Now, in this art of self-playing musical instruments alone I have been granted some twenty-seven patents by this country, and have also been granted patents all over the world. My patents read very similar to this--that I shall have the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the mechanical contrivance covered by the claims of those patents, and those claims embody, in connection with the mechanism, a perforated roll, which is a controller for the instrument, and is an essential part of it, and in the case of phonographs or graphophones they include the engraved record. Notwithstanding that I have gone ahead in good faith under the reading of the Constitution and the laws as construed by the courts right up to date, that composers shall be limited to their "writings," intimating thereby that we inventors should have the right to any methods that we might discover for mechanically reproducing music--notwithstanding that I have expended years of effort and all my money, time, and labor to devise these machines, and have built models and exhibited them, and companies have been formed around them--and notwithstanding that my patents give me the exclusive right to make, use, and sell these machines, this proposed act comes out and says that "any device especially adapted in any manner whatsoever to reproduce to the ear the whole or any material part of any published and copyrighted work after this act shall have gone into effect," etc., shall be illegal, and subjects me to all those hardships enumerated in my preamble, and transfers to the copyrighter in almost the exact words of my patent those rights given me by the Commissioner of Patents under the authority of the Constitution. I am not a lawyer, and never made a public speech before in my life, and can only speak to you out of the fullness of my heart. I have not even been able to get my counsel here---- Mr. CHANEY. I do not think you need any. [Laughter.] Mr. DAVIS. After destroying or limiting the patent rights already vested in me as explained, and transferring them in whole or part to the copyrighter, as contemplated in subsection (_g_), page 2, in the bill, I am, by another part of the bill, liable to imprisonment if I infringe a copyrighted composition, and this I will do of necessity if I proceed under the authority of my existing patents giving me the exclusive right to make, use, and sell my mechanical device for reproducing music, whether copyrighted or not, thus through two conflicting grants, one to the composer and the other to me, I may innocently---- Mr. CURRIER. Not if you do it innocently. If you read it carefully you will find that that is the case.