Senator MORSE. Senator Long, we are very pleased to have you here this morning to testify on the copyright issue. I think you know that it is one of the serious problems that confront this committee in connection with the bill. We have already received a considerable amount of material in connection with the problem.

I am delighted to invite you to testify this morning. You may proceed in your own way. I only want to say how much I appreciate the support that you have given to this committee not only in your capacity as majority whip, but carrying out your trust as the Senator from Louisiana, and I think that you have given a great contribution to this committee in helping us resolve this problem because frankly, as of this moment, I don't know what a workable solution to it might be. So I am looking forward to this testimony that you are giving this morning and also looking forward to your helping us in connection with our executive session discussion.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL B. LONG, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Senator LONG. Mr. Chairman, first let me just discuss the general issue. What I am here to talk about is the same general issue that separated the Republican-Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson from the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton in that day. It is the same general issue that separated Andrew Jackson from the Bank of the United States. It is the same issue that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson fought in their days.

It is just a question of whether this Government is going to be a government for the benefit of the many or whether it is going to be a government for the benefit of the few.

Now, there are several ways in which the few can make this Government one in which the many pay the great overwhelming burden of costs of it and in which the few hog up all the benefits. We have all this talk about how much taxes some people pay. Sometimes when you get down to it you find that some of our friends like H. L. Hunt pay no taxes at all, though they have you believing they are paying all of it. Most of the cost of the Government is paid by people of modest income. The overwhelming benefits, the really best deal is for those who have good incomes, many of whom pay no taxes whatever.

One of our studies before the Finance Committee showed that of those with gross adjusted income exceeding $5 million, 26 percent of them pay zero income tax, which is pretty good as far as being able to take full advantage of the tax laws. I am not complaining about that but I just want to point out that is how things work out sometimes. There are two favorite ways, it seems to me, that the few do exceedingly well at the expense of the many. One of them is to control the money supply and the interest rates, keep them high, and so the rank and file of the people pay about two points higher than necessary on a public and private debt of $1,250 billion. That works out to be about a gross benefit of $25 billion a year to the few paid by the many. Now, the second general area is the area of monopoly where you

make things scarce, make it hard to get, make the great number of people in the country pay high prices for something that is kept scarce in supply because a few people want it that way for their own special advantage. You know, Mr. Chairman, and if I do say it, you are one of the strong advocates that the Government should be a good deal for everybody in this country, not just a good deal for the few. One of the big areas in which the 190 million people of this country are victimized for the benefit of a very small few, perhaps less than a million, is this area of needless monopoly. I am not complaining about the monopoly of a private patent that somebody paid for himself, nor do I complain about a copyright that gives a monopoly on information published in certain forms to the person who writes that information, provided he does so at his own expense. But when the Government pays for it, that is a different matter.

Now, this area of copyright is parallel to what I have been trying to say about private patents on Government research. When the Government goes out here, as the Department of Defense does and as National Aeronautics and Space is trying to do, and gives a private patent on the research paid for by the Government, reserving only to the Government the right of license for its own purposes to use that patent, that is just the same thing as if you paid the U.S. Army to build a $500 million bridge across the Chesapeake Bay, guaranteed them a profit of $35 million, and having done so, let them own the bridge, reserving only to the U.S. Government the right to drive its Army trucks across it, and charging the taxpayers who paid that $500 million the highest toll the mind of man can conceive to drive all their trucks or automobiles and families across it for the next 17 years.

Inasmuch as the people of the country paid for it, why shouldn't they have the benefit of it.

Now, with regard to a copyright, if someone writes a good book or any kind of publication, even a syndicated column, at his own expense, he is entitled to prevent anybody from publishing that for 56 years and he is entitled to make them pay him a very high fee, whatever fee the tariff will bring, I don't complain about that. I applaud him if he can write something and make a lot of money, if he does it at his own expense.

But now, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, when the Government pays for this, why should the people have to pay a second time for it? Let me give you an example, I just grabbed this on the way to the committee hearing. Here is a report of one of our committees. This is freely available to the public. It ought to be. The public pays us. It pays our staffs. They are entitled to something for their money. So we do a study on highway costs. And if anybody wants this information, here it is. We pay people to do studies with regard to health, with regard to all sorts of practices, and having paid these people to do it, we are entitled to report on what we got for our

money.

Now, when they pay this to us, and we pay them and then the report comes in, we are entitled to have a report on the results of that study, the results of that research, and after they have rendered that report, as far as I am concerned, and I believe as far as anyone who feels as I do would be concerned, from that point forward the fellow who did that research can write all the books he wants to write.

For example, I received a letter from one of the real dedicated men of this country, Dr. Alcon Ochsner. He tended to disagree with me on this issue. Here is one of the fine men who does some wonderful research work on heart disease and cancer. He is very outstanding in the cancer area. He is one of the men who has studied the effect of smoking on cancer, for example, Dr. Alcon Ochsner. If he does research for the Government, he owes us a report on what he did with this Government money and what he discovered.

Now, beyond that point he can write all the books he wants to about this subject and have copyrights on them, except the report that we get for our research money. If we gave him half a million dollars to do a study on some area in which he is preeminent, the report he gives to us on that, and we are entitled to a report, should be freely available, be published by anyone who wants that information.

Now, while you have the book publishers up here, Mr. Chairman, wanting to lock all this stuff up behind copyrights, you have other committees headed by people like Mr. Wiggins down here at the Washington Post who are interested in giving the public information and they sign these statements and send them up to us on behalf of the freedom of information saying, well, if you are going to do this stuff with Government money, make it available so we can tell the people about it and pass this information along.

Now, here is just one pamphlet I would like to put in the record: "The Legality of Government Copyright Challenged by Leading Editors and Scholars."

This is headed up by a group of people like Robert U. Brown. editor of Editor & Publisher; Herbert Brookner, editor of the Hartford Courant; R. B. Downs, dean of the library administration, University of Illinois; former president of the American Library Association, V. M. Newton, editor of the Tampa Tribune; Roger Baldwin, of the American Civil Liberties Union; Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and many others. These people feel that if the Government pays for this information, the Government of the United States should have a report on it and it should be freely available to the 190 million people who pay taxes in this country.

I would like to ask that that be put in the record at the conclusion of my statement.

Senator MORSE. That will be put in the record at this point. (The material referred to follows:)

LEGALITY OF GOVERNMENT COPYRIGHTING CHALLENGED BY LEADING EDITORS AND

SCHOLARS

We the undersigned view with apprehension the rapidly growing tendency to place copyright restrictions on the contents of Government publications and documents.

The situation seems alarming in that such restrictions now apply to literally hundreds of official works despite the fact that section 8 of the copyright law expressly stipulates that "No copyright shall subsist in any publication of the U.S. Government, or any reprint, in whole or in part thereof ***." (Details and lists are set forth in the Washington Post, Mar. 12-16, 1962, and "Constraint by Copyright" by M. B. Schnapper.)

Also disregarded is the fact that Government curtailment of freedom of press via copyrighting is contrary to the guarantees of the Constitution's first amendment. This amendment is rendered meaningless when Government officials employ or authorize copyright procedures as a means of placing restrictions on

information amassed to promote "the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

to

Anyone who has the legal right to copyright has the legal right to restrict and censor. In recently justifying copyright restrictions on a score of official military histories Gen. C. G. Dodge stated, "The works were copyrighted prevent quoting of material out of context." Another Army officer has explained that copyrighting has been employed in order to prevent "sensationalizing.” These are disturbing admissions. Any attempt to control the manner and extent to which Government information can be quoted by the press or by the public is censorship.

The original and continuing purpose of the prohibitions in section 8 of the copyright law is, of course, to assure maximum availability and dissemination of informational material prepared by or for the Government at the expense of the public.

The right of Government officials to copyright that which is private is not at issue in this connection-except in the sense that this essential right is bound to be greatly vitiated if a clear line isn't drawn between what is personal and what is official.

The situation that troubles us is particularly serious in that the Federal Government is today the major source of information in practically every field of endeavor. Significantly, although $12 billion is currently being expended on Federal research only a negligible portion of unclassified findings is being made accessible to the public through noncopyrighted media. (Unfortunately it is popularly assumed that copyrighted works are available to the public. Strictly speaking copyright, a legalized form of monopoly, can be obtained by merely registering two typed copies of a work.)

In view of the improprieties and dangers noted herein the undersigned herewith urge the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government to take appropriate corrective action.

Among those who have agreed with this statement:

Robert U. Brown, editor of Editor and Publisher.

Herbert Brucker, editor of the Hartford Courant and former chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

R. B. Downs, dean, library administration, University of Illinois; former president of the American Library Association.

V. M. Newton, editor of Tampa Tribune and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of Sigma Delta Chi.

Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Edward Bernays, New York publicist.

M. B. Schnapper, editor of Public Affairs Press and author of "Constraint by Copyright."

E. Wilder Spaulding, historian, former State Department editor.

Wesley Maurer, chairman, Journalism Department of University of Michigan. Walter Gellhorn, professor of law, Columbia University and author of "Civil Liberties Under Attack."

Harold Fey, editor of Christian Century.

Virginius Dabney, editor of Richmond Times-Dispatch.

E. C. Pulliam, publisher of Indianapolis Star.

David Williams, research director of Americans for Democratic Action.

Bernard S. White, Washington attorney.

Lowell B. Mason, former member, Federal Trade Commission.

William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of National Review.

Ruben Levin, editor of Labor.

Daniel A. Poling, editor of Christian Herald.

Fred Siebert, dean of journalism, Michigan State University and author of The Rights and Privileges of the Press.

John Stempel, chairman, Journalism Department of Indiana University.

Ralph Ellsworth, director of libraries, University of Colorado.

Victor Weybright, editor of the New American Library.

O. W. Riegel, chairman of the Journalism Department, Washington and Lee University.

Fred Rodell, professor of law, Yale Uuniversity.

Graham DuShane, editor of Science, weekly publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

R. C. Swank, director, Stanford University Libraries.

Lester Sobell, editor of Facts on File.

Alexander Brooks, professor of law, Rutgers University.

Burton Marvin, dean of William Allen White School of Journalism, University of Kansas.

Ernest Griffith, dean of the School of International Service, American University and former director of the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress.

Hillier Krieghbaum, chairman of the Journalism Department, New York University.

Palmer Edmunds, profesor of law, John Marshall Law School.

Bryant Kearl, chairman of the Journalism Department, University of Wisconsin.

Edward J. Ennis, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. Wendell Phillippi, chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee, Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

Others opposed to copyrighting of official material by Government agencies and officials: Bernard Perry, director of Indiana University Press; James S. Pope, executive editor of the Louisville Courier Journal; William Bridgewater, editorin-chief of Columbia University Press; Gerald W. Johnson, historian; Gerard Piel, publisher of the Scientific American; Sylvan Gotshal, New York attorney; Quincy Howe, journalist; B. M. Huebsch, editor of Viking Press and treasurer of the American Civil Liberties Union; James Bracken, editor of the Spokesman Review; Thorsten Sellin, editor of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; L. B. Heilprin, Council on Library Resources; J. Edward Muray, editor of the Arizona Republic; Harold Cross, late counsel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Senator LONG. Here is an editorial from Editor & Publisher. It says:

[From Editor and Publisher, Mar. 27, 1965]

REVISED COPYRIGHT BILL CONTAINS KEY CHANGE

WASHINGTON.-A second draft of a proposed copyright bill presented in Congress to meet criticism of a version introduced last August contains a significant change.

Terms of the new draft prohibit the Government from copyrighting any of its publications, which basically is the law today. In this area, the Copyright Office has, unexpectedly, killed its own proposal for legalization of governmental copyright restrictions.

Previously, the Copyright Office had proposed that governmental agencies be empowered to place copyright restrictions on Government documents when their contents "must be controlled to prevent distortion in a dangerous manner" or for other reasons considered in "the public interest."

The policy change is contained in the following phrasing of H.R. 4347, introduced by Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on February 4:

"Copyright protection under this title (sec. 105, Subject Matter of Copyright: United States Government Works) is not available for any work of the U.S. Government, but the U.S. Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, or otherwise.

"A 'work of the U.S. Government' is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government within the scope of his official duties or employment." The same phrasing appears in Senate Resolution 1006, introduced by Senator John McClellan, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 4.

ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

Another area where the administrators have opened the door to greater freedom of information is an amendment to the Appalachia bill stipulating that "all information, copyrights, uses, processes, patents, and other developments" resulting from expenditures under that measure "will be freely available to the general public." This phrasing is more far reaching than any freedom of information provision incorporated in a Federal statute. Sponsored by Senator