Howard Berman: “I am not going to detail all the different provisions contained in this bill. There are many and they are important.…”

“I am not going to detail all the different provisions contained in this bill. There are many and they are important. They deal with a problem in the past of setting rates retroactively and how under these reforms rates will be set prospectively, and they deal with the integration of the Copyright Office and its role in providing advice and opinions on matters of law into the process. They create mechanisms for small participants to participate at much less cost than they now participate through all paper rate-setting proceedings, make some changes in evidentiary rules and discovery rules, and at the same time, they enable the copyright owners to negotiate voluntary agreements rather than go through the whole full blown rate-setting and distribution proceedings. I do want to call the attention of the body to one particular provision which I think is very important. We rationalize in this bill, H.R. 1417, the ability of the parties to engage in voluntary negotiations in the context of the Section 115 statutory license for reproductions of musical compositions.”