During the last two Judiciary Committee mark-up sessions (September 13 and 20) the Copyright Modernization Act has been on the agenda but has been pushed aside by other matters.During those meetings, the Judiciary Committee’s time was instead dominated by bills on electronic surveillance, military commissions and air transportation.
Tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept. 27) the bill is once again scheduled for markup – and it appears that the committee will actually consider the bill. The other bills on the agenda for September 27 (H.R. 4997, The Physicians for Underserved Areas Act; H.R. 5219, the Judicial Transparency and Ethics Enhancement Act of 2006; and H.R. 4239 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) are unlikely to generate enough debate to move the Copyright Modernization Act off the agenda for a third time.
If the Judiciary Committee fails to markup the legislation this week, the bill may not get out of committee until mid-November. The House has indicated that it will go into recess on Friday, September 29 and not return until the week of November 13. This means there will be less than seven weeks remaining in this Congress for the legislation to pass through both the House and Senate.
Even if the legislation dies at the end of this Congress, we fully anticipate that similar legislation would be introduced when the 110th Congress begins in January 2007.
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