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1976; if not, it can still be renewed under section 304(a) of the new act between January 1, 1977, and December 31, 1977.
SECTION 401. NOTICE ON PERCEPTIBLE COPIES
A requirement that the public be given formal notice of every work in which copyright is claimed was a part of the first U.S. copyright statute enacted in 1790, and since 1802 our copyright laws have always provided that the published copies of copyrighted works must bear a specified notice as a condition of protection. Under the present law the copyright notice requirements serves four principal functions:
- (1) It has the effect of placing in the public domain a substantial body of published material that no one is interested in copyrighting;
- (2) It informs the public as to whether a particular work is copyrighted;
- (3) It identifies the copyright owner;
- (4) It shows the date of publication.
Ranged against these values of a notice requirement are its burdens and unfairness to copyright owners. One of the strongest arguments for revision of the present statute has been the need to avoid the arbitrary and unjust forfeitures now resulting from unintentional or relatively unimportant omissions or errors in the copyright notice. It has been contended that the disadvantages of the notice requirement outweighs its values and that it should therefore be eliminated or substantially liberalized.
The fundamental principle underlying the notice provisions of the bill is that the copyright notice has real values which should be preserved, and that this should be done by inducing use of notice without causing outright forfeiture for errors or omissions. Subject to certain safeguards for innocent infringers, protection would not be lost by the complete omission of copyright notice from large numbers of copies or from a whole edition, if registration for the work is made before or within 5 years after the publication. Errors in the name or date in the notice could be corrected without forfeiture of copyright.
Sections 401 and 402 set out the basic notice requirements of the bill. the former dealing with “copies from which the work can be visually perceived,” and the latter covering “phonorecords” of a “sound recording.” The notice requirements established by theseparallel provisions apply only when copies or phonorecords of the work are "publicly distributed." No copyright notice would be required in connection with the public display of a copy by any means, including projectors, television, or cathode day tubes connected with information storage and retrieval systems, or in connection with the public performance of a work by means of copies or phonorecords, whether in the presence of an audience or through television, radio, computer transmissions, or any other process.
It should be noted that, under the definition of “publication” in section 101, there would no longer by any basis for holding, as a few court decisions have done in the past, that the public display of a work of art under some conditions (e.g., without restriction against its reproduction) would constitute publication of the work. And, as
