The Recording Industry Association of America is calling for congressional hearings on a controversial copyright amendment that would make sound recordings eligible for "work-for-hire" status. The record industry trade group joins prominent House representatives and artist managers who called for hearings last January.

The amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act, which was added to an unrelated satellite act without congressional debate and was signed into law last November, would allow a record company to treat a sound recording as a collective work whose individual contributors are paid for their efforts on a one-time basis. Should the amendment be validated in court, artists who have not signed contracts explicitly stating that their albums are not works-for-hire could find that record companies will be able to claim control of their masters in perpetuity.

RIAA president and CEO Hilary Rosen made her request for hearings in a Feb. 1 letter to House Intellectual Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who is a Subcommittee member. Although the RIAA disagrees with many artists and their managers on the issue, Rosen wrote that she supported ''a comprehensive discussion.'' According to her letter, Rosen decided to call for hearings after being contacted by "artists and artist managers in the music community who are concerned that the amendment.. substantively changes the rights of artists under the copyright law."

However, Rosen reiterated her own view that the copyright amendment does not threaten artists' rights, but "simply restates existing law and industry custom and practice over the decades." In Rosen's opinion, record companies should be able to consider that all the participants on an album, from backup musicians to engineers, have been hired and paid for their contributions and do not have the rights to sell or distribute the final work themselves. Otherwise, all could claim to be co-authors with an equal right to the work. This, Rosen said, would make it "virtually impossible to make commercial use of the recording."

Many artists and their managers disagree with Rosen. They say that record companies should be able to take control of a work in order to sell and distribute it over an agreed-upon time, but that they should not be able to consider the main artist's input as a hired, one-time contribution forever.

Additionally, they believe that the major creative force behind an album--the group or individual who creates the bulk of the recording--makes a far greater contribution to the final product than the other parties who contribute backup playing and sound engineering. And artists who signed recording contracts after 1978 are specifically concerned that the new copyright provision will weaken their legal ground when they try to regain their rights starting in 2013, as they are entitled to do under current law.

If the House Intellectual Subcommittee decides to hold hearings, it could be up to three months before they are scheduled.