compulsory licenses

From: <CNICOPY[_at_]charlie.usd.edu>
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1993 9:15:59 -0500 (CDT)

> Mary Brandt Jensen said (in part):

>> materials. And as Congress found was the case with jukeboxes and cable
>> TV, tracking down all the copyright holders for all the material in a large
>> electronic library to ask permission is impractical. For these reasons,
>> Congress adopted compulsory licenses for juke boxes and cable TV. However,
>> when the U.S. joined the Berne convention it became highly unlikely that
>> any additional compulsory licenses would be enacted.

Trotter Hardy replied

>Actually the difficulty of tracking down licensees had little to
>do with enacting compulsory licenses. As ASCAP and BMI have
>shown, when parties stand to make (or lose) money, they figure
>out a way to arrange for licensing despite what appear to be
>overwhelming transaction costs (as those organizations do
>for music, which is performed in a zillion places all over the
>country). It had more to do with the fact that the cable
>industry had been "subsidized" by earlier Supreme Court
>decisions, had grown into a powerful lobbying force, and was
>able to force copyright owners to come to a compromise between
>no liability for cable TV and full liability for cable TV:
>specifically, the compulsory license arrangement.

>In fact, there are far fewer (FAR fewer) cable tv stations than
>there are places where live and recorded music is played; hence
>an organization like ASCAP for television would have been
>eminently practical had Congress not depended on the interest
>groups to reach their own compromise.

The problem is not in tracking down licensees. I agree that when money is involved, licensors find a way to band together and share the expense of tracking down licensees. The problem is with tracking down licensors. I don't have my legislative history at home, so I can't give a pinpoint cite right now, but my comment about the impracticality of tracking down licensors comes straight out of the legislative history. I think, but and not absolutely certain, that it is in the section by section analysis of the house report on the section concerning the cable tv compulsory license.

Mary Brandt Jensen       		CNICOPY[_at_]CHARLIE.USD.EDU
Professor of Law                        (605) 677 6363
University of South Dakota              (605) 677 6357 fax

School of Law
414 E. Clark St.
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390 Received on Sun Sep 19 1993 - 14:11:17 GMT