Page:H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 (1976) Page 120.djvu

120 It is the intent of the Committee that schools be permitted to engage in off-the-air reproduction to the extent and under the conditions provided in 118(d)(3); however, in the event a public broadcasting station or producer makes the reproduction and distributes a copy to the school, the station or producer will not be held liable for the school’s failure to destroy the reproduction, provided it has given notice of the requirement of destruction. In such a case the school itself, although it did not engage in the act of reproduction, is deemed an infringer fully subject to the remedies provided in Chapter 5 of the Act. The establishment of standards for adequate notice under this provision should be considered by the Commission.

Section 118(f) makes it clear that the rights of performance and other activities specified in subsection (d) do not extend to the unauthorized dramatization of a nondramatic musical work.

Initial ownership

Two basic and well-established principles of copyright law are restated in section 201(a): that the source of copyright ownership is the author of the work, and that, in the case of a “joint work,” the coauthors of the work are likewise coowners of the copyright. Under the definition of section 101, a work is “joint” if the authors collaborated with each other, or if each of the authors prepared his or her contribution with the knowledge and intention that it would be merged with the contributions of other authors as “inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” The touchstone here is the intention, at the time the writing is done, that the parts be absorbed or combined into an integrated unit, although the parts themselves may be either “inseparable” (as the case of a novel or painting) or “interdependent” (as in the case of a motion picture, opera, or the words and music of a song). The definition of “joint work” is to be contrasted with the definition of “collective work,” also in section 101, in which the elements of merger and unity are lacking; there the key elements are assemblage or gathering of “separate and independent works * * * into a collective whole.”

The definition of “joint works” has prompted some concern lest it be construed as converting the authors of previously written works, such as plays, novels, and music, into coauthors of a motion picture in which their work is incorporated. It is true that a motion picture would normally be a joint rather than a collective work with respect to those authors who actually work on the film, although their usual status as employees for hire would keep the question of coownership from coming up. On the other hand, although a novelist, playwright, or songwriter may write a work with the hope or expectation that it will be used in a motion picture, this is clearly a case of separate or independent authorship rather than one where the basic intention behind the writing of the work was for motion picture use. In this case, the motion picture is a derivative work within the definition of that term, and section 103 makes plain that copyright in a derivative work is independent of, and does not enlarge the scope of rights in, any pre-existing material incorporated in it. There is thus no need to spell this conclusion out in the definition of “joint work.”