Washington Hotline

Shawnda Hines and Carrie Russell

Shawnda Hines is assistant director of communications, email: shines@ala.org, and Carrie Russell is director of the Program on Public Access to Information, email crussell@alawash.org, in ALA’s Washington Office

Federal library funding

The campaign to protect federal funding for libraries in fiscal year (FY) 2019 kicked off in mid-February with the release of the White House budget, which again proposed eliminating the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Meanwhile (as of this writing), Congress still has not completed its FY 2018 budget. ALA members continue to advocate for increased funding for library programs.

In early March, ALA launched a campaign to gather congressional signatories on letters urging support in FY 2019 for the Library Services and Technology Act and Innovative Approaches to Literacy programs, which together currently comprise more than $210 million in federal funding for libraries. Authored by a bipartisan group of library champions in the House of Representatives, the letters were slated to be delivered to members of the House Appropriations Committee at the end of March.

Efforts to gather signatures for companion letters to Senate appropriators will continue through April. Visit www.ala.org/fundlibraries to track whether your representative and senators have signed the FY 2019 letters and see their history of support for previous years’ “Dear Appropriator” letters.

Music copyright legislation proceeding

The House Judiciary Committee will soon drop three bills on music copyright. This is remarkable because all of the players—the labels, the radio stations, the songwriters, and streaming services—have actually agreed to a new copyright amendment. Does the legislation affect libraries? Potentially.

The CLASSICS (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society) ACT would provide federal copyright to pre-1972 sound recordings, but only for a digital performance right. All other copyright-related rights for pre-1972 sound recordings remain under state jurisdiction. This legislation primarily settles the matter that streaming services like Spotify have to pay royalties to rights holders and artists.

For libraries, there’s good and bad news. The good news is that the bill includes Section 107 and 108 (fair use and the library reproduction right). Section 107 would provide justification for streaming songs without prior authorization or fee when the use is fair. The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) has asked that Section 110 (1) and 110 (2), the public performance exceptions, be included in the bill.

The bad news is that the copyright term for pre-1972 sound recordings adds 95 years of protection to pre-1972 sound recordings when the legislation goes into effect. Pre-1972 sound recordings would have a longer copyright term than post-1972 sound recordings.This would allow the record labels and artists a longer time to collect royalties from older songs that are popular on streaming services. LCA provided amendment language to both the House and Senate Judiciary Committee to start the copyright term clock at the point of publication, like most protected works with a corporate copyright term.

This is fast-moving legislation with little opposition that may make it through Congress before this article is published. Follow ALA’s District Dispatch blog for updates at www.districtdispatch.org.