ber of 1974 and I might add that the same concern was expressed very forcefully by Irvin Karp at the Copyright Office hearing-was that if you had in hand a certificate of registration for a typeface design under the present copyright law, the typeface design owner could bring an action to enjoin publication of a book or magazine that had been printed from an unauthorized copy of that typeface design. In other words, there is a good deal of copying going on in this field, and the author and publisher would have no way of knowing whether or not-and in some cases, I would suspect the printer would not necessarily know-whether the typeface design he has is actually original or not. And in any case, the authors and publishers should not be faced with that kind of danger. Now, the proponents of typeface design protection have argued that at no time did they ever dream of such a thing, but one of the reasons that have made me very cautious about amending the Copyright Office regulations under the present law, one of the things among others, is the fact that I, as Register of Copyrights, cannot in any way guarantee that the authors and publishers would be safe from this kind of liability. In my opinion, a court faced with this problem would hold in their favor, and would say that protection covers only the making of other fonts and not the using of an unauthorized font to print something. And yet I cannot guarantee that that would be the result. The law is not that clear. I think this is one of the advantages of trying to deal with this in the current legislative effort to try to make that clear. Mr. KASTENMEIER. I agree. I think it is rather complex. I do not know to what extent we will have a competent technical understanding of this area, partly because it is-within the industry, it may beunderstood, but to the general public, it may not be. Turning to the compulsory licensing system, you do feel that here compulsory licensing is appropriate, that there be a compulsory license if he, in fact-the original designer and manufacturerlicensed anyone else. Then at that point, it becomes compulsory. Or is it-or if he licenses no one, does it immediately-is it once used? Ms. RINGER. The way the industry works, you have got to license somebody in order to commercially exploit their font, and there has to be some sort of trigger-I think this is true of all compulsory licensing systems-that brings it into operation and makes the reproduction of the font available to other manufacturers under stated conditions. I do not know exactly what the trigger would be. It might well be the issuance of the first license, but there might be some other act, perhaps earlier, that would bring it into effect, like the publication of advertisements reproducing the font. Mr. KASTENMEIER. We actually do not have such language. Ms. RINGER. No; let me say, Mr. Chairman, this is one of the most hotly contested issues I have had to deal with recently, and I would not dream of putting forward a compulsory licensing proposal independently, but it has been suggested by one of the principal proponents of protection in this area. In other words, in trying to establish a ground rule, I think this is not something we should ignore. Mr. KASTEN MEIER. On that note, we will conclude this morning's; efforts. The committee is very grateful to you. Our next meeting, which may or may not be the last meeting, will be Thursday, November 13, at 10 a.m. We will make a substantial effort at that point to have the members here so they can be here for our last project. That concludes this morning's session. The committee is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Thursday, November 20, 1975.] COPYRIGHT LAW REVISION THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1975 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in room 2226, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Kastenmeier [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. Present: Representatives Kastenmeier, Drinan, Pattison, and Wiggins. Also present: Herbert Fuchs, counsel, and Thomas E. Mooney, associate counsel. Mr. KASTENMEIER. The hearing will come to order. We have met this morning to hear further from Ms. Barbara Ringer, the Register of Copyrights, in what we hope will be the next to the last installment of her testimony and our Subcommittee's hearings on H.R. 2223, the copyright law revision bill. We have scheduled the next hearing and possibly the last hearing on Thursday, December 4. So with that, Ms. Ringer, you may proceed where you left off some 2 or 3 weeks ago. TESTIMONY OF BARBARA RINGER, REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS Resumed Ms. RINGER. I will do so. I must apologize for skipping over chapter 8 which would normally come next in the material I am presenting. It deals with section 114 on rights in sound recordings and the Danielson bill, which is the performance royalty provision of the bill. It is a difficult chapter, and I have been having some trouble with it. I have not finished it. Since it also ties in with an important issue under Section 301, involving the Federal preemption of sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972. I would rather like to present these two together in the interest of comprehensibility. You have before you four chapters which I hope to be able to get through today. For reference, they are chapter 9 on the compulsory license section, 115; chapter 10 on the jukebox provision, section 116; chapter 11 on ownership and transfer of copyright, which is chapter 2 of the Bill; and chapter 14, on the manufacturing clause, chapter 6 of the bill. 57-786-76-pt. 3- -31 Starting with chapter 9 dealing with what is known familiarly as the "mechanical royalty," I think we can identify five questions, which I will try to address in order. The first is whether or not to retain the compulsory license for the making of sound recordings at all. Second is an intriguing question involving the availability of the compulsory license under the copyright law with respect to music as used by the so-called record pirates or tape duplicators. Third is the basis of the royalty and the procedural provisions of section 115. Fourth is the basis of the royalty rate, which can be characterized as a percentage or a flat rate. And, finally, the all-important question of the amount of the royalty. Starting with chapter 9, I would like to read bits and pieces, as I have been doing, and I will try to identify the page for the sake of the reporter as I go along. The first issue is, Should the basic compulsory licensing system, established in the 1909 act to govern the manufacture and distribution of phonorecords of music, be retained? And at some length in this chapter I have traced the legislative history of section 115. This is the bulk of the chapter, pages 3 to 21, and let me try to summarize the contents of that very briefly, if I can. Section 1(e) of the present law is the great-granddaddy of all compulsory licensing systems. I do not think that is an overstatement. It sounds rather broad, but the compulsory licensing provisions of the 1909 statute were actually an imaginative effort to compromise a difficult problem and they represent a daring legislative innovation of historic significance. Section 1(e) of the 1909 act established the first compulsory licensing system in any copyright or patent statute, in any intellectual or industrial property statute or, as far as anyone seems to know, in any statute in the world. It set a pattern that has been widely followed in other countries in copyright laws as well as other fields, and has had a profound effect on the development of the music industry in the United States. Mr. KASTENMEIER. Ms. Ringer, I just want to say, I am glad you are dealing with this. One of the questions I think people new to copyright law have, and I do not mean to say that critically, but in a fresh approach-and I have noticed this among conversations with members of the committee-whether or not it is possible and practicable to retreat from a compulsory license. In other words, it tends to represent not only innovation but a device which proceeds out of other things, an evolution to the present state. Is it possible to rewrite the law so as to disengage from a compulsory license? I think some members have that question in their minds. Ms. RINGER. I think it is an absolutely essential question for you to answer, Mr. Chairman. I have tried to trace the history of the provision and the attitudes which evolved since the middle 1950's in an effort to show how the Copyright Office went through the same mental process that you are going through, how your subcommittee in 1966, 1967-1965, 1966-when through the same mental process, and how you need to go through it again. I think it is an absolutely essential question. It is not given, in my opinion, that the compulsory license must remain forever and ever. I think that once-I have traced this in a very general way-I think you will see how we came to the point where we now are down to 22, 3 cents type of discussions, but I do not think we can get to that type of discussion until we have addressd the more general questions. I certainly agree with you. What I am trying to say now is that this was essentially an antitrust measure, attempting to create exclusive rights which were considered just in 1909, the right of the composer or an author of music or a music publisher to have rights against those who were recording his music, then on piano rolls, primarily, but without creating a monopoly in the music industry. And this was because of the particular situation that existed in 1909, and I do go into this briefly here. There was one company, to make a long story short, that had bought up sound recording rights and musical compositions in anticipation that Congress would change the law, and Congress was thus faced with the prospect that, if it granted exclusive rights with no restrictions, it would be creating an automatic monopoly in the Aeolian Co., which was this big piano roll manufacturer that had succeeded in getting licenses. And they did not feel they could do that. And their response-while the section is poorly drafted, at least looking at it from the vantage point of 70 years later; nevertheless, it was, I think, an imaginative effort. And if you look at the hearings in 1909, 1906, and 1908, actually the bulk of the testimony was on this issue. This was the big issue in the 1909 law. I do not think I need to emphasize the point that obviously the phonograph industry went through enormous ups and downs with the technological developments of the 20th century, but lying there in the background all the way through it was the compulsory license, and in many ways the music industry in the United States was built up with the compulsory license there. Now, in 1961, obviously the whole industry had been transformed, and it was difficult and is difficult to justify compulsory license simply out of hand, simply by itself. A compulsory license has to be a compromise of some sort. And the industry had changed so radically that the Copyright Office felt that there might be a possibiliy of doing away with the compulsory license and, therefore, in our recommendations in the Register's report in 1961 we recommended that the clause be done away with altogether and that licensing of sound recordings, music licensing of sound recordings, be left to free negotiation. We did hedge our proposal because we recognized how radical this was, and we recommended that if the clause were retained, that it be thoroughly overhauled. Now, as I tried to bring out in these first 20 or so pages of the chapter, there was a storm of controversy after this, and without going into-I will not read, I will try to summarize. The record industry mounted a major campaign against repeal, and their basic argument was economic. But they argued similarly that the laws for the compulsory license would produce the same kind of result that was sought to be avoided in 1909, basically that it would lead to concentration and monopoly problems and would raise the cost of records to consumers. There was something else, though, and I think this needs to be emphasized. The music industry itself was obviously uneasy about |