Mr. BANZHAF. The computer program library was begun late February 1965 while I was still in my last year of law school. I had very little time to devote to it. Then it mostly went up as a trial balloon rather than as a full fledged business operation. I have done no advertising so far. I have had a great many interested people who have come to me but so far the library itself is very small. As I mentioned the number of copyrighted programs is still very small. It has just been a year that the protection has been available.

The computer industry has been rather slow in taking advantage

of it.

Mr. TENZER. In appearing today you are not speaking in behalf of the computer industry but your own organization?

Mr. BANZHAF. That is right. I am speaking as an individual.

To the extent I could, I hoped to present the views that the computer industry would have presented were they aware of the problem and had they had a chance to consider it.

Mr. TENZER. Thank you.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. Mr. Hutchinson.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Where is your library located?

Mr. BANZHAF. It is located in New York City.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Do I understand your testimony to be that in law school you did a considerable amount of research in the copyrightability of such material?

Mr. BANZHAF. Yes, I did, sir.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. As a result of which research you struck upon a new kind of a business?

Mr. BANZHAF. Well, I would think it would be an indirect effect, yes.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. I commend you for it.

Mr. BANZHAF. Thank you, sir.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. That is all.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. Thank you, Mr. Banzhaf.

Mr. BANZHAF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. Our last witness today is Mr. Larston D. Farrar, representing the Farrar Publishing Co.

STATEMENT OF LARSTON D. FARRAR, ON BEHALF OF THE FARRAR

PUBLISHING CO.

Mr. FARRAR. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, my name is Larston D. Farrar. I am president of the American Professional Writer's Club, which has members in all areas of the United States, and I am publisher of Author & Journalist, a publication founded in 1916 to serve freelance writers. It is circulated throughout the free world. We have subscribers in every one of the 50 States. In an interpolation here, in connection with the previous gentleman's testimony, I wish I could have sat through all the testimony because I am sure points like this constantly have arisen.

The members of this committee heard this gentleman ask for the use of editorial copy in computers of what I might make up or the members of this committee might make up, and virtually an unlimited use in feeding this into computers.

He has never yet appeared to my knowledge before the Federal Power Commission asking that they get free electricity for these computers. What is used in making the computers is paid for. What is used in servicing the computers is paid for. The power which is used, which might be a trivial amount and yet it is vital then to the electric company, is paid for.

Yet, what goes into the computer must not be paid for if it is produced by someone who is earning his living in this field. I would like to check that right at this point as you have it fresh in your thinking.

This is typical of the thinking of the people of the United States. They think because the Library of Congress has books there that everybody should use them freely. It is like saying there is electricity in the air so we should all get it free. I agree if they will give me free electricity then we should give them free books to read and use day after day.

Just because a multiplicity of persons is involved in producing the works or by writing is no reason why Congress cannot put a reward for the writer on the use of his creative material. As Rex Stout pointed out here, if a man produces something, it is his.

Just because a power company produces electricity it is theirs, and we recognize this fact. Just because, again, it is a company, though, and has been able to get into law various devices by which it can be guaranteed an 8-percent profit or whatever, this is natural; it has been going on for 50 years, so it is natural.

This concept in a growing expanding society which I have, and other writers have, has not been explored because writing did not reach its full fruition until recent decades. Therefore, as I say to you right now, writing should be paid for just as electricity should be paid for as anything else a man produces should be paid for. The complexities involved are trivial.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. If I may interrupt in this regard, you agree with the Authors League?

Mr. FARRAR. I certainly do, as my statement will make clear.

I came today to strike one more blow, feeble thought it may be, for the writers of the United States, who are among the most put upon group in the society, in the sense that, compared to their contributions, they are the lowest paid people in the society. Writers are a heterogeneous, diverse, and you might even say, nondescript people.

The word "writer" encompasses both those who live (or try to live) on their earnings as writers and those who may be extremely rich, due to other work, and dabble in the field of literature. Such men as Edgar Queeny, chairman of the huge Monsanto Chemical Co.; Nelson Rockefeller, who inherited one of the world's largest fortunes; Paul Getty, the oil half-a-billionaire, and many others, including our own Mrs. Perle Mesta, who inherited a fortune, have written books. But I do not speak for these millionaire dabblers in writing, who apparently could not care less whether or not there is a change in the copyright law.

They would be more interested. I am sure, if the subcommittee were considering tinkering with the oil depletion allowance.

No. I come to speak for the plainly creative commercial writer, who is striving both to make a contribution to the kaleidoscopic, even weird

(in many respects) society in which we find ourselves and also, in the process, must make a buck so that he, and his dependents, can eke out a drab existence. Although all of us read the works of writers, and many of us "know a writer" personally, or think we do, the sad truth is that the average commercial writer in the United States today is among the lowest paid of all our citizens.

It is safe to say that the average janitor working for the Federal Government on a salary earns more money, net, than the average commercial writer in the United States today. I do not deprecate the work of the janitor, either, and I will even agree that he should be called a "maintenance superintendent" if that be his wish.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. May I interrupt once more to say they apparently have not read your book on "How To Make $18,000 a Year Freelance Writing."

Mr. FARRAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the plug, but the study, research, and intelligence and mental skills required of a commercial writer, on almost any level, certainly entitle him to greater compensation than the manual labor of a janitor, otherwise we should encourage our finest intellects to learn how to use mops instead of attempting to get them interested in literature and the classics.

The writer is as common as an old shoe, in this society, and yet he is unique. In a true sense, any one of us can be writers, if he will pay the price to become one. Writing enjoys a unique legal status in the United States. Our Bill of Rights gives any one of us an absolute right to write, within the bounds of libel and logic. As has been made clear, every man can be his own novelist, poet, essayist (by that I mean within the bounds of the legal definition of obscenity), editorialist, or whatever. The rich and the poor do it.

Yet, in the nature of our society, there has developed a group which is known as professionals because they earn their livelihoods from writing, while perhaps also practicing the craft as an avocation.

They might be newsmen who hold down a job on the copy desk or copywriters in an advertising agency. In their vocations the members of these groups are able to protect themselves economically by unions, shrewdness, or business acumen. Still, even the number in these protected fields who earn as much as a good shoe clerk, year in and year out, are few and again far between.

In their avocational writing-that which they do freelance to make extra money-these people have exactly the same interest in this legislation, and in protecting their rights to make a livelihood off their creations, as the full-time professional writers. You can believe me that there are hundreds of thousands of alert, intelligent, and informed individuals engaged in writing in all its facets, including many teachers who endorse fully the views about this legislation which the Authors League of America has endorsed.

I should like particularly to compare the average creative commercial writer's earnings, which represent a mere pittance, to the earnings of schoolteachers and librarians. There no doubt are many teachers and librarians who are in the field of writing. They would be the first to say that, as writers, they are far underpaid for the intense research and concentration which goes into their writing. They know that teaching from a textbook-that is, repeating what already has been formulated by creative writers or handling books is a far less complex task than that of creating a literary work, whether it be a

piece of business writing, the lyrics to a popular song, or a massive novel.

I mention this comparison between teaching and creative writing because (and I have read many elements of the testimony; I could not be present but I have made arrangements to get the copies) it seems to me, just how I do not understand, the "educational lobby" has the idea that this bill will take away from teachers some rights they have held and exercised throughout our history as a nation. The teachers should pay for the materials they use as well as for the electricity and every other element that goes in the schools. Just because the writing was taken out of my head at my expense and through great trouble and study and long years of concentration I should give it away to students? The contractor who is rich and in Florida enjoying his profits should get these (the society says), but the writer-in a sense we say, "Let him go, who cares for him, he just gave his best to society." I mention this comparison, as I say, because teachers seem to think this bill will take away some of their usual fair use. It does not, in my judgment.

They also are alined with the purely crass interests of those businessmen who, being unable to buy commercial television stations, in many cases have been able to get a license for an "educational" television station, which operates almost the same way as one called a commercial station.

I think it is tragic that the teachers, who are themselves in many ways victims of the U.S. public's blind ignorance of the economic state of those in writing and the arts generally, should now aline themselves with the businessmen who own educational channels or hope to own such channels.

The two have little in common, economically, ideologically, or otherwise. One group, we hope and trust, namely, the teachers, are motivated by a desire to upbuild the society. This is the same motivation which characterizes most persons striving to be writers. The businessmen who own and will operate educational TV stations are motivated by one big desire-to make a huge profit, which no doubt will come to pass.

It comes with poor grace, in my judgment, for the teachers-who depend on, use, copy, and repeat the ideas of writers to strive to take more advantage of the writers, who are, I repeat, among the most put upon people in the society, certainly the lowest paid, commensurate to their contributions and withal the least organized of all discernible groups of individuals in the society.

In general, I would like to urge the chairman and the members of the committee, when they work on this bill and make changes in it, to give greatest and most careful consideration to the recommendations of the Authors League of America, the American Textbook Publishers Institute, and the American Book Publishers Council.

These groups, of all those testifying so far, most adequately have expressed the thoughts which, if I considered them to be helpful, I would repeat to you. Specifically, in your deliberations I would urge you to bear in mind that the writers who must live and work and earn their livings in this society already are the low men on the economic totem pole of this century.

They must pay high prices for rent, clothing, food, electricity, and all other necessary items for their existence in a stratified society.

They economically are at the mercy of every serviceman, ranging from the TV repairman to the plumber and electrician, while they work constantly in a competitive low-paying field where any high school child of exceptional intelligence and a flair for words might knock them out of a sale they need, at that time, for bare living expenses. For only in one or two special situations, the Screen Writers Guild and the Radio & Television Writers Guild and in ASCAP, have writers been able to protect themselves, or their works, from the most unconscionable exploitation and from the most penurious possible payment. And these, of course, include only a minute fraction of all the fulland part-time writers of the Nation. That is, the members of these protected groups.

Mostly, as noted, the writer is faced with bitter and unrelenting competition, in season and out, and he must fight hard merely to earn enough money upon which to subsist.

The society points out to the exceptions, but these exceptions, believe me, only prove the rule among writers. Every survey made shows conclusively that the income of writers-even including that of the so-called highly paid syndicated columnists and the already mentioned moving picture and television writers-by and large is no more than $100 to $125 a week. This is barely a miser's ransom in today's affluent society-affluent for some, that is.

Bear in mind, if you can, gentlemen, that a writer, Tom Paine, made possible our American Revolution by the power of his words, and that writers have lifted this civilization to its highest peaks.

Bear in mind that without writers and their fresh and vital and creative ideas, our Nation would sink slowly into a kind of darkness. Just as every generation must understand, and preserve, its own freedoms, so must every generation have writers to make clear to it the course it must follow and make the society make sense to most, if not all, of those who are living in it.

The writer is a key person in our development, mentally, spiritually, morally, and physically. Perhaps the manner in which writers have been rewarded by the society explains, in large measure, why there has been sag in the society that is noticeable to every thoughtful man.

On another subject which tied into this one here, there are one or two dozen bills relating to obscene and girlie books on the newsstands. Why do you think these people are in this field? These people are the disillusioned people with the civilization. They are trying in a sense to destroy civilization, not upbuild it. There is a reason why they act this way and they are probably thwarted or disillusioned writers, in my judgment.

You have to explain every man's actions insofar as you can. There are reasons for every single social aberration we have. I am telling you that the fact that the writers have been so poorly paid in the United States and so poorly rewarded for what they have done is a basic reason why this civilization is sagging.

The writers are disillusioned, by and large, and they have a right to be. The society promises them much more than it delivers to them, although it drains them dry of their energies, and their ideas, and their creativeness. In this sense, they are robbed by the very society which should be rewarding them, in my judgment.

So, I endorse the bill, that is the basic bill, the Library of Congress revision bill.