[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 139 (Wednesday, December 8, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S12041]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     SIDETRACKING OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS 
                              LEGISLATION

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, during the final days of this session, 
which have stretched over weeks and months, we have been struggling to 
pass a number of important and uncontroversial bills, but we have met 
with what some would call obstructionism from the Republican side of 
the aisle. Enactment of legislation needed for e-911 provisions to 
provide critical resources to our first responders, the Universal 
Service Administrative Corporation, a spectrum relocation trust fund, 
junk fax legislation, as well as the Family Entertainment and Copyright 
Act, anticounterfeiting legislation, film preservation legislation and 
many other measures have been sidetracked and hijacked.
  The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has 
spoken out urging enactment of these needed telecommunications bills. 
The telecommunications package contains critically important provisions 
that will enhance 911 service, allow spectrum relocation, and preserve 
the ability of the universal service fund to do its important work. 
These are not controversial or partisan provisions. We should do all we 
can to ensure that first responders can provide their essential public 
services and that includes e-911. The spectrum relocation trust fund 
will free more space for wireless broadband services. This will help 
the American economy by promoting jobs and education. The Universal 
Service Fund provision will fix an accounting glitch that if left 
unattended will seriously impede the USF as it goes about its critical 
work. If we do not make this fix, rural communities and schools will 
suffer, and in the end everyone will pay, with higher fees. I echo the 
FCC's concern and add my own with respect to the intellectual property 
legislation.
  Thanks to the ingenuity, the inspiration and the hard work of 
America's creators, the United States is the world leader in the 
creation of intellectual property. Protecting intellectual property 
matters. It matters to our creators, to our economy and to our future. 
Affording intellectual property straightforward and reasonable 
protections, and giving law enforcement officials the resources to give 
those protections genuine power should be bipartisan, noncontroversial 
goals. In the United States, copyright industries account for at least 
12 percent of our gross domestic product and employ more than 11 
million people. Copyright industries have been adding workers at an 
annual rate that exceeds that of the economy as a whole by 27 percent, 
and those industries have achieved annual foreign sales and exports of 
almost $90 billion. Republican objection has prevented the Senate from 
passing important intellectual property legislation, in an apparent 
effort to pressure the House to accept unrelated legislation.
  Along with Senator Hatch, Senator Cornyn, Senator Biden, Senator 
Feinstein, and many others, I have been working on a package of key 
intellectual property legislation for some time. Our staffs have worked 
late into the night and through weekends to accomplish all that we can 
this year. We have a package of strong and significant measures that 
would bolster protection of the intellectual property that helps drive 
our Nation's economy and that would ensure that law enforcement has the 
tools it needs to do its job in this regard. There was no good reason 
not to have sent this package to the House so that it could be enacted 
without delay. Instead, it has been blocked and the reason has nothing 
to do with the merits of the bill. It is merely being misused as 
leverage in an attempt to pass unrelated legislation that the Senate 
has already sent to the House and that the House finds objectionable. 
Apparently some are willing to sacrifice important intellectual 
property legislation for their own narrow purposes. That is 
unfortunate.
  Our economy loses billions of dollars every year to various forms of 
piracy. Instead of making inroads in this fight, we face a Republican 
roadblock. It is a barrier that stands in the way of the ART Act, a 
bill that passed the Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate by 
unanimous consent. Senators Cornyn and Feinstein introduced the bill, 
and I was pleased to work with them on it and to include it in our 
intellectual property legislation. These provisions would provide new 
tools in the fight against bootleg copies of movies snatched from the 
big screen by camcorders smuggled into theaters. Our bill would adopt a 
creative solution developed by the Copyright Office to address the 
growing problem of piracy of pre-release works. Republican obstruction 
is ensuring that these problems will be left unaddressed by this Senate 
and this Congress.
  Our anticounterfeiting legislation would mark a step forward in the 
fight against software piracy. I was glad to work with Senator Biden on 
this provision, which we included in the intellectual property package. 
The Republican-led Congress can tell our software companies that they 
will have to wait at least another year for the remedies promised by 
this legislation. The Business Software Alliance tells us that $29 
billion in software was stolen in 2003 alone. We are risking a higher 
number and more harm as we proceed into 2005.
  There are other noncontroversial provisions in this legislation, as 
well, such as language that would help ensure that the Library of 
Congress is able to continue its important work in archiving our 
Nation's fading film heritage. Some of America's oldest films--works 
that document who we were as a people in the beginning of the 20th 
Century--are literally disintegrating faster than they can be saved.
  It now appears an expanse of important, bipartisan legislation may 
fall victim to yet another Republican roadblock. Our copyright holders 
will suffer, our patent holders will suffer, our economy will suffer, 
emergency services and broadband deployment will suffer, our rural 
communities and rural schools will suffer. The Senate will have failed 
to respond to the needs of the American people. That is a shame.

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