What Rights Does A Copyright Owner Have?

• Jurisdiction: Maryland

IV. WHAT RIGHTS DOES A COPYRIGHT OWNER HAVE?

So, exactly what are these exclusive rights that every copyright owner enjoys? They are listed in Section 106 of the Copyright Act and, as noted above, they may be assigned or licensed separately or altogether. They are the right:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.²²

The reproduction right has both obvious and somewhat obscure applications. For example, photocopying pages from a book or magazine whose copyright is owned by another obviously constitutes a violation of the owner's reproduction right. Less obvious is the fact simply "using" a computer program without the proper license is also an infringement of the reproduction right. Because the computer's random access memory (RAM) makes a copy of the code, the courts have held the copy infringing.²³ Libraries and archives may have a special exemption for certain kinds of reproduction under Section 108 of the act.²⁴

Derivative works are defined and discussed in Part 1 above. Under Section 106, the author of the underlying work has the exclusive right to make or license another to make a derivative work based on the underlying work. For example, the author of a novel can license a playwright to make a play from the novel, or a screenwriter to make a screenplay from the novel. In such cases, the licensee will own the copyright in those aspects of the play or screenplay that are original to the licensee.

The distribution right is the 1976 Act's expression for the publishing right that appeared in earlier versions of the Act; indeed, there is no definition of distribution in the current Act. Courts have been divided over whether "distribution" and "publishing" are essentially synonyms, which would mean that...