103
Subsection (d) provides that the royalty fees deposited with the Register of Copyrights shall be distributed according to the specified procedures. Each person claiming such fees must in July of each year file a claim with the Register of Copyrights. Notwithstanding any provisions of the antitrust laws, the claimants may agree among themselves as to the division and distribution of such fees. If no controversy exists as to the division of the fees, the Register of Copyrights, after deducting his reasonable administrative costs, shall distribute the fees to the copyright owners or their agents. If the Register of Copyrights finds the existence of a controversy, he shall proceed as is provided in Chapter 8 to constitute a panel of the Copyright Royalty Tribunal. The Register of Copyrights shall withhold from distribution an amount sufficient to satisfy all claims with respect to which a controversy exists, but shall have discretion to proceed to distribute any amounts that are not in controversy.
Definitions
Subsection (f) defines the terms “public broadcasting” and “public broadcasting entity.” While those terms have been defined in comprehensive terms, the Committee in adopting this section intends that the compulsory licenses created by Section 118 are only operative for specific purposes. The compulsory license applies to public television and radio broadcasting of a “public broadcasting entity,” and the recording of the broadcasts by or for a non-profit institution in their instructional activities within a limited time period from the date of the transmission. “Public broadcasting” includes such activities incdental to the transmission of the broadcast as production and recording by or for use by public broadcasting and, distribution, sale or licensing solely to, and acquisition by, non-profit public broadcasting.
A public broadcasting entity is defined as a non-profit “licensee or permittee” of a noncommercial educational broadcast station as well as other nonprofit institutions such as, for example, independent non-profit production companies which have produced a program for distribution and broadcast by noncommercial educational broadcast stations. The compulsory license does not apply to commercial station broadcast of television or radio programs produced or distributed by public broadcasting entities.
SECTION 201, OWNERSHIP OF COPYRIGHT
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 contribution with the knowlodge and intension that it would be merged with the contributions of other authors as “inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” The touchstone here is 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
