"A performance right would not only have a salutary effect on the symmetry of the law, but also would assure performing artists of at least some share of the return realized from the commercial exploitation of their recorded performances."
- Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer, 1978

"The Copyright Office has testified before this Subcommittee many times in favor of performance rights legislation. We continue to support a performance right for sound recordings.... [P]romotion can, of course, benefit selected recordings and lead artists. But it does not, in our view, justify denying compensation for public performance of recordings from which the user enjoys financial gain.... In our view, the potential economic burden on the users of sound recordings resulting from performance rights legislation is outweighed by the commercial benefits they derive from the use and by the damage suffered by performers when recordings are used without compensation as a substitute for live performances."
- Register of Copyrights David Ladd, 1981

"Undoubtedly, U.S. performers and producers would benefit if Congress granted public performance rights in their sound recordings enabling these authors to claim their fair share of foreign royalties...As a world leader in the creation of sound recordings, the United States should no longer delay in giving its creators of sound recordings the minimum rights many countries give their performers and producers."
- Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, 1995

"I have always supported a full performance right in sound recordings...If you look at a performance, one of the key things is it's performed. And if in fact you're not basically giving the right to control performances, you're giving them less than totally valuable rights. So of course, I support that."
- Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, 2007

"Nowhere else in copyright law - and nowhere in American jurisprudence generally - can one business take another's private property without permission or payment because the user concludes unilaterally that long term it would be good for the property owner's business, even if the owner, because of blindness or stupidity, doesn't think so.... The broadcasters' exemption runs counter to all other rules of business, and it runs counter to our legal system."
- Register of Copyrights 1985 to 1993 Ralph Oman, in 2009 testimony

"The DOC has long endorsed amending the U.S. copyright law to provide for an exclusive right in the public performance of sound recordings."
- General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce Lily Fu Claffee, 2008

"The lack of a public performance right in sound recordings under U.S. law is an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification -- and certainly not a legal one."
- The Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, established within President Clinton's Information Infrastructure Task Force, and chaired by Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, 1995

"The National Endowment for the Arts strongly believes that musicians and record companies who contribute their creative efforts to the production of copyrighted sound recordings should share in the income enjoyed by radio..."
- NEA Chairman Nancy Hanks, 1975