The Copyright Act
Copyright protection does not just “happen.” The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to pass copyright legislation,[1] and Congress has enacted legislation pursuant to that authorization. The Copyright Act of 1976[2]—the legislation now in force in the United States—was the first complete revision of our federal copyright statute since 1909.
Congress recognized as early as the 1950s that the 1909 Act was outdated. But Congress, as we know, usually moves more at the speed of the tortoise than the hare. The 1976 Act, which took more than twenty years to pass, was only the fourth major revision of our federal copyright statute since the first such Act was passed in 1790,[3] the others occurring in 1831,[4] 1870,[5] and 1909.[6]
In drafting the 1976 Act, Congress tried to balance the often competing interests of copyright owners and those who use copyrighted works. Input from creators, publishers, educators, librarians, and other interested parties resulted in an Act one commentator called “a body of detailed rules reminiscent of the Internal Revenue Code.”[7]
But we are not given detailed rules for everything. Occasionally Congress gave us guidelines, such as those for classroom copying and off-air taping, rather than legislation. Although not part of the Act, some guide-
- ↑ U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8.
- ↑ Pub. L. No. 94-553, 90 Stat. 2541 (1976).
- ↑ Act of May 31, 1790, ch. 15, 1 Stat. 124 (1790).
- ↑ Act of Feb. 3, 1831, ch. 16, 4 Stat. 436 (1831).
- ↑ Act of July 8, 1870, ch. 230, 16 Stat. 198 (1870).
- ↑ Act of March 4, 1909, ch. 230, 35 Stat. 1075 (1909).
- ↑ 1 Melville Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright, Preface to the 1978 Comprehensive Treatise Revision.
