1976 Copyright Act

Copyright Act of 1976

Long title	An Act for the general revision of the Copyright Law, title 17 of the United States Code, and for other purposes
Enacted by	the 94th United States Congress
Effective	January 1, 1978
Citations
Public law	Pub.L. 94–553
Statutes at Large	90 Stat. 2541
Codification
Acts amended	Copyright Act of 1909
Titles amended	17 (Copyright)
U.S.C. sections created	17 U.S.C. §§ 101-810
U.S.C. sections amended	44 U.S.C. §§ 505, 2113; 18 U.S.C. § 2318
Legislative history
Introduced in the United States Senate as S.22 by John Little McClellan on January 15, 1975 Committee consideration by House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice); Senate Judiciary Committee Passed the Senate on February 19, 1976  Passed the House on September 30, 1976  Reported by the joint conference committee on September 29, 1976; agreed to by the Senate on September 30, 1976  and by the House on September 30, 1976  Signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 19, 1976
Major amendments
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Copyright Term Extension Act

The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, codified the doctrine of "fair use," and for most new copyrights adopted a unitary term based on the date of the author's death rather than the prior scheme of fixed initial and renewal terms. It became Public Law number 94-553 on October 19, 1976 and went into effect on January 1, 1978.

Before the 1976 Act, the last major revision to statutory copyright law in the United States occurred in 1909. In deliberating the Act, Congress noted that extensive technological advances had occurred since the adoption of the 1909 Act. Television, motion pictures, sound recordings, and radio were cited as examples. The Act was designed in part to address intellectual property questions raised by these new forms of communication. (see House report number 94-1476)

Aside from advances in technology, the other main impetus behind the adoption of the 1976 Act was the development of and the United States' participation in the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) (and its anticipated participation in the Berne Convention). While the U.S. became a party to the UCC in 1955, the machinery of government was slow to update U.S. copyright law to conform to the Convention's standards. Barbara Ringer, the US Register of Copyrights, took an active role in drafting a new copyright act.

In the years following the United States' adoption of the UCC, Congress commissioned multiple studies on a general revision of copyright law, culminating in a published report in 1961. A draft of the bill was introduced in both the House and Senate in 1964, but the original version of the Act was revised multiple times between 1964 and 1976 (see House report number 94-1476). The bill was passed as S. 22 of the 94th Congress by a vote of 97-0 in the Senate on February 19, 1976. S. 22 was passed by a vote of 316-7 in the House of Representatives on September 22, 1976. The final version was adopted into law as title 17 of the United States Code on October 19, 1976 when Gerald Ford signed it. The law went into effect on January 1, 1978. At the time, the law was considered to be a fair compromise between publishers' and authors' rights.

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