[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 171 (Saturday, November 22, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15573-S15574]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HATCH (for himself, Mrs. Feinstein, and Mr. Cornyn):
  S. 1933. A bill to promote effective enforcement of copyrights, an 
for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Enhancing Federal 
Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003, the EnFORCE 
Act. This bill makes three sets of narrow, but important, changes that 
will build greater flexibility and accountability into our system of 
intellectual property laws.
  First the EnFORCE Act will expand an existing antitrust exemption to 
conform the law to market realities. Today, an antitrust exemption in 
the Copyright Act gives record companies and music publishers the 
flexibility they need to negotiate mechanical royalty rates in the 
rapidly evolving market for legal music downloading. These parties now 
need the same flexibility to ensure that they can negotiate royalties 
associated with innovative forms of physical phonorecords, like 
enhanced compact disks and DVD audio disks.
  The music industry has sometimes been criticized for being too slow 
to

[[Page S15574]]

adopt its business models to new technologies. The industry is now 
responding to such concerns by developing new products and new 
distribution channels. The EnFORCE Act will ensure that Federal law 
allows the music industry to provide consumers with these innovative 
products and services.
  Second, the EnFORCE Act will also resolve two narrow issues relating 
to statutory damages in copyright infringement litigation. Some accused 
infringers have tried to avoid liability for statutory damages by 
challenging the accuracy of the information in copyright registrations; 
this bill clarifies that courts should resolve such challenges by 
applying the existing judicial doctrine of fraud-on-the-Copyright-
Office. In other cases, disputes have arisen about how many ``works'' 
have been infringed for purposes of computing statutory damages. These 
disputes are important for the music industry, which has received 
inconsistent adjudications about whether an album consisting of ten 
songs counts as one or ten works for statutory-damages computation. The 
bill gives courts discretion to conform the law of statutory damages to 
changing market realities.
  Third, and finally, the EnFORCE Act will also enhance both the 
enforcement and oversight of federal intellectual property law. The 
bill authorizes appropriations to ensure that all Department of Justice 
units that investigate intellectual property crimes have the support of 
at least one agent specifically trained in the investigation of such 
crimes. The bill also requires the Department of Justice to report to 
Congress detailed information about the scope of its efforts to 
investigate and prosecute crimes involving the sexual exploitation of 
minors or intellectual property.
  For the above reasons, I urge my colleagues to support the Enhancing 
Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003. I 
look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and the 
affected public to ensure that this bill achieves its important 
objectives.

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