by the United States House of Representatives

“ There may well be cases where it would be in the public interest to deny copyright in the writings generated by Government research contracts and the like; it can be assumed that, where a Government agency commissions a work for its own use merely as an alternative to having one of its own employees prepare the work, the right to secure a private copyright would be withheld. However, there are almost certainly many other cases where the denial of copyright protection would be unfair or would hamper the production and publication of important works. ”

“ It may seem that a compulsory license is a drastic invasion of the rights of private property. Yet, when we remember that a cable system is passive in its program selection and must intercept and distribute whatever the primary transmitter transmits then we must recognize that it is impossible and impractical for the cable system to negotiate for a license with the copyright owner in advance of transmitting the programing. ”

“ It is argued that cable merely intercepts the signal which has already been broadcast and then carries it to the subscriber’s television receiver. It is argued that cable is merely an extension of the viewer’s antenna. But the copyright owners and the copyright licensees argue that the cable systems are distributing the broadcast signals to a vastly greater audience than the broadcaster could reach and that this constitutes a “performance” and should invoke a copyright liability. ”

“ As a class of subject matter, sound recordings are clearly within the scope of the “writings of an author” capable of protection under the Constitution, and the extension of limited statutory protection to them was too long delayed. Aside from cases in which sounds are fixed by some purely mechanical means without originality of any kind, the copyright protection that would prevent the reproduction and distribution of unauthorized phonorecords of sound recordings is clearly justified. ”

“ Although limitations on the term of copyright are obviously necessary, too short a term harms the author without giving any substantial benefit to the public. The public frequently pays the same for works in the public domain as it does for copyrighted works, and the only result is a commercial windfall to certain users at the author’s expense. ”

“ As a form of property, copyright is also afforded the protection of the Constitution and our laws, including the injunctions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments which declare that no person shall be deprived of property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. ”

“ As long as a work fits within one of the general subject matter categories of sections 102 and 103, the bill prevents the States from protecting it even if it fails to achieve Federal statutory copyright because it is too minimal or lacking in originality to qualify, or because it has fallen into the public domain. On the other hand, section 301 (b) explicitly preserves common law copyright protection for one important class of works: works that have not been “fixed in any tangible medium of expression.” ”

“ Common law copyright protection for works coming within the scope of the statute would be abrogated, and the concept of publication would lose its all-embracing importance as a dividing line between common law and statutory protection and between both of these forms of legal protection and the public domain. ”

“ A library that has acquired ownership of a copy is entitled to lend it under any conditions it chooses to impose. This does not mean that conditions on future disposition of copies or phonorecords, imposed by a contract between their buyer and seller, would be unenforceable between the parties as a breach of contract, but it does mean that they could not be enforced by an action for infringement of copyright. Under section 202 however, the owner of the physical copy or phonorecord cannot reproduce or perform the copyrighted work publicly without the copyright owner’s consent. ”

“ In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. ”

“ The exemption not only deprives copyright owners of revenue to which they are fairly entitled, but it also discriminates against all other commercial users who must pay in order to perform copyrighted music. Over the years the jukebox industry has become strong and prosperous by taking a free ride on the hits created and developed by authors and publishers. Jukebox operators, alone in the entertainment field, continue to use others’ property for profit without payment. ”

“ The “best edition” of a work is the edition, published in the United States at any time before the date of deposit, that the Library of Congress determines to be most suitable for its purposes. A person’s “children” are that person’s immediate off-spring, whether legitimate or not, and any children legally adopted by that person. A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. ”

“ A “pseudonymous work” is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which the author is identified under a fictitious name. “Publication” is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication. ”

“ A “transmission program” is a body of material that, as an aggregate, has been produced for the sole purpose of transmission to the public in sequence and as a unit. To “transmit” a performance or display is to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent. The “United States”, when used in a geographical sense, comprise the several States, the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the organized territories under the jurisdiction of the United States Government. ”

“ A single infringer of a single work is liable for a single amount between $250 and $10,000, no matter how many acts of infringement are involved in the action and regardless of whether the acts were separate, isolated, or occurred in a related series. 3 Where the suit involves infringement of more than one separate and independent work, minimum statutory damages for each work must be awarded. For example, if one defendant has infringed three copyrighted works, the copyright owner is entitled to statutory damages of at least $750 and may be awarded up to $30,000. ”

“ Under section 203, an author’s widow or widower and children are given rights of termination if the author is dead, but these rights apply only to grants by the author, and any effort by a widow, widower, or child to transfer contingent future interests under a termination would be ineffective. In contrast, under the present renewal provisions, any statutory beneficiary of the author can make a valid transfer or license of future renewal rights, which is completely binding if the author is dead and the person who executed the grant turns out to be the proper renewal claimant. ”

“ The term “compilation” includes collective works. “Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed. “Copyright owner”, with respect to any one of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, refers to the owner of that particular right. ”

“ They asserted that the performing rights society arrangements under which copyrighted music is licensed for performance removed any problem in clearing music for broadcasting, and that voluntary agreements could adequately resolve the copyright problems feared by public broadcasters, at less expense and burden than the compulsory license, for synchronization and literary rights. The authors of literary works stressed that a compulsory licensing system would deny them the fundamental right to control the use of their works and protect their reputation in a major communications medium. ”

“ It is thus clear, for example, that a local broadcasting station holding an exclusive license to transmit a particular work within a particular geographic area and for a particular period of time, could sue, in its own name as copyright owner, someone who infringed that particular exclusive right. ”

“ The scope and impact of the “manufacturing clause,” which came into the copyright law as a compromise in 1891, have been gradually narrowed by successive amendments.
Under the present statute, with many exceptions and qualifications, a book or periodical in the English language must be manufactured in the United States in order to receive full copyright protection. Failure to comply with any of the complicated requirements can result in complete loss of protection. Today the main effects of the manufacturing requirements are on works by American authors. ”

“ A point that has concerned some educational groups arose from the possibility that, since a large majority (now about 85 percent) of all copyrighted works are not renewed, a life-plus-50 year term would tie up a substantial body of material that is probably of no commercial interest but that would be more readily available for scholarly use if free of copyright restrictions. A statistical study of renewal registrations made by the Copyright Office in 1966 supports the generalization that most material which is considered to be of continuing or potential commercial value is renewed. ”