William F. Smith: “Mr. Speaker, as Chairman Sensenbrenner just stated, H.R. 1036, the Copyright Royalty Judges Program Technical…”

“Mr. Speaker, as Chairman Sensenbrenner just stated, H.R. 1036, the Copyright Royalty Judges Program Technical Corrections Act, amends certain technical aspects of the Copyright Act which itself was amended by the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004. A chief objective of the Copyright Reform Act was to delineate between functions of the Copyright Office and the functions of the newly established Copyright Royalty Judges, or CRJs. Unfortunately, during the bill enrollment process, the law was written to state that the Librarian of Congress was charged with authorizing the distribution of funds. The language could be subject to an interpretation that Congress wanted the Librarian to retain a role that had clearly been intended to be exercised only by the new CRJs. The purpose behind this bill is to correct errors such as this and to enable the reform act to operate as Congress originally intended. In addition, the bill contains a number of other noncontroversial stylistic, technical, clarifying, and conforming changes that have been considered and agreed to by Members on both sides of the aisle.”