[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 19, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3893-S3894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT AND COPYRIGHT ACT OF 2005

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am pleased that today the House has voted 
to pass the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, clearing 
the way for the President to sign this important bill into law. That 
signature will mark the completion of our unfinished intellectual 
property business from last year. As we work to enact an equally 
ambitious intellectual property agenda in this new Congress, we have 
started off on the right foot.
  The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act will help protect the 
rights of our innovators and support efforts at preserving America's 
cultural heritage. Title I of the bill, the ``Artists' Rights and Theft 
Prevention Act,'' will criminalize a growing scourge: the use of 
camcorders to surreptitiously swipe movies from the big screen. Theft 
of intellectual property does not involve stealing something tangible, 
but the economic impact is very real. According to the Motion Picture 
Association of America, our film industries lose $3 billion annually 
due to piracy. We already know of high profile examples of movies 
showing up in other parts of the world on DVD while still in theaters 
in the United States. Theft of intellectual property is a global 
problem, and we need to ensure that our own IP house is in order even 
as we continue efforts at stronger international enforcement.
  I have long been an enthusiastic proponent of the Library of 
Congress's efforts at protecting and promoting our nation's rich and 
diverse film heritage. Thus, I am particularly pleased that the bill 
passed today also contains the National Film Preservation Act, 
legislation that I sponsored in the last Congress to continue support 
for this extraordinary project. It reauthorizes a Library of Congress 
program dedicated to preserving precisely those types of films most in 
need of archival preservation: ``orphaned'' works that do not enjoy the 
protection of the major studios. The movies saved include culturally 
significant silent-era films, ethnic films, newsreels, and avant-garde 
works. The Act will allow the Library of Congress to continue its 
important work, and to provide assistance to libraries, museums, and 
archives in preserving films and in making these works available to 
researchers and the public. We know that more than 50 percent of the 
works made before 1950 have disintegrated and that only 10 percent of 
films made before 1929 still exist. Once these works are gone, they are 
lost to history forever. The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, 
has referred to our film heritage as ``America's living past.'' The 
National Film Preservation Act will help ensure that this past is 
accessible in order to entertain and enlighten future generations.
  I am also glad that a small but significant component of the bill is 
the Preservation of Orphan Works Act, which corrects a drafting error 
in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Correction of this 
error will allow libraries to create copies of orphan works, 
copyrighted materials that are in the last 20 years of their copyright 
term, are no longer commercially exploited, and are not available at a 
reasonable price. The last provision in the bill is the Family Movie 
Act, which ensures that in-home viewing of movies can be done as 
families see fit.
  I noted when this bill was introduced that while I might well have 
drafted specific components of this package differently, the Family 
Entertainment and Copyright Act was built around collegiality and 
compromise, both across the aisle and between chambers. As a result, we 
have produced good law worthy of the broad support it has enjoyed. I 
thank the bill's Senate cosponsors, Senators Hatch, Cornyn, Feinstein, 
and Alexander, for all of their

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hard work. I also wish to thank in particular Chairmen Sensenbrenner, 
Congressman Conyers, Congressman Smith, and Congressman Berman, without 
whose efforts this bill could not become law.

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