Heidi Alexander: “I want to thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership. He is not only the senior Republican Senator and former chair…”

“I want to thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership. He is not only the senior Republican Senator and former chair of the Judiciary Committee, which will hear this legislation, and chairman of the Finance Committee, he is a songwriter himself. He is not just a songwriter; he has a platinum record, he has a gold record, and he has another one that might become gold. So he knows what he is talking about. I think, for all of us in the Senate, when Orrin Hatch says that in his 40 years or so here--more than any other Republican Senator--this is the capstone of his career in his work on copyright and it is personally important to him, that means something to the rest of us here. I think that means--among all of the other issues here--we are going to pay more attention to this, and we are going to work hard to pass it. I hope it also means something to those outside this Chamber-- the songwriters themselves, the digital music companies, the music publishers, the broadcasters. This is something we intend to do. We intend to make this a law because it is right thing to do, because the songwriters aren't being treated fairly, and because it is important to Senator Hatch, whom we respect. When Senator Hatch stands up on the floor and says: I have been working since 1977 on copyright issues--and we know how many important issues he has dealt with--and he says this is a capstone of all those issues, we should pay attention to that, and we should deal with it.…”