In November 1962, the Register announced that the Copyright Office was prepared to change its position on some debatable questions and to draft alternative language on others. He indicated that the Office was prepared to revise its recommendations concerning "public dissemination" and the retention of common law protection, and that, "at least one alternative version of our draft bill will adopt the lifeplus basis for computing the term-in conjunction with a system of notice, deposit, and registration that we consider essential."

The Register also announced that he would send preliminary drafts of statutory language to the members of an expanded Panel of Consultants on General Revision for their comments, and that he would convene another series of meetings on the preliminary draft.

The process of preparing draft language for circulation occupied practically all of 1963, and included a total of eight meetings of the Panel of Consultants.

The development of this preliminary draft proved to be a difficult but enormously productive phase of the program. The procedure adopted provided a motive and a forum for detailed, critical scrutiny of the language and substance of a new copyright statute by representatives of nearly all of the groups affected.

It also created an atmosphere of cooperative effort that has survived various stresses and strains and has continued to grow in breadth and depth.

The preliminary draft of the general revision bill, that had reached completion at the beginning of 1964, was never intended to be a final product. The next 6 months were devoted to compiling, analyzing, and synthesizing all of the comments received on the draft, to making substantive decisions and changes on the basis of these comments, and to preparing a complete, section-by-section revision of the bill. The draft of the bill that emerged from this process was prepared entirely within the Copyright Office without collaboration or consultation with any private groups or individuals involved. The introduction of the 1964 draft in July 1964, marked the end of the drafting phase of the revision program and the opening of the legislative phase.

Like the preliminary draft on which it was based, the 1964 bill was not intended as a finished product, but as a focal point for further comments and suggestions. In August 1964, a full week of detailed discussions of the bill showed that a great deal of progress had been made, but that still further revisions would be necessary before legislative hearings could profitably begin.

During the fall and winter of 1964-65, the Copyright Office reviewed and analyzed the many oral and written comments on the bill and prepared another complete revision.

At the beginning of the 89th Congress, on February 4, 1965, Representative Celler introduced the 1965 General Revision bill and the Copyright Office spent the next 3 months preparing a supplement to the 1961 Register's Report. The supplementary report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law: 1965 Revision bill which was published in May 1965, set forth the reasons for changing a number of recommendations in the 1961 report and clarified the meaning of the provisions of the 1965 bill. Publication of the supplementary report coincided with the open

ing of congressional hearings on the bill. Over a period of more than 3 months, between May 26, 1965 and September 2, 1965, 22 days of public hearings were held before your subcommittee, under the objective and dedicated chairmanship of the man who is still your chairman, Robert W. Kastenmeier.

A total of 163 witnesses, representing an extraordinarily wide range of public and private interests, appeared to testify. The record of those 1965 hearings comprises nearly 2,000 pages of printed text, including not only the oral transcript but also more than 150 written

statements.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee under the chairmanship of John McClellan of Arkansas, held brief hearings on the Revision bill in August 1965, but delayed a full series pending the conclusion of the intense activity in the House subcommittee.

Several significant factors with respect to the general revision program emerged from the 1965 hearings. Most obvious were the sharp controversies remaining to be settled on some old issuessuch as the jukebox exemption, the royalty rate to be paid under the compulsory license for recording music, and the manufacturing requirements with respect to English-language books and periodicals— and on some relatively new issues-such as fair use, and the reproduction of copyrighted works for educational and research purposes. the liability of educational broadcasters and similar transmitters. and the status of community antenna television systems under the copyright law.

Aside from the need to work out further accommodations on several critical issues, the most serious problem arising from the 1965 hearing was how to organize the massive contents of the record in a way that would overlook no significant comment or suggestion but that still would form a comprehensible basis for decisionmaking. Let me say a personal word about those 51 days of subcommittee meetings, since they were very significant.

Working in close collaboration, the Copyright Office and the House Judiciary Committee counsel prepared summaries of every statement that had been made, and then divided the entire corpus of the hearings into 10 general areas: Subject matter of copyright, ownership, duration, notice and registration, manufacturing and importa tion requirements, community antenna systems and other secondary transmissions, jukebox performances, compulsory license for phonorecords, educational copying and fair use, and educational broadcasting and other performing rights.

Each subject was then divided into subtopics, under which were listed every issue raised at the hearings.

The "experiment in legislative technique." as it has been called, proved effective. I think the effectiveness will become more and more apparent as you progress in 1975. It enabled the House Judiciary Subcommittee, in its deliberations of the bill, to consider each issue in context, to weigh the arguments for and against it, and to arrive at reasoned decisions.

Meeting regularly, usually twice a week, from February through September 1966, the subcommittee held 51 executive sessions, all of which were attended by representatives of the Copyright Office. Examining each issue in depth and then redrafting the pertinent sec

tion of the bill as they went along, the subcommittee produced an entirely revised bill in an atmosphere of informal, bipartisan discussions that could well serve as a model for similar legislative projects. The bill, as revised by the subcommittee, was reported unanimously to the full House Judiciary Committee on September 21, 1966, and was reported without amendment by the full Judiciary Committee on October 12, 1966.

The House report still remains the basic legislative explanation of the content of the bill, and the reports succeeding it in both Houses have all been drawn from it.

The bill was reported too late in the 89th Congress for further legislative action, and indeed, none had been expected in 1966. In the revised form reported by the House, it was introduced by Representative Celler in the 90th Congress, and was considered by the newly constituted membership of Subcommittee No. 3, again chaired by Representative Kastenmeier, on February 20, 24, and 27, 1967.

It was reported to the full committee on the last of these dates, and, after rather heated debates in the full committee on February 28 and March 2, 1967, was again reported to the House.

This time, however, the report included minority views by Representatives Byron G. Rogers of Colorado and Basil L. Whitener of North Carolina, devoted to the jukebox issue, and additional dissent by Mr. Whitener on the bill's treatment of CATV.

It was becoming increasingly apparent, as the bill moved toward the House floor, that extremely sharp and unreconciled conflicts on the issues of jukebox performance and CATV transmissions remained, and that there was a serious danger that one or both of these issues could defeat the bill.

The bill was considered by the House Rules Committee on March 8, 1967, and the rather acrimonious arguments in the committee before it took action authorizing full debate on the House floor were another danger signal.

The debates of the bill in the House of Representatives on April 6, 1967, were difficult and protracted, to say the least. When the House finally recessed after 7 p.m., it was apparent that a rescue operation was essential. Over the next 4 days, in an atmosphere of intense crisis, several crucial compromises were achieved, and on Tuesday, April 11, 1967, an amended bill was passed by the House after mild debate with the extraordinary vote of 379 yeas to 29 nays.

Fairly radical changes were made in three areas: There were drastic revisions in the provisions establishing copyright liability for jukebox performances; the provisions dealing with community antenna transmission were dropped entirely and the exemptions for instructional broadcasting were considerably broadened. On the other hand, the structure and content of the bill itself has remained substantially intact.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, which had opened hearings in 1965, and had had a short series of hearings on the CATV problem in 1966, resumed full-scale consideration of the bill, under the joint chairmanship of Senators McClellan and Burdick, on March 15,

1967.

Indeed, the Senate hearings were in full swing during the crisis in the House, and for a time the general revision program resembled a

two-ring circus in more ways than one. To everyone's surprise the record of the Senate hearings, which lasted 10 days and ended on April 28, 1967, very nearly equals that of the House hearings in size and content.

Of the several areas that emerged as fullblown issues at the Senate hearings, by far the most important is the problem of the use of copyrighted works in automated information storage and retrieval systems. This problem was addressed separately in the context of the creation of a National Commission on New Technological Uses which Congress enacted as separate legislation only last year, and which is still awaiting staffing from the White House.

Meanwhile, as the 1967 legislative momentum began to slow more. and more, it was increasingly apparent that cable television had become the make-or-break issue for copyright revision. Although the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee worked long and hard between 1968 and 1970 to resolve controversies over a number of issues other than cable, and succeeded in reporting the revised bill to the full Senate. Judiciary Committee during the 91st Congress, it was not able to push revision any further.

An effort spearheaded by the Copyright Office to gain enactment of a "barebones" bill, containing everything except the cable section and other controversial provisions dealing with economic rights, also failed for tactical reasons.

By 1971, it was apparent that the bill was completely stymied over the CATV issue, and even the issuance of comprehensive FCC rules in 1972, governing the carriage of signals and programing by cable. systems, failed to break the impasse.

Because of this long delay, Congress has passed a series of successive bills extending the term of expiring copyrights. These now run through the end of the current Congress, and are scheduled to expire on December 31, 1976. The urgent problem of tape piracy was also taken care of through separate legislation.

A total of 7 years passed between House passage of the bill in 1967 and the resumption of its active consideration in the Senate subcommittee last year.

There may have been other reasons, but certainly the most immediate cause of the Revision bill's new momentum was the Supreme Court's decision in CBS v. Teleprompter, in March 1974, holding that under the 1909 statute, cable systems are not liable for copyright infringement when they import distant signals.

The decision was followed quickly by favorable actions in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee and full committee and, after a brief referral to the Commerce Committee, by passage in the Senate on September 9, 1975, by a vote of 70 to 1.

In late November, your subcommittee held a hearing which, in one respect, was a forerunner of these hearings. I testified in an optimistic. vein at that time, and I remain hopeful that at long last the entire revision measure will be enacted into law during the current Congress.

Mr. Chairman. this is the end of my prepared statement, but I would also like to identify seven or perhaps eight issues which will certainly come before you. I am preparing what I hope will be a second supplementary report of the register of copyrights which will be,

57-786-76-pt. 1—8

available to you and also to the subcommittee by the time you need to consider the bill in a markup sense.

This would not be something that would be part of the record of this hearing, but I would hope that I might have a chance to speak to it again later toward the end of these hearings or perhaps during the markup sessions.

I have no intention now in trying to guess what the other witnesses are going to say or in arguing anyone's case.

My feeling as the head of the Copyright Office is that my responsibility is to one group and one group only, and that is the group that is identified as the sole and only beneficiary of the copyright law of the United States under the Constitution, the authors of the so-called writings. In other words, the creators of copyrighted works as we now know them.

I am profoundly of the belief that authors in this country have been treated shabbily and stingily from the very beginning of our copyright system.

And, whatever I say will be with the thought that the situation of authors, not only as the creators of works of economic value, but as something that is infinitely precious to our country, needs to be promoted.

I don't think this has been done effectively under previous legislation. I will return to this point later. I am also conscious that everyone else besides the author is a user of the author's work, and as between users there may be arguments which are extremely persuasive for reasons unrelated to protection of the author but in some respects are irrelevant to the essential purpose of the copyright law.

In these areas I think compromises have been reached. I think compromises have been necessary and I think further compromises will be made. But it is vitally important that you consider the effect of a particular provision on the individual author and not primarily of its effect on an economic group using the author's work for good or for ill.

Turning to H.R. 2223, as it now stands, I will try to give you an idea of its framework and its approach and pinpoint a few of the major issues that you will be hearing debated in the weeks to come.

In the long, I am afraid, and rather boring statement that I made on the history of this project, I did want to make a point. Obviously, there is a long history behind the provisions in this bill, and aside from the chairman, all the members of your subcommittee are coming on it as new legislation, and you should not take it on faith.

No one in their right mind would ask you to. What I am trying to say, though, is that your predecessor members on the subcommittee went over most of these provisions in vast and searching detail. And, to a remarkable degree, aside from a few of the widely-publicized issues like cable, your subcommittee did its work so well that the basic legislation and its wording have become generally accepted.

A lot of things are not issues that once were, because what you did has been accepted. I think you will realize this as you go along.

Very simply, the present law is outdated, it is vague, it is ambiguous, it is arbitrary, and results in a great deal of unproductive work both on the part of those who have to operate under it and on the part of the Copyright Office.