A bill to amend the copyright law respecting the limitations on exclusive rights to secondary transmissions, and for other purposes.

Summary

Amends the copyright law to permit secondary transmissions to the public by a cable system where the carriage of such signals is permissible under regulations of the Federal Communications Commission in effect on July 1, 1980. Makes violations of such provision an infringement of copyright. Empowers the Copyright Royalty Tribunal to establish royalty fees for cable systems with 5000 subscribers or more. Makes it an infringement of copyright to carry signals comprising the secondary transmission in violation of the regulations of the Tribunal. Subjects sports and syndicated programming to compulsory licensing. Grants the Tribunal greater freedom in establishing and adjusting rates for secondary transmissions. Requires the Tribunal to distribute royalty fees for radio programming based upon the production of original programming. Permits the filing of proceedings before the Tribunal to adjust royalty rates every third year, starting in 1982. Empowers the Tribunal to issue subpoenas for the testimony of witnesses and the production of documents. Eliminates any judicial stay of determinations by the Tribunal. Retains current royalty rates established by the Tribunal concerning compulsory licensing of cable systems' secondary transmissions, pending a review by the Tribunal.

This text is taken from the official record. PoliticalRepo does not editorialize.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

1 official file

• Introduced in House

  summary · EN · 12 May 1981

  Open at official source

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.