mr. dowdle, your view on that same? >> thank you, senator, yes.first of all on a number of ascap, have been for over 20 years. i'm a very important member of ascap i am a member of ascap and still a publishing interest as well in musical works. these are friends of mine so not trying to say anything personal about their personal behavior, but they don't really compete is to protect the wood because they don't allow people to license with those societies to us to the works in the catalogs the deal exclusively. i don't think that is competition, frankly. spin ms. griffin, cottages as to what risks do we run if doj were to disband the consent decree also? if we really got to a free market of light on antitrust statutes, and that is partial withdrawal medicaid or aggregate those risks? >> so if we were to disband the consent decrees entirely i think the three major publishers would have the market power to demand whatever they want for licenses. they may or may not be able to efficiently licensed the nondigital pieces of the market like restaurants an

mr. dowdle in this round. mr. dowdle i think as has been mentioned today a distinguishing characteristic of any free market system is that two parties negotiating have the ability to walk away from a negotiation if they can't achieve a mutually agreeable outcome. and yet it's been suggested that music services and broadcasters in particular cannot they literally cannot walk away from license negotiations with a publisher. or the pr because they don't have total control over what music they publicly perform. let me just ask you that question. can a broadcaster remove a specific licensure's catalog from its service? is that possible? >> theoretically possible, not practically possible and here's why. we have various types of programs that we put out over our airwaves. some of that we produce. the amount we produce would identify the music and we are able to do that exactly. but for a very large -- the. >> identified music. who wants a copyright? >> exactly right that if we can come to an agreement with them we can cu

mr. mike dowdle. who is from my home state of utah. mr. dowdle is the vice president of business affairs and also the general counsel for bonneville international. lee thomas miller is with broadcast music inc. a songwriter affiliate and also the president of the nashville song writers association international. and finally we have jodie griffin, who is a senior staff attorney with public knowledge. okay. will each of our witnesses please stand and be sworn. do you affirm the testimony you're about to give before committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but truth so help you god? thank you. okay. we will now hear from each of our witnesses beginning with ms. matthews and then continuing to her left until we get over to ms. griffin and after that we'll proceed to questions. ms. matthews. >> good morning chairman lee, ranking member klobuchar and members of the subcommittee. my name is elizabeth matthews and i'm the chief executive officer of the american society of composers, authors and publishers which was formed 100 years

mr. dowdle. in your testimony, you talked about i think both the value of the consent decrees generally and about the harm that would with caused if composers and publishers could withdraw from some of their rights. without withdrawing all of their rights. you didn't address i don't believe the two changes that ascap and bmi have proposed to the content decrees, bundling of additional right and arbitration. could you give us your view of these proposals? >> yes, thank you. i gave my i think you were out of the room, i did address arbitration. arbitration is a or if even a second choice of very poor second choice to the system that we have now for these reasons. with an orb traitor, you don't know who you're going to end up with, whether they know anything about the industry and what you know with the rate courts we have is that these courts have deep experience and a lot of history with these consent te krees. they understand the underlying dynamic that's going on. that's first. second in the fed

mr. mike dowdle. he is the vice president of business affairs and also the general counsel for boneville international. lee thomas miller is with broadcast music, inc and also president of the nashville songwriters association internationaler and finally we have jodi griffin who is a senior staff attorney with public knowledge. okay. will each of our witnesses please stand and be sworn. do you affirm the testimony you're about to give before committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but truth so help you god? thank you. okay. we will now hear from each of our witnesses beginning with miss matthews and all the way to miss griffin and then after that we'll proceed to questions. miss matthews. >> good morning chairman lee ranking member klobuchar and members of the subcommittee. my name is elizabeth matthews and i'm the chief executive officer of the american society of composers, authors and publishers which was formed 100 years ago by songwriters. it operates on a not for profit basis we

mr. dowdle in this round. they don't have total control. let me just ask you that question, can a broadcaster remove a specific license southerlies catalog from itsds service? is that possible? >> they are relatically possible, not practically possible. and here's why. we have various types of programming tlout our air waves. we are able to do that exactly. but for a very large -- if you identify the music, you can figure out who owns the copy right. >>> a lot of the stuff that comes in fween we don't have that editorial control. we couldn't do it if we tried. therefore, we're at the mercy, literally, of these pros. everybody this's going to come to us and say if you don't license from me, i'm coming after you. we have no way to avoid it. >> it wouldn't change in the sense that the producers or the syndicating programming, they don't identify whose music they're using. i don't know if it's within the realm of possibility that we'll have every single producer to provide music to us in our programming, identify music. if we were king, it woul