every group concerned in copyright. Most of the changes in the bill were made because the Copyright Office was persuaded that, on balance, the arguments for them were valid. Other changes represent carefully worked-out compromises in the public interest, between legitimate but opposing points of view; while they may not represent the ideal solution to a particular problem, I believe that these compromises are necessary, desirable, and worthy of support. I also hope I am correct in my conviction that all the changes reflect, not vacillation or indifference, but a painstaking, persistent, open-minded effort to achieve the best copyright statute we can get. This was Arthur Fisher's goal, and for that reason I believe he would be proud of what has been accomplished so far.

The introduction of bills for hearings in 1965 is, of course, a milestone in the revision program, but it is not the end of the road. It should be obvious by now that neither the bill nor this supplementary report represents any final statement of the fixed views of the Copyright Office. Our purpose is the enactment and implementation of a good, clear, practical copyright law that will reward authors and thereby encourage the arts and humanities; and we are aware that further changes will undoubtedly need to be considered.

SCOPE OF THIS SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

A number of the recommendations in the Register's Report of 1961 have been incorporated without substantial change in the Copyright Law Revision Bill of 1965. Except where they have been retained in the face of strong opposition, there seems no point in repeating the reasoning behind these recommendations. The main purpose of this supplementary report is to explain why we modified or completely changed many of our earlier recommendations and, in a few cases, why we have included provisions on points not covered by the 1961 Report. We have decided not to burden this supplement by attempting to trace in detail how the language and content of the current bill evolved through the intermediate stages of the preliminary draft of 1963 and the bill of 1964. The comparative tables in Appendix B, which show the language of the present law, the 1965 and 1964 bills, and the 1963 draft on every provision, can be used for this purpose. Taken together with the original Register's Report of 1961, this supplementary report is intended to explain the thinking that went into the 1965 bill and to illuminate some of its language.

THE CONTINUING PROBLEM OF COPYRIGHT LAW REVISION

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on December 2, 1964, President Johnson

opened his remarks by recalling President Kennedy's memorable address at Amherst College the month before his death, in which he said:

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.

And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

President Johnson pointed to the Kennedy Center as symbolizing "our belief that the world of creation and thought are at the core of our civilization":

Only recently in the White House, we helped commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. The political conflicts and ambitions of his England are known to the scholar and the specialist. But his plays will forever move men in every corner of the world. The leaders that he wrote about live far more vividly in his words than in the almost forgotten facts of their own rule.

Our civilization, too, will survive largely in the works of our creation. There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man, nation from nation and century from century. * * *

[I]t is important to know that the opportunity we give to the arts is a measure of the quality of our civilization. It is important to be aware that artistic activity can enrich the life of our people; which is the central object of government. It is important that our material prosperity liberate and not confine the creative spirit.

This unreserved recognition by the heads of our Government of the importance of creative endeavor in our national life is one of the most striking and encouraging of the trends that have emerged since 1961. At the same time it would be delusive to assume that there has been any general realization on the part of Government officials or the public that copyright is no less than the life's blood of this endeavor. Too many people still think of copyright law as the esoteric sporting ground of an "elite cadre," and regard its impact as confined to a handful of unimportant industries and special interests. They have not yet seen that the interrelation between copyright and the communications revolution is fully as important to our age as the interrelation between copyright and the revolution brought on by the printing press was to an earlier one. Somehow people must be made to realize that the copyright statute of a country not only shapes its cultural and intellectual development, but acutally penetrates into the lives and thinking of every citizen.

Speaking of automation someone observed recently that "invention is the mother of necessity": and in the copyright field this necessity is reaching crisis proportions. In recent years we have seen, among a multitude of technological developments, the introduction of com

munications satellites, the tremendous growth in information storage and retrieval devices, changing patterns in broadcasting including the emergence of educational television and community antenna systems, radical changes in teaching methods by the use of new audiovisual devices, the proliferation of copying machines, and remarkable developments in the use of video tape. Not only is the 1909 statute dismally inadequate to deal with what is happening; we now find that even our 1961 recommendations were not flexible and forward-looking enough.

I realize, more clearly now than I did in 1961, that the revolution in communications has brought with it a serious challenge to the author's copyright. This challenge comes not only from the evergrowing commercial interests who wish to use the author's works for private gain. An equally serious attack has come from people with a sincere interest in the public welfare who fully recognize (in the words of Sir Arthur Bliss) "that the real heart of civilization, the letters, the music, the arts, the drama, the educational material, owes its existence to the author"; ironically, in seeking to make the author's works widely available by freeing them from copyright restrictions, they fail to realize that they are whittling away the very thing that nurtures authorship in the first place. An accommodation among conflicting demands must be worked out, true enough, but not by denying the fundamental constitutional directive: to encourage cultural progress by securing the author's exclusive rights to him for a limited time.

Since 1961 I have also acquired a deeper understanding of the importance of American copyright law revision throughout the world. The days when the United States could play a lone hand in international copyright have been over for quite a while, but it is not enough for us merely to seek and extend as much international cooperation as possible.

It is startling to realize, in an era when copyrighted materials are being disseminated instantaneously throughout the globe, that the United States has copyright relations with less than half of the world's nations. The injustice of this situation to authors here and abroad is obvious, but equally serious to our national interest is the lack of the cultural bridge between countries that copyright furnishes. And, even where copyright relations exist, the lack of uniformity in the scope and standards of protection results in unfairness and endless confusion.

The United States can, if it will, offer leadership in the effort to evolve a truly universal copyright system that takes account of national interests while at the same time offering effective uniformity and a fair reward to all authors. Many of the newly-independent

nations are at a turning point in the development of their own copyright systems, and suggestions have been made for bridging the gap between the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions. Copyright law revision is the first necessary step we can take in meeting this tremendous challenge.

ABRAHAM L. KAMINSTEIN,

Register of Copyrights,

Copyright Office, The Library of Congress.

THE 1965 BILL IN SUMMARY

The following summary is intended to indicate the structure of the 1965 bill and to outline its principal provisions. Since no attempt is made here to describe the background on development of the bill or to analyze its language and content in detail, this summary is necessarily oversimplified. The provisions of the bill are thoroughly reviewed in the chapters of the Supplementary Report itself, and the text of the bill will be found in Appendix B.

SUBJECT MATTER OF COPYRIGHT

Basic requirements of copyright. In defining the general subject matter of copyright, section 102 drops the present reference to "all the writings of an author" and substitutes the phrase "original works of authorship." It also requires that protected works be "fixed" in a "tangible medium of expression." The manner or medium of fixation is irrelevant as long as it is tangible enough for the work to be perceived or made perceptible to the human senses, directly or with the aid of any machine or device "now known or later developed."

Categories of copyrightable works. Section 102 also includes an "illustrative and not limitative" listing of seven categories of copyrightable works. This list covers all classes of works that are copyrightable under the present law, designates "pantomimes and choreographic works" as a specific category, and adds a new category of "sound recordings."

National origin. Under section 104, as under the common law at present, protection would be granted to unpublished works without regard to the nationality or domicile of the author. As under the present statute, with relatively minor changes, published works of foreign origin would be protected only if the country of origin were covered by a treaty or a Presidential proclamation. The authority of the President would be broadened, however, to allow him to issue proclamations without regard to reciprocity "whenever he finds it to be in the national interest.”

United States Government works. The bill retains the present prohibition against copyright in "publications of the U.S. Government" and expands it to cover any published or unpublished "work of the United States Government," which is defined as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government within the scope of his official duties or employment." This definition would

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