Seven-time Grammy winner Sheryl Crow will testify before Congress on behalf of artists, producers, songwriters, and other members of the music industry.

During Thursday morning's hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington D.C., Crow will inform the House Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property that she is opposed to a new law that lists "sound recordings" as works for hire in the Copyright Act.

Under the new law, a November, 1999 amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act, artists would not have the rights to songs they have written once those songs are released by a record company.

In the past, musicians held the copyrights on the material they created, and after leaving a record label, the artist still owned the rights to perform or license the songs they wrote and recorded.

Under the new law, once an artist hands music over to a record label, the record label owns the material; artists who leave a record company

no longer have access to record or perform those songs, unless the record company allows them to.

Prominent musicians and their representatives are protesting the new law by claiming a work may only be a "work for hire" if the artist and the record company agree, in writing, that the work being recorded will be owned entirely by the record company.

Those protesting are also claiming that in passing the "work for hire" law, Congress did not allow for hearings to be held with regard to the law before it was passed. As a result, artists demanded that the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee hold a hearing to review, and possibly change, the controversial new law.

The President of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Mike Greene, will join Crow in an effort to have the new law repealed. The Academy, which speaks out on such as issues as Intellectual Property Protection and First Amendment Protection, feels that a fair debate with members of the

music industry did not occur before the new law was passed.