United StatesCopyright Act, exclusive rights and infringement, 17 U.S.C. §§ 106 and 501
In force since .
A copyright: the exclusive rights rule binding public and private bodies.
- Private right of action
- Yes
- Instrument type
- an act of a legislature
As of .
What it requires
- Get the copyright owner's permission before you reproduce a copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords, prepare a derivative work based on it, or distribute copies or phonorecords of it to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending, unless sections 107 through 122 allow the use (s. 106(1) to (3)).
- Get the copyright owner's permission before you publicly perform or publicly display a work of a kind clauses (4) and (5) of section 106 name, or publicly perform a sound recording by means of a digital audio transmission, unless sections 107 through 122 allow the use (s. 106(4) to (6)).
- Treat transmitting or otherwise communicating a performance or display of a work to the public by any device or process as performing or displaying it publicly, whether the recipients receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times (s. 101).
- Do not violate any of the exclusive rights provided by sections 106 through 122, or import copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602: anyone who does is an infringer, including a State, a State instrumentality, and a State officer or employee acting in an official capacity (s. 501(a)).
- Do not induce or encourage users to infringe, and do not profit from their infringement while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it: the Supreme Court describes the first as contributory infringement and the second as vicarious infringement (MGM Studios v. Grokster, 545 U.S. 913 (2005)).
What this law does
Section 106 of title 17 gives the owner of copyright the exclusive rights to do and to authorize six kinds of act, subject to sections 107 through 122. The first three rights are to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords, to prepare derivative works based upon it, and to distribute copies or phonorecords of it to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.
Clauses (4) and (5) add the rights to perform and to display the work publicly, for the kinds of work they name. Clause (6) adds, for sound recordings, the right to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Section 101 provides that to perform or display a work publicly includes transmitting or otherwise communicating a performance or display of it to the public by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
Section 101 defines a work as fixed in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration.
Section 101 defines a derivative work as a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.
Section 501(a) makes anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner provided by sections 106 through 122, or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, an infringer. The word anyone in section 501(a) includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in an official capacity.
Under section 501(b), the legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right is entitled, subject to the requirements of section 411, to institute an action for any infringement of that right committed while he or she is the owner of it. The House report on the 1976 Act says that the phrase to authorize in section 106 is intended to avoid any questions as to the liability of contributory infringers.
In MGM Studios v. Grokster the Supreme Court said that the Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another, and that the doctrines of secondary liability emerged from common law principles. The Court described contributory infringement as intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement. The Court described vicarious infringement as profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app reuses other publishers' content, distributes a software product, trains models, generates content with AI or crawls the web.