Page:Copyright Law Revision (Senate Report No. 94-473).djvu/88

 to reproduce, prepare derivative works, and distribute as stated in Section 106 and do not include any right of performance.

Subsection (b) provides that the rights do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that is an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted recording. Subsection (c) states that nothing in the provisions of section 114 should be construed to “limit or impair the exclusive right to perform publicly, by means of a phonorecord, any of the works specified by section 106(4).” This principle is already implicit in the bill, but is restated to avoid the danger of confusion between rights in a sound recording and rights in the musical composition or other work embodied in the recording.

The provisions of section 1(e) and 101(e) of the present law, establishing a system of compulsory licensing for the making and distribution of phonorecords of copyrighted music, are retained with a number of modifications and clarifications in section 115 of the bill. Under these provisions, which represented a compromise of the most controversial issue in the 1909 act, a musical composition that has been reproduced in phonorecords with the permission of the copyright owner may generally be reproduced in phonorecords by anyone else if he notifies the copyright owner and pays a specified royalty.

The fundamental question of whether to retain the compulsory license or to do away with it altogether was a major issue during earlier stages of the program for general revision of the copyright law. At the hearings it was apparent that the argument on this point had shifted, and the real issue was not whether to retain the compulsory license but how much the royalty rate under it should be.

Availability and scope of the compulsory license

Subsection (a) of section 115 deals with three doubtful questions under the present law: (1) the nature of the original recording that will make the work available to others for recording under a compulsory license; (2) the nature of the sound recording that can be made under a compulsory license; and (3) the extent to which someone acting under a compulsory license can depart from the work as written or recorded without violating the copyright owner’s right to make an “arrangement” or other derivative work. The first two of these questions are answered in clause (1) of section 115(a), and the third is the subject of clause (2).

The present law, though not altogether clear, apparently bases compulsory licensing on the making or licensing of the first recording, even if no authorized records are distributed to the public. The first sentence of section 115(a)(1) would change the basis for compulsory licensing to authorized public distribution of phonorecords (including disks and audio tapes but not the sound tracks or other sound records accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work). Under the clause, a compulsory license would be available to anyone as soon as “phonorecords of a nondramatic musical work have been distributed to the public under the authority of the copyright owner.”