Copyright Act of 1976
Encyclopedia
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| Copyright Act of 1976 |
| Full title: An Act for the general revision of the Copyright Law, title 17 of the United States Code, and for other purposes. |
| Enacted by the: 94th Congress 94th United States Congress The Ninety-fourth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1975 to January 3, 1977, during the administration... |
| Effective Date: January 1, 1978 |
| Citations |
| Public Law: Pub. L. 94-553 (Oct. 19, 1976) |
| U.S. Statutes at Large: 90 Stat. 2541 |
| Codification |
| Act(s) amended: Copyright Act of 1909 Copyright Act of 1909 The Copyright Act of 1909 was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It became Public Law number 60-349 on March 4, 1909 by the 60th United States Congress, and it went into effect on July 1, 1909... |
| Title(s) amended: 17 (Copyright) |
| United States Code sections created: 17 U.S.C. §§ 101-810 |
| United States Code sections substantially amended: 44 U.S.C. §§ 505 & 2113; 18 U.S.C. § 2318 |
| Legislative history |
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| Major amendments |
| Digital Millennium Copyright Act Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to... ; Copyright Term Extension Act Copyright Term Extension Act The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship... |
The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, codified the doctrine of "fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
," and for most new copyrights adopted a unitary term based on the date of the author's death rather than the prior scheme of fixed initial and renewal terms. It became Public Law number 94-553 on October 19, 1976 and went into effect on January 1, 1978.
History and purpose
Before the 1976 Act, the last major revision to statutoryStatute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
copyright law in the United States occurred in 1909. In deliberating the Act, Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
noted that extensive technological advances had occurred since the adoption of the 1909 Act
Copyright Act of 1909
The Copyright Act of 1909 was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It became Public Law number 60-349 on March 4, 1909 by the 60th United States Congress, and it went into effect on July 1, 1909...
. Television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, motion pictures, sound recordings, and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
were cited as examples. The Act was designed in part to address intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
questions raised by these new forms of communication. (see House
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
report number 94-1476)
Aside from advances in technology, the other main impetus behind the adoption of the 1976 Act was the development of and the United States' participation in the Universal Copyright Convention
Universal Copyright Convention
The Universal Copyright Convention , adopted at Geneva in 1952, is one of the two principal international conventions protecting copyright; the other is the Berne Convention....
(UCC) (and its anticipated participation in the Berne Convention
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886.- Content :...
). While the U.S. became a party to the UCC in 1955, the machinery of government was slow to update U.S. copyright law to conform to the Convention's standards. In the years following the United States' adoption of the UCC, Congress commissioned multiple studies on a general revision of copyright law, culminating in a published report in 1961. A draft of the bill was introduced in both the House and Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in 1964, but the original version of the Act was revised multiple times between 1964 and 1976 (see House report number 94-1476). The bill was passed as S. 22 of the 94th Congress by a vote of 97-0 in the Senate on February 19, 1976. S. 22 was passed by a vote of 316-7 in the House of Representatives on September 22, 1976. The final version was adopted into law as title 17 of the United States Code
United States Code
The Code of Laws of the United States of America is a compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States...
on October 19, 1976 when Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
signed it. The law went into effect on January 1, 1978.
At the time, the law was considered to be a fair compromise between publishers' and authors' rights. Barbara Ringer
Barbara Ringer
Barbara Ringer was the first female Register of Copyrights in the United States Copyright Office, an important contributor to United States copyright law in the 20th century, and a key force behind the preparation and passage of the 1976 Copyright Act.-Early life:Barbara Ringer was born in...
, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, called the new law "a balanced compromise that comes down on the authors' and creators' side in almost every instance." The law was almost exclusively discussed in publishers' and librarians' journals, and with the exception of a half page article in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, was not discussed in mainstream publications at all. The claimed advantage of the law's extension of the term of subsisting copyrights was that "royalties will be paid to widows and heirs for an extra 190 years for such about-to-expire copyrights as those on Sherword Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio . . . ." The other intent of the extension was to protect authors' rights "for life plus 50 years—the most common term internationally and the one Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
fought for in his lifetime." Further extensions of both term and scope have been desired by some, as outlined in this Time magazine article."
Significant portions of the Act
Subject matter of copyright
Under section 102 of the Act, copyright protection extends to "original works of authorship fixedFixation
Fixation may refer to the following:In science:*Fixation , the state in which an individual becomes obsessed with an attachment to another human, an animal, or an inanimate object...
in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
or device." The Act defines "works of authorship" as any of the following:
- literaryLiteratureLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
works, - musicalMusicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
works, including any accompanying words, - dramaticDramaDrama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
works, including any accompanying music, - pantomimeMime artistA mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...
s and choreographicChoreographyChoreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
works, - pictorial, graphic, and sculpturalSculptureSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
works, - motion pictures and other audiovisual works, and
- sound recordings.
An eighth category, architectural
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
works, was added in 1990.
The wording of section 102 is significant mainly because it effectuated a major change in the mode of United States copyright protection. Under the last major statutory revision to U.S. copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1909, federal statutory copyright protection attached to original works only when those works were 1) published and 2) had a notice of copyright affixed. State copyright law governed protection for unpublished works before the adoption of the 1976 Act, but published works, whether containing a notice of copyright or not, were governed exclusively by federal law. If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was, in fact, "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. Under the 1976 Act, however, section 102 says that copyright protection extends to original works that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Thus, the 1976 Act broadened the scope of federal statutory copyright protection from "published" works to works that are "fixed".
Exclusive rights
Section 106 granted five exclusive rights to copyright holders:- the right to reproduce (copy),
- the right to create derivative works of the original work,
- the right to sell, lease, or rent copies of the work to the public,
- the right to perform the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, motion picture, or other audiovisual work), and
- the right to display the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, motion picture, or other audiovisual work).
The Act was amended in 1995 to include a sixth exclusive right: the right to perform a sound recording by means of digital audio.
Fair use
Additionally, the fair use defense to copyright infringementCopyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
was codified for the first time in section 107 of the 1976 Act. Fair use was not a novel proposition in 1976, however, as federal courts had been using a common law form of the doctrine since the 1840s (an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
version of fair use appeared much earlier). The Act codified this common law doctrine with little modification. Under section 107, the fair use of a copyrighted work is not copyright infringement, even if such use technically violates section 106. While fair use explicitly applies to use of copyrighted work for criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship
Scholarly method
Scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public.-Methods:...
, or research purposes, the defense is not limited to these areas. The Act gives four factors to be considered to determine whether a particular use is a fair use:
- the purpose and character of the use (commercial or educational, transformative or reproductive);
- the nature of the copyrighted work (fictional or factual, the degree of creativity);
- the amount and substantiality of the portion of the original work used; and
- the effect of the use upon the marketMarketA market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
(or potential market) for the original work.
The Act was later amended to extend the fair use defense to unpublished works.
Term of protection
Previous copyright law set the duration of copyright protection at twenty-eight years with a possibility of a twenty-eight year extension, for a total maximum term of fifty-six years. The 1976 Act, however, substantially increased the term of protection. Section 302 of the Act extended protection to "a term consisting of the life of the author and 50 years after the author's death." In addition, the Act created a static seventy-five-year term (dated from the date of publication) for anonymous works, pseudonymous works, and works made for hire. The extension term for works copyrighted before 1978 that had not already entered the public domain was increased from twenty-eight years to forty-seven years, giving a total term of seventy-five years. In 1998 the Copyright Term Extension ActCopyright Term Extension Act
The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship...
further extended copyright protection to the duration of the author's life plus seventy years for general copyrights and to ninety-five years for works made for hire and works copyrighted before 1978.
Transfer of copyright
Section 204 of the Act governs the transfer of ownership of copyrights. The section requires a copyright holder to sign a written instrument of conveyance that expressly transfers ownership of the copyright to the intended recipient for a transfer to be effective. Prior case law on this issue was conflicting, with some cases espousing a rule similar to section 204 and others reaching a quite different conclusion. In the 1942 New York case Pushman v. New York Graphic SocietyPushman v. New York Graphic Society
Pushman v. New York Graphic Society, 287 N.Y. 302 , was a case decided by the New York Court of Appeals that held that, while the copyright in a work of authorship is distinct from the tangible embodiment of the work, if the only tangible embodiment of the work is transferred the copyright is also...
, for example, the court held that although a copyright in a work is distinct from a property right in a copy of the work, where the only existing copy of the work is transferred, the copyright is transferred along with the copy, unless expressly withheld by the author. Section 202 of the 1976 Act retains the property right/copyright distinction, but section 204 eliminates the inconsistent common law by assuming that the copyright is withheld by the author unless it is expressly transferred.
Registration and deposit
According to section 408 of the Act, registration of a work with the Copyright OfficeUnited States Copyright Office
The United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress, is the official U.S. government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States. It is used by copyright title searchers who are attempting to clear a chain of title for copyrighted works.The head of...
is not a prerequisite for copyright protection. The Act does, however, allow for registration, and gives the Copyright Office the power to promulgate the necessary forms. Aside from Copyright Office paperwork, the Act requires only that one copy, or two copies if the work has been published, be deposited with the Office to accomplish registration. Though registration is not required for copyright protection to attach to a work, section 411 of the Act does require registration before a copyright infringement action by the creator of the work can proceed. Even if registration is denied, however, an infringement action can continue if the creator of the work joins the Copyright Office as a defendant, requiring the court to determine the copyrightability of the work before addressing the issue of infringement.
See also
- United States copyright lawUnited States copyright lawThe copyright law of the United States governs the legally enforceable rights of creative and artistic works under the laws of the United States.Copyright law in the United States is part of federal law, and is authorized by the U.S. Constitution...
- Digital Millennium Copyright ActDigital Millennium Copyright ActThe Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
- Section 115 Reform Act of 2006Section 115 Reform Act of 2006The Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 was a bill introduced June 8, 2006 in the 109th United States Congress by Howard Berman and Lamar Smith as part of...
External links
- US Copyright Office, Title 17
- Cornell Law School, on Copyright
- World wide school.org
- New York Law School Law Review, The Complete Guide to the New Copyright Law, Lorenz Press Inc., 1977, ISBN 0-89328-013-5
- House Report No. 94-1476, a key component in the legislative history of the Act.
- Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians (Circular 21). United States Copyright Office, United States Library of Congress.(This circular cites and describes the key legislative history documents for the law, and briefly outlines the guidance that the legislative history provides.)