is that we as commercial publishers are under no illusion that all of this