Page:Copyright Law Revision (Senate Report No. 94-473).djvu/99

 of the contribution of the musical works of each person to the earnings of the particular jukebox. A person who is denied access to the establishment and the jukeboxes may bring an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for the cancellation of the compulsory license of the jukebox to which access has been denied, and the court may declare the compulsory license invalid. This clause is not intended to authorize the Register of Copyrights to impose any record-keeping requirements upon jukebox operators, or to require the installation in jukeboxes of any metering devices for counting the play of particular recordings.

Review of royalty rate

Section 802 and other provisions of Chapter 8 of this legislation provide for the periodic review and adjustment of the statutory royalty rates, including those provided in section 116. Jukebox operators have sought to have the jukebox royalty rate excluded from the review procedures of Chapter 8. Under this proposal, the owners of jukeboxes would be able to increase the charge to the public for playing the machine, but in the absence of an act of Congress, the royalty rate would be frozen at $8 a year per jukebox.

The royalty rate of $8 per box is derived from action of the House of Representatives in 1967. That rate was adopted without the benefit of adequate analysis of the relevant economic data, and the rate has not been adjusted to reflect the significant inflation since 1967.

This committee has accepted the $8 jukebox royalty in the expectation that it would be subject to periodic review. If such a review is to be precluded, the committee recommends that the royalty rate be now adjusted to provide a payment which is reasonable under existing conditions.

As the program for general revision of the copyright law has evolved, it has become increasingly apparent that in one major area the problems are not sufficiently developed for a definitive legislative solution. This is the area of computer uses of copyrighted works: the use of a work “in conjunction with automatic systems capable of storing, processing, retrieving, or transferring information.” The Commission on New Technological Uses is intended, among other things, to make a thorough study of the emerging patterns in this field and, on the basis of its findings, to recommend definite copyright provisions to deal with the situation.

Since it would be premature to change existing law on computer uses at present, the purpose of section 117 is to preserve the status quo. It is intended neither to cut off any rights that may now exist, nor to create new rights that might be denied under the Act of 1909 or under common law principles currently applicable.

The provision deals only with the exclusive rights of a copyright owner with respect to computer uses, that is, the bundle of rights specified for other types of uses in section 106 and qualified in Sections 107 through 116. With respect to the copyrightability of computer programs, the ownership of copyright in them, the term of protection, and the formal requirements of the remainder of the bill, the new statute would apply.