March 25, 2005.  Due to the rapid consolidation of the media and copyright industries throughout the world, each year more copyrighted sound recordings become unavailable to the public.  Because recording artists routinely transfer their copyrights in their recording agreements, there are many recording artists who want to exploit their works but cannot do so because another party controls the underlying rights, namely, their current or former record labels.  At this time, there are thousands of records that are commercially unavailable because record labels have decided not to manufacture and distribute them. 

AFTRA, the AFM and the Future of Music Coalition requested that the Copyright Office issue a Notice of Inquiry ("NOI") about issuing a compulsory license so that the recording artist would be able to exploit his/her recordings if the copyright owner is not doing so.  Copyright was never intended to become a warehouse to capture culture and make it unavailable.  As you may recall, AFTRA took up this issue in our last collective bargaining negotiations with labels and on Capitol Hill.