clerk will report  licenses to reflect the national digital television transition meeting the challenges of rapidly evolving technology to provide for the  practice of multicasting resolving the phantom signal problem that's causing instability and confusion for the cable and content and the result before you today high stakes series of negotiations between all of the above parties and i want to compliment both staffs for that and credibly  and behind the scenes numberless hours and we still seek consensus finishing consensus among all interested parties and continue to share language consider the fact that we've got to go to the floor and into conference special thanks to rick boucher his invaluable contributions as not only a senior committee but also as the chair of the telecommunications sub committee on the energy and commerce committee no we haven't addressed all the issues for all time the need for varying licenses the method of calculating while the need for compulsory licenses of all of vital question however given our time constraints i believe we've done well and i'm very proud of the agreements and the restraints that have come forward from my colleagues on both sides of this committee so i thank you  now for his statement on the subject thank you mr chairman and i'm glad we agree on this bill and thank you for those compliments the satellite before us today an important one that affects countless ender's trees and literally every american regardless of whether or not they subscribe to pay television more and more choose to rely on over the air digital programming from local broadcasters and new license internet distribution models for their entertainment and information with the advent of digital television america's community broadcasters are able to offer a greater variety of programming free and over the air that's a good thing but something this committee ought to encourage historically this committee has been at the forefront of efforts to strengthen the relationship between networks and their local communities the men and women who work in america's copyright dependent industries also confront precedent and challenges and unfair competition and they can't make a living or continue to produce high quality works when others are able to appropriate their efforts for little or no value we understand it is expensive to innovate and create but sheep to copy and distribute we take seriously our constitutional imperative which is found in article one section eight of the constitution for more than two decades congress has an active legislation to enable satellite carriers such as direct t v and dish to appropriate the property of others and retransmitted subscribers who otherwise can't receive it through the air and return these providers are required to pay statutory royalties and honor the conditions of the compulsory license that's not too much to ask especially in return for the enormous benefits these providers receive by utilizing a below market government dictated license there are many provisions in the churning satellite legislation that i support and i appreciate our staff and we are working together i do have a serious reservation about the committee's restoring the ability of dish network to again benefit from the distant signal programming licensing the copyright at the decision to legislatively overturn the court orders permanent injunction prohibits us from exploiting the distant signal license is something i don't understand i'm not aware of any precedent for congress to step in and order a federal court to relieve a law breaker of this magnitude from the forseeable consequences of their unlawful conduct  will not enumerate the countless times dish network and its affiliated corporations have been found liable for willfully and systematically violating the rights of others except to passengers in the unanimous decision of the us court of appeals for the eleven th circuit as ruling and c b s broadcasting versus echostar communications court and that decision the court wrote quote echostar has disregarded the limitations of its statutory license and sought to avoid it obligations under the law at every turn and quote and furthermore quote as if the magnitude of it in eligible subscriber base were insufficiently disconcerting we have found no indication that goes dark was ever interested in complying with the act indeed we seem to have discerned a pattern and practice of violating the act in every way imaginable and quote and i want to again commend the chairman for his desire to expand consumer choice and to solve longstanding technology issues i do think this is one outstanding if you that i'd like to continue to work with the chairman or on before we go to the house floor all that said mr chairman despite that provision the rest of the bill is important enough to americans both viewers and creators of programming to justify our support and now you're back so much mr chairman i have a minute let's go to the gym and from virginia mister the chairman will i have just a very short they want to come in both the chairman and the ranking member for working together to resolve some of the problems with this bill and i want to i say that well i'm not i am supportive of the legislation it's not a perfect bill but i am very pleased that the bill fixes a problem that many short markets face across the country these are television markets where not all of the television stations all of the major networks are present within the market in markets where there is not a full complement of local stations oftentimes signals from adjoining television markets bleed into the local markets when this occurs under current law it makes it extremely difficult to bring distance signals of that network into that area this bill considers consumers as served by a television station only when they are served by stations within their own d m a as a result all consumers in short markets will have access to a full complement of network television stations and i appreciate the chairman's work on that issue thank you very much before we were trying to finish this bill before members have to leave for their various caucuses and the only person  matter working on two different committees the gentleman's recognized well thank you very much mr chairman and i want to compliment you and your staff for the outstanding work that you've done on this measure i'm pleased to be and encourage its reporting by the full committee and i want to thank you for the coordination and the work that you have done with my staff and with me as we have sought to bring our separate bills reauthorizing the satellite home  through the judiciary committee and also through the energy and commerce committee i'm going to take just a moment this morning to comment on several of the key provisions the most important of which i believe to be excepting a very generous offer that has been made by echo star to serve all two hundred local television markets across the united states at the present time there are twenty eight local markets they're all rural where they are likely populated that do not have a local the local television service in these instances the viewers and those markets are either receiving the local signal across the air by means of an outdoor antenna or they're getting distant networks signals imported to them from the coast and the principal of localism truly suffers under that arrangement while these markets are likely populated their residents want to have the same access to local into local television service so they can receive satellite kerridge the local television signals that are transmitted within their market that the residents of the more populated urban areas currently have and dish network has offered to provide that service and to serve these twenty eight markets so that all two hundred ten local markets around the country will receive a local and a local service if it is granted the opportunity to import distant network signals in those limited instances where what we have what we call short markets exist and these are markets where the full complement of network stations are not found within the local market and many of these done serve markets into that category and the carriers to date have simply not been able to make an economic case to serve these markets given that circumstance this network has promise is that it will serve all of these markets if it is given the opportunity to import distant to fill those gaps and serve those short markets and supply the just network in those instances that appears to lead to be an outstanding offer we have accepted that in the energy and commerce committee and i'm very pleased that the legislation before us also accepts that generous offer this morning in a number of other respects that the chairman has mentioned and that mr goodlatte and mr smith mentioned the principle of localism is well served in the well and i won't repeat those but i certainly do indoors i'll just mention one other area where a significant improvement over current law is made and that is this legislation directs that the federal communications commission create a predictive model for digital television transition transmissions with the transition from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting the old predictive model to determine which columns are likely to be able to receive a local television signal over the air from the local station  is now antiquated and no longer useful and there are technical differences between digital and analog transmissions that require a new predictive model the digital signals typically simply doesn't travel as far as the analog signal from the same station used to travel and therefore a new methodology is needed this bill directs the f c c to create it mr chairman it is an outstanding measure i compliment you and your staff for its creation thank you for intend to vote for it but i do think there's an important underlying issue here that i would like to raise this sense that there is something that's become an editable about reauthorizing the compulsory license we ask the copyright office to conduct a review on the various compulsory licenses and they found the exact opposite to be the case that the public interest would be best served by a permanent phase out of the cable and satellite distance compulsory licenses whatever justification may have existed for those licenses when i dropped there really is no longer a justifiable reason that the cable and satellite industries need a government sponsored and sizable subsidy paid for by programme providers for the right to retransmit broadcast signals this would be a different story if we were talking about a compulsory license for an emerging new technology or the licensing scheme is so one wieldy but neither cable nor satellite are nascent industries there are well developed practices for licensing in this area and what is even more problematic is that every time we authorize what should be phased out the license has been expanded rather than serve the intended purpose of providing a sunset to temporary marketplace interference the periodic renewal of the satellite license has proven to be a vehicle for those slow but steady expansion of the government's incursion in an otherwise workable marketplace for multi chad the channel video program i'm not saying this transition would be easy but those rights should be negotiated in the free market without government intervention as they are for hundreds of cable and satellite channels every day thirty years ago congress adopted a section one eleven cable compulsory license one hundred seventy six on the assumption that it would be impractical and one duly bernsen to require every cable system to negotiate with every copyright owner whose work was retransmitted by a cable system at the time the cable industry was a small and nascent industry retransmitting over the air signals from a small number of broadcast stations twenty years ago the satellite home viewers act of one thousand nine hundred eight was and acted to spur the growth of a startup direct to home satellite industry as an effect competitor to cable congress dermont determined then that the public interest will best be served by create an interim statutory solution that will allow carriers of broadcast signals to serve home satellite antenna users until markets of marketplace solutions to this problem can be developed can be developed now we're in a much different world of cable and satellite services license programming for more than five hundred fifty nine broadcast networks directly in the marketplace without a need for a compulsory license and the online video marketplace is growing exponentially without government intervention there is no reason these rights should not be negotiated for in the market just as a are for other forms such as the internet video distribution most of which carry some of the very same programming the copyright office recommendation was that congress moved toward abolishing section one eleven and section one nineteen of the copyright act we haven't had that discussion and it and an appeal to those who are concerned with intellectual property enforcement abroad having just come back from trying to i can tell you it is much more difficult to garner the necessary protection for american intellectual property in foreign countries when we continue to sanction u s government restraint of the exclusive rights of copyright owners i think this should be the last time for this reauthorization everyone's on notice if there are problems or issues with licensing practices that need to be addressed to a marketplace negotiations take care of that now this bill will give five years to do that and i think this is the last time we should just automatically reauthorize and expand these compulsory licenses and i appreciate your indulgence this year chairman and i promise not to say another word on another subject well i thank you very much for your thoughtful and you've been working on as long or longer than so that we could say that two years from now this would come to an end and that the industry would have that long i've been told that one it would prevent the bill from actually reaching a conclusion this year and that it would break up certain other deals which  desirable so for that reason as chairman i will withdraw my amendment after making it very clear that mr berman was absolutely right what was five years was really too long the industry needs to be working today so the two years from now we truly can be looking at bringing this to a close rather than waiting for reauthorization to then hear that they haven't quite gotten there and i would ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment but lay down this marker with mr berman issue that has been a year long dispute and this is the kind of work we'd like to see i also want to make note of the fact that i think this is a good pro consumer bill that ensures fair compensation for copyright owners while enabling cable and satellite operators to continue to provide consumers with broadcast stations however one of the issues that i still have concern about is programming accent and i hope that i can determine work with diversity and i don't see it completely in the bill i don't know what's in the energy and commerce bill but i'm hoping that we'll have the opportunity as we have to make it to the floor