A concurrent resolution to correct the enrollment of H. R. 1417.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting Senate Concurrent Resolution 145. It is a critical adjunct to H.R. 1417, the next bill to be considered on the suspension calendar today. S. Con. Res. 145 will correct a number of drafting errors within H.R. 1417 prior to enrollment of that bill. While many of these drafting errors are purely technical in nature, some may have significant negative repercussions. So it is critical that we concur in S. Con. Res. 145 now and thus ensure these errors will be corrected before H.R. 1417 becomes law.

I am not going to bore my colleagues with an explanation of all the technical changes made by S. Con. Res. 145, but I would like to bore my colleagues with a few of the changes that have the most substantive effect.

S. Con. Res. 145 ensures that H.R. 1417 will not create a major conflict with H.R. 4518, the satellite bill now pending before the Senate. Section 6(b)(2) of H.R. 1417 states that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, satellite license rate-setting proceedings will be conducted pursuant to the law, rules and practices in place prior to enactment of H.R. 1417. Thus, even if H.R. 4518 is enacted after H.R. 1417, section 6(b)(2) would take precedence over the provisions of H.R. 4518. Such an outcome would undo provisions of H.R. 4518 that created an expedited procedure for submitting and adopting voluntary section 119 rate agreements and thus undo language critical to the viability of H.R. 4518. S. Con. Res. 145 fixes this problem by ensuring that the process H.R. 4518 may later establish for determining satellite TV royalties will not be preempted by the terms of H.R. 1417.

S. Con. Res. 145 also addresses the concern that the Senate amendments to H.R. 1417 will render it impossible for decisions of copyright royalty judges to take effect.

The Senate amendments to H.R. 1417 state that the Librarian of Congress shall cause a copyright royalty judge determination to be published in the Federal Register following the Register's review of the CRJ's determination. However, the Register's review is both permissive and unlimited in time. If the Register never undertakes such a review, H.R. 1417 would appear to prohibit the Librarian from publishing the CRJ's determination.

S. Con. Res. 145 addresses this problem by establishing a time frame within which the Register must complete its review for legal error. As a result, the Librarian will, after a date certain, be authorized to publish the determinations of CRJs.

S. Con. Res. 145 addresses concerns that, as structured in Senate- passed H.R. 1417, the small claims process in distribution proceedings would not work. H.R. 1417 allows a distribution proceeding participant, who has a legitimate claim of $6 to avoid being forced into a small claims proceeding if he asserts a claim of $10,005. However, under H.R. 1417, that same participant cannot be sanctioned for bad faith inflation of a claim because the amount in controversy is less than $10,000. This anomaly allows participants to game the system and force full-blown distribution proceedings, exactly the problem small claim proceedings were designed to address.

S. Con. Res. 145 addresses this problem by hewing to the approach taken in the House-passed version of H.R. 1417. This approach ensures that participants are forced into small claims proceedings if the contested amount of their claim is $10,000 or less. Thus, a participant who asserts a claim of $10,005 could still be forced into a small claims proceeding if other participants asserted they were willing to pay $6, and thus the contested amount is less than $10,000. If the participant attempts to game the system by asserting a claim of $10,007, then the participant would face fines for asserting in bad faith an amount in controversy in excess of $10,000.

And, finally, S. Con. Res. 145 addresses one further substantive problem created by the Senate amendments to H.R. 1417. H.R. 1417 unintentionally removed the current legal requirement that voluntary agreements submitted to establish rates and terms under the section 112 compulsory license must include a minimum payment for uses of copyrighted works covered by section 112. S. Con. Res. 145 would ensure that H.R. 1417 does not alter this current legal obligation.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, adoption of S. Con. Res. 145 is critical to ensuring that H.R. 1417, which we will take up next, will operate as intended. Thus, I urge its adoption by my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. Con. Res. 145, a bill for correcting the enrollment of H.R. 1417, the ``Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act.'' I commend Messrs. Smith, Mr. Berman, and Ranking Member Conyers, for their respective hard work in crafting this legislation.

The underlying bill would replace the existing administrative procedures within the U.S. Copyright Office that determine copyright royalty rates and the distribution of related royalties under various compulsory licenses.

Under the Copyright Royalty Tribunal Reform Act of 1993, the Librarian of Congress has the authority to convene Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels, or ``CARPS,'' to resolve failed private negotiations between parties that fail to establish rates or to distribute royalties regarding the commercial use of movies, music and other specified copyrighted works.

For years, the CARP system has been criticized for rendering unpredictable and inconsistent decisions, employing arbitrators lacking the expertise to render sound decisions, and for being unnecessarily expensive.

H.R. 1417 is a reasonable bill to cure these concerns and is based on the input and recommendations of government and industry experts.

H.R. 1417 addresses the problem of lack of arbitrator expertise by appointing a ``Copyright Judge'' to preside over the new process. The Copyright Judge will be appointed by the Librarian of Congress, have full adjudicatory responsibility, and have the authority to make rulings on both the law and rates. The Copyright Judge will select two professional staff members with knowledge of economics, business, and finance. These staff qualifications will also improve the quality of the decisions rendered.

H.R. 1417 redefines the role of the Copyright Office. Presently, acts as an intake agency answering initial case intake questions, as well as an appellate court for CARP decisions by advising the Librarian on cases. This dual role forces the Copyright Office to often decline to answer threshold intake questions for fear of having to review its own decisions at the appellate stage. Under H.R. 1417, the Copyright Office's appellate responsibilities will be removed and the Office will only act in an administrative and advisory capacity by counseling the Copyright Judge on substantive issues as requested.

For small claimants who participate in the CARP process, the substantial expenses are practically preclusive. H.R. 1417 contains provisions to make the process more accessible. First, claimants must declare an ``amount in controversy'' during a distribution determination phase of the proceedings. If the dollar figure is $500 or less, the claimant will be assigned to the small claims process which is an less expensive, ``all-paper'' claim resolution method.

Another provision of H.R. 1417, that benefits both large and small claimants requires the filing of a ``notice of intent to participate'' in either a rate-making or distribution proceeding. This not requirement will discourage entities from disrupting the process by participating at the last minute. If a party failure to file in a timely manner or fails to pay the required fee, they will be an exclusion of either written or oral participation in that determination. Those exempted as small claimants would not be affected by this requirement.

H.R. 1417 contains several procedural changes to make the claim resolution process more convenient for the parties. H.R. 1417 expands the duration of the discovery phase from 45 to 60 days to give parties more time to file their claims. Additionally, the 180-day time-frame for completing the CARP hearing process is amended to require parties complete the hearing phase of a rate-making or distribution determination in 6 months. The Copyright Judge, at their discretion, could extend this period up to a maximum of 6 additional months.

Mr. Speaker, after the corrections made by S. Con. Res. 145, H.R. 1417 will make changes to the CARP system that will benefit the parties as well as the agents of the copyright adjudication system. I support H. Con. Res. 145 and H.R. 1417, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 145) to correct the enrollment of H.R. 1417.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on Senate Concurrent Resolution 145 currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, prior to our last recess, the other body was frantically applying their finishing touches to H.R. 1417, a bill to reform the copyright royalty arbitration process which we will consider in a few minutes. When we get to that bill, I will describe the core amendments that were developed there. For now, I will just state that they are acceptable to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Unfortunately, in the rush to send the amended bill back to the House, some inadvertent drafting errors were included in the text. The purpose of this concurrent resolution which passed the other body yesterday is to correct these provisions before the fact in the enrollment of the bill. In other words, the concurrent resolution will automatically make the appropriate changes to H.R. 1417, thereby ensuring that the measure will work as intended.

The most expeditious way to address this matter is by concurring in the Senate concurrent resolution. Because we cannot approve H.R. 1417 conditionally, it is important that we consider and support the enrolling resolution first.

The concurrent resolution is especially important because of the interaction of the present language in H.R. 1417 with that of H.R. 4518, the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act of 2004, which passed the House on October 6. Among other things, that measure extends the copyright compulsory license for satellite broadcasts for another 5 years.

As the Committee on the Judiciary moved H.R. 4518 through the legislative process, the major developers of copyrighted programming and the satellite carriers arrived at a voluntary agreement on the use and compensation of this programming.

However, the relevant Senate text in H.R. 1417 inadvertently required rate-making proceedings under the satellite license to be conducted pursuant to the rules and practices in place prior to the enactment of the CARP performed bill. This conflicts with those provisions in the satellite bill that take into account the voluntary agreement. In other words, unless the error is corrected, the voluntary agreement will not work as intended once the satellite bill is adopted.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 145 will ensure that the voluntary agreement and the text of the satellite bill will operate as intended by Congress and the parties to the rate-making negotiations.

This major fix aside, the concurrent resolution makes other noncontroversial tweaks to additional drafting errors. These tweaks include developing language that clarifies certain definitions; imposing time deadlines on the Copyright Office when reviewing legal matters; and tightening those rules that prevent claimants from ``gaming'' small-claim proceedings.

Finally, the concurrent resolution eliminates typographical errors and adopts other grammatical and stylistic changes where appropriate.

Mr. Speaker, after 3 years of the excruciating process, it is time to put CARP reform to bed. I urge Members to support this concurrent resolution and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), ranking member of this very important Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, for yielding me this time.

His explanation has been more than sufficient in which we make sure that what we are doing with the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel is done correctly. And with H.R. 1417, with which I was pleased to join him and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), subcommittee chairman, on, with the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), does it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. Those of us in Congress and the private sector who follow how the government sets copyright royalty rates agree that the current system needs change. It is expensive, unwieldy, and too unpredictable. Based on that, subcommittee Chairman Smith, subcommittee Ranking Member Berman, and I introduced legislation, H.R. 1417, that would make substantial procedural changes.

We heard the current system is costly because the copyright owners and users have to pay for the arbitrators. Because copyright law subjects copyright owners and users to a compulsory process, we believe the law should not place this additional financial burden on them. Our bill creates 3 Copyright Royalty Judges who would be paid from appropriated funds to set royalty rates and distribute royalty fees.

Another complaint was that the CARP does not have adequate rules on how to address hearsay evidence. This bill explicitly requires that the judges treat hearsay evidence in the same manner that it is treated in Federal court. This will bring uniformity to the proceedings for parties on both sides of royalty disputes.

This bill also alters the terms for which certain royalty rates are in effect. Rates that are determined by the Judges will be in effect for 5 years. This should create some predictability and uniformity for those who rely on the Judges' determinations.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill as amended.

Mr. President, we have all heard the expression, ``To err is human.'' We teach our children that mistakes are okay because we learn from them. However, there are some mistakes that are more costly to make than others. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine released a report entitled, ``To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System.'' The report revealed the following devastating statistic: every year, between 44,000 and 98,000 hospitalized people in the United States die due to medical errors.

Science has not yet found a cure for cancer or even the common cold, but it has discovered a way to prevent the thousands of fatalities that occur every year due to medical errors. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations developed a universal protocol that calls for surgical teams to literally call a ``time out'' before surgeries begin. This ``time out'' serves a brief period for surgeons and nurses to verify the patient's identity, the procedure to be performed, and the site of the procedure. Endorsed by the American College of Surgeons, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Hospital Association, the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses, and the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management, this idea of a ``time out'' may seem almost simplistic, but the fact of the matter is even the best surgeon in the world can make a very costly mistake if he or she does not stop for a moment for surgery and take a ``time out.''

Therefore, it is my pleasure to rise today to submit this resolution, which promotes a National Time Out Day and promotes the adoption of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's universal protocol for preventing errors in the operating room.

To err may be human, but for the thousands of relatives that are currently sitting in a hospital waiting room, waiting for a loved one to come out of surgery, human error is not an acceptable answer.