Dear Congressmen:

           I am writing you concerning what has become nothing less than a "black hole" special interest interpretation of the copyright laws that seek to benefit big publisher interest. The U.S. Copyright Industries - that include music, sound recordings, books, entertainment software, business software, DVDs, home video, TV Programs, and theatrical films must be stopped from stealing works from small town composers in America. These U.S. Copyright Industries in 2001 accounted for 5.24 percent of the Gross Domestic product (GDP), or $535.1 billion - an increase of over $75 billion from 1999 and exceeding 5 percent of the economy and one-half trillion dollars for the very first time.

           After fighting through the United States Federal Courts of the Eleventh Circuit, Case No. 02-1426 Calhoun vs Lillenas Publishing, et al ended up in the Supreme Court and they denied that this case be forwarded to a jury. This case scenario proves that large publisher money and interest is better served through the court system by simply arguing what they term as "independent creation" theory. This simply means they present, in the form of affidavits i.e. to the court, self-serving statements that state their defendant had never heard of the previous work or its writer. In other words, if a work of creation has not had popular distribution by those publishers then the Courts rule in favor of the "independent creation" theory.

           You can imagine what this misuse and control of the copyright law will do to every small town composer in the United States. They will lose all benefits of their creative works and the majority of creative expression will be lost to publisher monopolies.

           A very important protection is lacking in the copyright laws. I ask you to consider the following:

           This protection added to TITLE 17 of the United States Code, entitled "Copyrights," would lay the foundation for what the owner [first in time] has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize and not undermine what I believe the Constitution and Congress intended in the copyright laws.

           Concluding that two identical works have equal copyright protection is a wrong application of the copyright law. It requires, in itself, a [creative] application of the fundamental copyright law resulting in not only conflicting [created] applications of law, such as found in the weight that the independent creation theory carries in any Court decision, but conflicting works of creation in and of themselves. The copyright law was not intended by the Constitution and Congress to allow the Court to setup an alternative set of rules for determination and provide protection for identical creations. Therefore, if TITLE 17 was amended to correct this problem, then the U.S. Copyright Industries could not "legally steal" works of creative American's to justify large amounts of money made from those works. The interest of U.S. Copyright Industries is better served by not being subject to infringement damage.

           The Court has established over time several theories to approach copyright law resulting now in obvious deterioration of the protection granted under the law. It [the Court] has created parallel applications of the copyright law that seek to benefit special interest publishers. This should not be and must be stopped.

           Please help stop U.S. Copyright Industries from stealing works from small town composers in America.