REVISION OF COPYRIGHT LAWS

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1936

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON PATENTS,
Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. William I. Sirovich (chairman) presiding.

(Bills referred to in the hearings will be found at the beginning of the appendix.)

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will now come to order and hearings will begin on copyright. The three bills before the committee are the Duffy bill, the Daly bill, and the Sirovich bill.

The subject of copyright embraces newspapers, magazines, periodicals, publications, authors, composers, novelists, dramatists, poets, motion pictures, distributors, exhibitors, mechanical device people, record people, phonograph people, radio people, hotels, restaurants, and countless other industries.

The purpose of this committee is to give a fair and square hearing to every party who is interested in the copyright bill.

The first witness that the committee is going to call is Mr. Gene Buck, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Will you take the witness stand, Mr. Buck?

STATEMENT OF GENE BUCK, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, AUTHORS, AND PUBLISHERS

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Buck, do you wish to read a statement, and do you wish to give your statement without any interruption?

Mr. Buck. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would be deeply grateful if I would be permitted to make the statement uninterrupted, and I would be happy at the conclusion to answer any questions the committee may put to me on this all-important question.

My name is Gene Buck. I am an author and president of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, member of the council of the Authors' League of America, a director of the American Dramatists.

As an author, I have written 20 Follies for the late Florenz Ziegfeld, 16 Midnight Frolics, and some other plays.

I come before you gentlemen to submit for your consideration the ideas of the men who create the songs of the Nation, in opposition to the Duffy bill, which passed the Senate and which is now before you gentlemen for consideration in the House of Representatives.

I realize that to some of you that what I am going to say may sound a bit repetitious, but inasmuch as there are many new members of the committee, inasmuch as this Congress has been sensitized by propaganda from the users of music, I believe that every Congressman has heard in some way from the hotel owners, the broadcasters, possibly the motion-picture exhibitors and those gentlemen who utilize creative property.

Inasmuch as these wires and telegrams have come in, and inasmuch as there has been spread on the record a telegram which was addressed to Congressman Zioncheck by broadcasters in the State of Washington, wherein they applied the term "racketeers" to those I have the honor to represent, it necessitates my going over that subject to explain to you gentlemen just exactly what the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers is.

This organization was founded in 1914 by one of the greatest composers that ever lived, the late Victor Herbert.

Mr. Herbert and his colleagues and conferees found that those who created the songs of the Nation were having their works pirated, from Maine to California, by users of music, and the composer and author were forced to band together to protect their rights.

It just so happened that around 1910 there arose in this country cabaret shows, motion-picture houses, which started with music to help project films on the screen. The writers of this country were absolutely unable to cope with the situation which developed. It necessitated the forming of an organization which could protect the rights of these men, because these users were pirating music throughout the Nation.

Now, inasmuch as this term "racketeer" has been applied, I want to dwell on that, because that is very insidious propaganda which has gone through the Halls of this Congress.

These men would like to have you legalize piracy. This word "racketeer" trips lightly from their lips to the men who have made contributions to this Nation which will last 100 years.

I want to go into who these racketeers are. That is very important, and if you will permit me I would like to read into this record some of the names of these so-called racketeers.

The late Victor Herbert, John Phillip Sousa, George M. Cohan, Sigmund Romberg, Carrie Jacobs Bond, John Alden Carpenter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Charles K. Harris, Fritz Kreisler, Deems Taylor, Harry Von Tilzer, Rachmaninoff, Leopold Godowsky, Rudolf Friml, Vincent Youmans, William C. Woodin, Frank Stanton, Oley Speaks, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Chauncey Olcott, Ernest R. Ball, Raymond Hubbel, Ring Lardner, Billy Rose, Bud De Silva, Henry Hadley, James Francis Cook, Gus Edwards, Pearl Curran, Reginald de Koven, Harry B. Smith, Oscar Hammerstein, Walter Donaldson, John Golden, Louis Gruenberg, Rosamond Johnson, James Wel. Johnson, William C. Handy, James Thornton, Silvio Hein, Louis Hirsch, Hart & Rogers, Warren & Dubin, Rupert Hughes, Warner Jansen, Geoffrey O'Hara, Jean Schwartz, Jack Yellen, Brown & Henderson, Otto Harbach, Mrs. H. H. Beach, Lillian Strickland Anderson, Joe Young, Edgar Leslie; Deems Taylor, Wolfe Gilbert, Jerome Kern, Fritz Kreisler, George Whiting, Irving Caeser, Mrs. Etbelber Nevin, Billy Hill.

I introduce those names, gentlemen, into the record as they represent a cross section of the creative musical brains of this Nation.

As I said, Mr. Herbert called a group of us together and submitted to us some ideas to combat this pirating that was going on from Maine to California without asking the author's permission.

For instance, as you gentlemen know, Shanley's Cafe, formerly a restaurant, started to introduce a new idea, and they engaged artists, took musical numbers from Herbert's shows, my shows, and Mr.

Berlin's shows, plays on which the managers had spent $200,000 with a group of stars, and this restaurant took these works, engaged inferior people, put them on the floor of the cafe, and while no admission was charged at the door to get in, there was a couvert charge. They practiced one of the original rackets, or the so-called couvert charge.

I notice that these users in this bill are bringing in the same old technique.

Unless admission is charged at the door, it is not a public performance for profit.

What happened? Mr. Burkan, who is present here, Mr. Victor Herbert's attorney, took on this fight for us legally, and he took these

men into court.

He lost in the lower court. It took from 1914 to 1917 before it arrived in the Supreme Court, and one of the great minds that the world has ever produced, not alone the Nation, the late Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, rendered a decision in which he said, that a couvert charge was a public performance for profit; that that man running that restaurant utilized these works, and although they did not charge an admission at the door, they put this charge on your check, 50 cents and a dollar, which was the pay-off for the artists who were making the performance in the establishment.

Right away, when we started to assert our rights, with whom were we confronted? The restaurant owners of America. Then the hotel owners of America. What chance did Berlin, or Charlie Cadman, or any of these creative workers who are with me here today, what chance did they have to watch an infringement in every city in the United States and to cope with organized opposition by users of music? Out of this situation came this society which I have the honor to lead.

After that the motion-picture theaters in this country, in those days as you will recall, the silent films. Wisely they came to the conclusion that in the showing of pictures they should add this universal language, music, and from the smaller picture house to the most palatial picture house in the country today, used music, and by the use of this universal language, music, to help project the picture. If it was a love scene, they would play a love song; if it was a war scene, they would play a war song.

This society immediately asked the picture producer, the distributor, to compensate us for this performance for profit. The price was set at 10 cents per seat per year. That is very important in your deliberations.

For instance, if a picture house in this country has 300 seats, they would pay to the Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers $30. If they had 600 seats they would pay $60-a year, mind you, not a month, a week, or a day.

These gentlemen have come down before the Congress and have endeavored to take out of the Copyright Act this performance-forprofit clause, so that they could have music for nothing.

From the one-fingered piano player in the small town, it got to the 125 men in the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall. And some of these theaters, gentlemen, operate from 11 o'clock in the morning until 12 o'clock at night.