NEW YORK TIMES CO., INC., et al. v. TASINI et al.

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483 OCTOBER TERM, 2000
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NEW YORK TIMES CO., INC., et al. v. TASINI et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the second circuit
No. 00–201. Argued March 28, 2001—Decided June 25, 2001
Respondent freelance authors (Authors) wrote articles (Articles) for news-
papers and a magazine published by petitioners New York Times Com-
pany (Times), Newsday, Inc. (Newsday), and Time, Inc. (Time). The
Times, Newsday, and Time (Print Publishers) engaged the Authors as
independent contractors under contracts that in no instance secured an
Author’s consent to placement of an Article in an electronic database.
The Print Publishers each licensed rights to copy and sell articles to
petitioner LEXIS/NEXIS, owner and operator of NEXIS. NEXIS is
a computerized database containing articles in text-only format from
hundreds of periodicals spanning many years. Subscribers access
NEXIS through a computer, may search for articles using criteria such
as author and subject, and may view, print, or download each article
yielded by the search. An article’s display identifies its original print
publication, date, section, initial page number, title, and author, but each
article appears in isolation—without visible link to other stories origi-
nally published in the same periodical edition. NEXIS does not repro-
duce the print publication’s formatting features such as headline size
and page placement. The Times also has licensing agreements with
petitioner University Microfilms International (UMI), authorizing re-
production of Times materials on two CD–ROM products. One, the
New York Times OnDisc (NYTO), is a text-only database containing
Times articles presented in essentially the same way they appear in
LEXIS/NEXIS. The other, General Periodicals OnDisc (GPO), is an
image-based system that reproduces the Times’ Sunday Book Review
and Magazine exactly as they appeared on the printed pages, complete
with photographs, captions, advertisements, and other surrounding ma-
terials. The two CD–ROM products are searchable in much the same
way as LEXIS/NEXIS; in both, articles retrieved by users provide no
links to other articles appearing in the original print publications.
The Authors filed this suit, alleging that their copyrights were in-
fringed when, as permitted and facilitated by the Print Publishers,
LEXIS/NEXIS and UMI (Electronic Publishers) placed the Articles in
NEXIS, NYTO, and GPO (Databases). The Authors sought declara-
tory and injunctive relief, and damages. In response to the Authors’
complaint, the Print and Electronic Publishers raised the privilege ac-

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484 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
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corded collective work copyright owners by § 201(c) of the Copyright
Act. That provision, pivotal in this case, reads: “Copyright in each sep-
arate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the
collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contri-
bution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any
rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is pre-
sumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distribut-
ing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revi-
sion of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same
series.” The District Court granted the Publishers summary judg-
ment, holding, inter alia, that the Databases reproduced and distributed
the Authors’ works, in § 201(c)’s words, “as part of . . . [a] revision of
that collective work” to which the Authors had first contributed. The
Second Circuit reversed, granting the Authors summary judgment on
the ground that the Databases were not among the collective works
covered by § 201(c), and specifically, were not “revisions” of the periodi-
cals in which the Articles first appeared.
Held: Section 201(c) does not authorize the copying at issue here. The
Publishers are not sheltered by § 201(c) because the Databases repro-
duce and distribute articles standing alone and not in context, not “as
part of that particular collective work” to which the author contributed,
“as part of . . . any revision” thereof, or “as part of . . . any later collec-
tive work in the same series.” Pp. 493–506.
(a) Where, as here, a freelance author has contributed an article to a
collective work, copyright in the contribution vests initially in its author.
§ 201(c). Copyright in the collective work vests in the collective author
(here, the Print Publisher) and extends only to the creative material
contributed by that author, not to “the preexisting material employed
in the work,” § 103(b). Congress enacted the provisions of the 1976
revision of the Copyright Act at issue to address the unfair situation
under prior law, whereby authors risked losing their rights when they
placed an article in a collective work. The 1976 Act recast the copy-
right as a bundle of discrete “exclusive rights,” § 106, each of which
“may be transferred . . . and owned separately,” § 201(d)(2). The Act
also provided, in § 404(a), that “a single notice applicable to the collective
work as a whole is sufficient” to protect the rights of freelance contribu-
tors. Together, § 404(a) and § 201(c) preserve the author’s copyright in
a contribution to a collective work. Under § 201(c)’s terms, a publisher
could reprint a contribution from one issue in a later issue of its maga-
zine, and could reprint an article from one edition of an encyclopedia in
a later revision of it, but could not revise the contribution itself or in-
clude it in a new anthology or an entirely different collective work. Es-

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sentially, § 201(c) adjusts a publisher’s copyright in its collective work to
accommodate a freelancer’s copyright in her contribution. If there is
demand for a freelance article standing alone or in a new collection, the
Copyright Act allows the freelancer to benefit from that demand; after
authorizing initial publication, the freelancer may also sell the article to
others. Cf. Stewart v. Abend, 495 U. S. 207, 229, 230. It would scarcely
preserve the author’s copyright in a contribution as contemplated by
Congress if a print publisher, without the author’s permission, could
reproduce or distribute discrete copies of the contribution in isolation
or within new collective works. Pp. 493–497.
(b) The Publishers’ view that inclusion of the Articles in the Data-
bases lies within the “privilege of reproducing and distributing the [Ar-
ticles] as part of . . . [a] revision of that collective work,” § 201(c), is
unacceptable. In determining whether the Articles have been repro-
duced and distributed “as part of ” a “revision,” the Court focuses on
the Articles as presented to, and perceptible by, a Database user. See
§§ 102, 101. Here, the three Databases present articles to users clear
of the context provided either by the original periodical editions or by
any revision of those editions. The Databases first prompt users to
search the universe of their contents: thousands or millions of files con-
taining individual articles from thousands of collective works (i. e., edi-
tions), either in one series (the Times, in NYTO) or in scores of series
(the sundry titles in NEXIS and GPO). When the user conducts a
search, each article appears as a separate item within the search result.
In NEXIS and NYTO, an article appears to a user without the graphics,
formatting, or other articles with which it was initially published. In
GPO, the article appears with the other materials published on the same
page or pages, but without any material published on other pages of
the original periodical. In either circumstance, the Database does not
reproduce and distribute the article “as part of ” either the original edi-
tion or a “revision” of that edition. The articles may be viewed as parts
of a new compendium—namely, the entirety of works in the Database.
Each edition of each periodical, however, represents only a miniscule
fraction of the ever-expanding Database. The massive whole of the
Database is not recognizable as a new version of its every small part.
Furthermore, the Articles in the Databases may be viewed “as part
of ” no larger work at all, but simply as individual articles presented
individually. That each article bears marks of its origin in a particular
periodical suggests the article was previously part of that periodical,
not that the article is currently reproduced or distributed as part of the
periodical. The Databases’ reproduction and distribution of individual
Articles—simply as individual Articles—would invade the core of the
Authors’ exclusive rights. The Publishers’ analogy between the Data-

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486 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
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bases and microfilm and microfiche is wanting: In the Databases, unlike
microfilm, articles appear disconnected from their original context.
Unlike the conversion of newsprint to microfilm, the transfer of articles
to the Databases does not represent a mere conversion of intact peri-
odicals (or revisions of periodicals) from one medium to another. The
Databases offer users individual articles, not intact periodicals. The
concept of “media-neutrality” invoked by the Publishers should there-
fore protect the Authors’ rights, not the Publishers’. The result is not
changed because users can manipulate the Databases to generate search
results consisting entirely of articles from a particular periodical edition.
Under § 201(c), the question is not whether a user can assemble a revi-
sion of a collective work from a database, but whether the database
itself perceptibly presents the author’s contribution as part of a revision
of the collective work. That result is not accomplished by these Data-
bases. Pp. 498–504.
(c) The Publishers’ warning that a ruling for the Authors will have
“devastating” consequences, punching gaping holes in the electronic rec-
ord of history, is unavailing. It hardly follows from this decision that
an injunction against the inclusion of these Articles in the Databases
(much less all freelance articles in any databases) must issue. The Au-
thors and Publishers may enter into an agreement allowing continued
electronic reproduction of the Authors’ works; they, and if necessary the
courts and Congress, may draw on numerous models for distributing
copyrighted works and remunerating authors for their distribution. In
any event, speculation about future harms is no basis for this Court to
shrink authorial rights created by Congress. The Court leaves reme-
dial issues open for initial airing and decision in the District Court.
Pp. 504–506.
206 F. 3d 161, affirmed.
Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist,
C. J., and O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined.
Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, J., joined, post,
p. 506.
Laurence H. Tribe argued the cause for petitioners. With
him on the briefs were Jonathan S. Massey, Bruce P. Keller,
Jeffrey P. Cunard, Michael R. Potenza, Peter C. Johnson,
and Thomas C. Goldstein.
Laurence Gold argued the cause for respondents Tasini
et al. With him on the brief were Patricia A. Felch, Dan-
iel W. Sherrick, Michael H. Gottesman, and Leon Dayan.

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Emily Maruja Bass filed a brief for respondents Garson
et al.*
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.
This copyright case concerns the rights of freelance au-
thors and a presumptive privilege of their publishers. The
litigation was initiated by six freelance authors and relates
to articles they contributed to three print periodicals (two
newspapers and one magazine). Under agreements with
the periodicals’ publishers, but without the freelancers’ con-
sent, two computer database companies placed copies of the
freelancers’ articles—along with all other articles from the
periodicals in which the freelancers’ work appeared—into
three databases. Whether written by a freelancer or staff
member, each article is presented to, and retrievable by, the
user in isolation, clear of the context the original print publi-
cation presented.
The freelance authors’ complaint alleged that their copy-
rights had been infringed by the inclusion of their articles in
the databases. The publishers, in response, relied on the
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for Advance Publica-
tions, Inc., et al. by Charles S. Sims, Jerry S. Birenz, Harold W. Fuson,
Jr., Andrew A. Merdek, Barbara W. Wall, Katherine Hatton, Barbara
Cohen, and Clifford M. Sloan; for the National Geographic Society by
Kenneth W. Starr, Christopher Landau, Terrence B. Adamson, and Robert
G. Sugarman; for the Software & Information Industry Association et al.
by Henry B. Gutman, Arthur R. Miller, and James F. Rittinger; and for
Ken Burns et al. by Michael F. Clayton and Brett I. Miller.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American
Library Association et al. by Arnold P. Lutzker; for the Authors Guild,
Inc., et al. by Leon Friedman; for the International Federation of Jour-
nalists by Thomas M. Peterson and Brett M. Schuman; and for Ellen
Schrecker et al. by Theodore M. Lieverman.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the American Intellectual Property
Law Association by Paul E. Lacy and Daniel W. McDonald; and for the
American Society of Media Photographers, Inc., et al. by L. Donald Prutz-
man and Victor S. Perlman.

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privilege of reproduction and distribution accorded them by
§ 201(c) of the Copyright Act, which provides:
“Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective
work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as
a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribu-
tion. In the absence of an express transfer of the copy-
right or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright
in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only
the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contri-
bution as part of that particular collective work, any re-
vision of that collective work, and any later collective
work in the same series.” 17 U. S. C. § 201(c).
Specifically, the publishers maintained that, as copyright
owners of collective works, i. e., the original print publica-
tions, they had merely exercised “the privilege” § 201(c) ac-
cords them to “reproduc[e] and distribut[e]” the author’s dis-
cretely copyrighted contribution.
In agreement with the Second Circuit, we hold that § 201(c)
does not authorize the copying at issue here. The publish-
ers are not sheltered by § 201(c), we conclude, because the
databases reproduce and distribute articles standing alone
and not in context, not “as part of that particular collective
work” to which the author contributed, “as part of . . . any
revision” thereof, or “as part of . . . any later collective work
in the same series.” Both the print publishers and the elec-
tronic publishers, we rule, have infringed the copyrights of
the freelance authors.
I
A
Respondents Jonathan Tasini, Mary Kay Blakely, Barbara
Garson, Margot Mifflin, Sonia Jaffe Robbins, and David S.
Whitford are authors (Authors). Between 1990 and 1993,
they wrote the 21 articles (Articles) on which this dispute
centers. Tasini, Mifflin, and Blakely contributed 12 Articles
to The New York Times, the daily newspaper published by

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petitioner The New York Times Company (Times). Tasini,
Garson, Robbins, and Whitford wrote eight Articles for
Newsday, another New York daily paper, published by peti-
tioner Newsday, Inc. (Newsday). Whitford also contributed
one Article to Sports Illustrated, a weekly magazine pub-
lished by petitioner Time, Inc. (Time). The Authors regis-
tered copyrights in each of the Articles. The Times, News-
day, and Time (Print Publishers) registered collective work
copyrights in each periodical edition in which an Article orig-
inally appeared. The Print Publishers engaged the Authors
as independent contractors (freelancers) under contracts that
in no instance secured consent from an Author to placement
of an Article in an electronic database.1
At the time the Articles were published, all three Print
Publishers had agreements with petitioner LEXIS/NEXIS
(formerly Mead Data Central Corp.), owner and operator of
NEXIS, a computerized database that stores information
in a text-only format. NEXIS contains articles from hun-
dreds of journals (newspapers and periodicals) spanning
many years. The Print Publishers have licensed to LEXIS/
NEXIS the text of articles appearing in the three periodi-
cals. The licenses authorize LEXIS/NEXIS to copy and sell
any portion of those texts.
Pursuant to the licensing agreements, the Print Publishers
regularly provide LEXIS/NEXIS with a batch of all the ar-
ticles published in each periodical edition. The Print Pub-
lisher codes each article to facilitate computerized retrieval,
then transmits it in a separate file. After further coding,
LEXIS/NEXIS places the article in the central discs of its
database.
1 In the District Court, Newsday and Time contended that the freelanc-
ers who wrote for their publications had entered into agreements authoriz-
ing reproduction of the Articles in the databases. The Court of Appeals
ruled that Newsday’s defense was waived, and rejected Time’s argument
on the merits. Neither petitioner presses the contention here.

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Subscribers to NEXIS, accessing the system through a
computer, may search for articles by author, subject, date,
publication, headline, key term, words in text, or other crite-
ria. Responding to a search command, NEXIS scans the
database and informs the user of the number of articles
meeting the user’s search criteria. The user then may view,
print, or download each of the articles yielded by the search.
The display of each article includes the print publication
(e. g., The New York Times), date (September 23, 1990), sec-
tion (Magazine), initial page number (26), headline or title
(“Remembering Jane”), and author (Mary Kay Blakely).
Each article appears as a separate, isolated “story”—without
any visible link to the other stories originally published in
the same newspaper or magazine edition. NEXIS does not
contain pictures or advertisements, and it does not reproduce
the original print publication’s formatting features such as
headline size, page placement (e. g., above or below the fold
for newspapers), or location of continuation pages.
The Times (but not Newsday or Time) also has licensing
agreements with petitioner University Microfilms Interna-
tional (UMI). The agreements authorize reproduction of
Times materials on two CD–ROM products, the New York
Times OnDisc (NYTO) and General Periodicals OnDisc
(GPO).
Like NEXIS, NYTO is a text-only system. Unlike
NEXIS, NYTO, as its name suggests, contains only the
Times. Pursuant to a three-way agreement, LEXIS/
NEXIS provides UMI with computer files containing each
article as transmitted by the Times to LEXIS/NEXIS.
Like LEXIS/NEXIS, UMI marks each article with special
codes. UMI also provides an index of all the articles in
NYTO. Articles appear in NYTO in essentially the same
way they appear in NEXIS, i. e., with identifying informa-
tion (author, title, etc.), but without original formatting or
accompanying images.

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GPO contains articles from approximately 200 publications
or sections of publications. Unlike NEXIS and NYTO, GPO
is an image-based, rather than a text-based, system. The
Times has licensed GPO to provide a facsimile of the Times’
Sunday Book Review and Magazine. UMI “burns” images
of each page of these sections onto CD–ROMs. The CD–
ROMs show each article exactly as it appeared on printed
pages, complete with photographs, captions, advertisements,
and other surrounding materials. UMI provides an index
and abstracts of all the articles in GPO.
Articles are accessed through NYTO and GPO much as
they are accessed through NEXIS. The user enters a
search query using similar criteria (e. g., author, headline,
date). The computer program searches available indexes
and abstracts, and retrieves a list of results matching the
query. The user then may view each article within the
search result, and may print the article or download it to a
disc. The display of each article provides no links to articles
appearing on other pages of the original print publications.2
B
On December 16, 1993, the Authors filed this civil action
in the United States District Court for the Southern District
of New York. The Authors alleged that their copyrights
were infringed when, as permitted and facilitated by the
Print Publishers, LEXIS/NEXIS and UMI (Electronic Pub-
lishers) placed the Articles in the NEXIS, NYTO, and GPO
databases (Databases). The Authors sought declaratory
2 For example, the GPO user who retrieves Blakely’s “Remembering
Jane” article will see the entirety of Magazine page 26, where the article
begins, and Magazine page 78, where the article continues and ends. The
NYTO user who retrieves Blakely’s article will see only the text of the
article and its identifying information (author, headline, publication, page
number, etc.). Neither the GPO retrieval nor the NYTO retrieval pro-
duces any text on page 27, page 79, or any other page. The user who
wishes to see other pages may not simply “flip” to them. She must con-
duct a new search.

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and injunctive relief, and damages. In response to the Au-
thors’ complaint, the Print and Electronic Publishers raised
the reproduction and distribution privilege accorded collec-
tive work copyright owners by 17 U. S. C. § 201(c). After
discovery, both sides moved for summary judgment.
The District Court granted summary judgment for the
Publishers, holding that § 201(c) shielded the Database repro-
ductions. 972 F. Supp. 804, 806 (1997). The privilege con-
ferred by § 201(c) is transferable, the court first concluded,
and therefore could be conveyed from the original Print Pub-
lishers to the Electronic Publishers. Id., at 816. Next, the
court determined, the Databases reproduced and distributed
the Authors’ works, in § 201(c)’s words, “as part of . . . [a]
revision of that collective work” to which the Authors had
first contributed. To qualify as “revisions,” according to the
court, works need only “preserve some significant original
aspect of [collective works]—whether an original selection or
an original arrangement.” Id., at 821. This criterion was
met, in the District Court’s view, because the Databases pre-
served the Print Publishers’ “selection of articles” by copy-
ing all of the articles originally assembled in the periodicals’
daily or weekly issues. Id., at 823. The Databases “high-
light[ed]” the connection between the articles and the print
periodicals, the court observed, by showing for each article
not only the author and periodical, but also the print publica-
tion’s particular issue and page numbers. Id., at 824 (“[T]he
electronic technologies not only copy the publisher defend-
ants’ complete original ‘selection’ of articles, they tag those
articles in such a way that the publisher defendants’ original
selection remains evident online.”).
The Authors appealed, and the Second Circuit reversed.
206 F. 3d 161 (1999). The Court of Appeals granted sum-
mary judgment for the Authors on the ground that the Data-
bases were not among the collective works covered by
§ 201(c), and specifically, were not “revisions” of the periodi-
cals in which the Articles first appeared. Id., at 167–170.
Just as § 201(c) does not “permit a Publisher to sell a hard

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copy of an Author’s article directly to the public even if the
Publisher also offered for individual sale all of the other arti-
cles from the particular edition,” the court reasoned, so
§ 201(c) does not allow a Publisher to “achieve the same goal
indirectly” through computer databases. Id., at 168. In
the Second Circuit’s view, the Databases effectively achieved
this result by providing multitudes of “individually retriev-
able” articles. Ibid. As stated by the Court of Appeals,
the Databases might fairly be described as containing “new
antholog[ies] of innumerable” editions or publications, but
they do not qualify as “revisions” of particular editions of
periodicals in the Databases. Id., at 169. Having con-
cluded that § 201(c) “does not permit the Publishers,” acting
without the author’s consent, “to license individually copy-
righted works for inclusion in the electronic databases,” the
court did not reach the question whether the § 201(c) privi-
lege is transferable. Id., at 165, and n. 2.
We granted certiorari to determine whether the copying
of the Authors’ Articles in the Databases is privileged by
17 U. S. C. § 201(c). 531 U. S. 978 (2000). Like the Court
of Appeals, we conclude that the § 201(c) privilege does not
override the Authors’ copyrights, for the Databases do not
reproduce and distribute the Articles as part of a collective
work privileged by § 201(c). Accordingly, and again like the
Court of Appeals, we find it unnecessary to determine
whether the privilege is transferable.
II
Under the Copyright Act, as amended in 1976, “[c]opyright
protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed
in any tangible medium of expression . . . from which they
can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated.”
17 U. S. C. § 102(a). When, as in this case, a freelance author
has contributed an article to a “collective work” such as
a newspaper or magazine, see § 101 (defining “collective
work”), the statute recognizes two distinct copyrighted
works: “Copyright in each separate contribution to a collec-

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tive work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as
a whole . . . .” § 201(c) (emphasis added). Copyright in the
separate contribution “vests initially in the author of the con-
tribution” (here, the freelancer). Ibid. Copyright in the
collective work vests in the collective author (here, the news-
paper or magazine publisher) and extends only to the cre-
ative material contributed by that author, not to “the pre-
existing material employed in the work,” § 103(b). See
also Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.,
499 U. S. 340, 358 (1991) (copyright in “compilation”—a term
that includes “collective works,” 17 U. S. C. § 101—is lim-
ited to the compiler’s original “selection, coordination, and
arrangement”).
Prior to the 1976 revision, as the courts below recognized,
see 206 F. 3d, at 168; 972 F. Supp., at 815, authors risked
losing their rights when they placed an article in a collective
work. Pre-1976 copyright law recognized a freelance au-
thor’s copyright in a published article only when the article
was printed with a copyright notice in the author’s name.
See Copyright Act of 1909, § 18, 35 Stat. 1079. When pub-
lishers, exercising their superior bargaining power over au-
thors, declined to print notices in each contributor’s name,
the author’s copyright was put in jeopardy. See Kamin-
stein, Divisibility of Copyrights, Study No. 11, in Copyright
Law Revision Studies Nos. 11–13, prepared for the Senate
Committee on the Judiciary, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 18 (1960).
The author did not have the option to assign only the right
of publication in the periodical; such a partial assignment
was blocked by the doctrine of copyright “indivisibility.”
See id., at 11. Thus, when a copyright notice appeared only
in the publisher’s name, the author’s work would fall into the
public domain, unless the author’s copyright, in its entirety,
had passed to the publisher. See id., at 18. Such complete
transfer might be accomplished by a contract, perhaps one
with a provision, not easily enforced, for later retransfer of
rights back to the author. See id., at 20–22. Or, absent a
specific contract, a court might find that an author had tacitly

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transferred the entire copyright to a publisher, in turn
deemed to hold the copyright in “trust” for the author’s
benefit. See id., at 18–19; see generally 3 M. Nimmer &
D. Nimmer, Copyright § 10.01[C][2], pp. 10–12 to 10–14
(2000).
In the 1976 revision, Congress acted to “clarify and im-
prove [this] confused and frequently unfair legal situation
with respect to rights in contributions.” H. R. Rep. No. 94–
1476, p. 122 (1976) (hereinafter H. R. Rep.).3 The 1976 Act
rejected the doctrine of indivisibility, recasting the copy-
right as a bundle of discrete “exclusive rights,” 17 U. S. C.
§ 106 (1994 ed. and Supp. V),4 each of which “may be trans-
3 Two Registers of Copyrights have observed that the 1976 revision of
the Copyright Act represented “a break with a two-hundred-year-old tra-
dition that has identified copyright more closely with the publisher than
with the author.” Letter from M. Peters to Rep. McGovern, reprinted in
147 Cong. Rec. E182 (Feb. 14, 2001) (hereinafter Peters Letter) (quoting
Ringer, First Thoughts on the Copyright Act of 1976, 22 N. Y. L. S. L.
Rev. 477, 490 (1977)). The intent to enhance the author’s position vis-a` -vis
the patron is also evident in the 1976 Act’s work-for-hire provisions. See
Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730, 742–750
(1989); see also 17 U. S. C. § 203(a)(5) (inalienable authorial right to revoke
a copyright transfer). Congress’ adjustment of the author/publisher bal-
ance is a permissible expression of the “economic philosophy behind the
[Copyright Clause],” i. e., “the conviction that encouragement of individual
effort [motivated] by personal gain is the best way to advance public wel-
fare.” Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U. S.
539, 558 (1985) (quoting Mazer v. Stein, 347 U. S. 201, 219 (1954)).
4 As amended, § 106 now provides: “Subject to sections 107 through 121,
the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and
to authorize any of the following:
“(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 indi-

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ferred . . . and owned separately,” § 201(d)(2).5 Congress
also provided, in § 404(a), that “a single notice applicable to
the collective work as a whole is sufficient” to protect the
rights of freelance contributors. And in § 201(c), Congress
codified the discrete domains of “[c]opyright in each sepa-
rate contribution to a collective work” and “copyright in the
collective work as a whole.” Together, § 404(a) and § 201(c)
“preserve the author’s copyright in a contribution even if
the contribution does not bear a separate notice in the au-
thor’s name, and without requiring any unqualified transfer
of rights to the owner of the collective work.” H. R. Rep.
122.
Section 201(c) both describes and circumscribes the “privi-
lege” a publisher acquires regarding an author’s contribution
to a collective work:
“In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright
or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the
collective work is presumed to have acquired only the
privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribu-
tion as part of that particular collective work, any revi-
sion of that collective work, and any later collective
work in the same series.” (Emphasis added.)
A newspaper or magazine publisher is thus privileged to re-
produce or distribute an article contributed by a freelance
author, absent a contract otherwise providing, only “as part
of ” any (or all) of three categories of collective works: (a)
“that collective work” to which the author contributed her
work, (b) “any revision of that collective work,” or (c) “any
later collective work in the same series.” In accord with
Congress’ prescription, a “publishing company could reprint
vidual 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.”
5 It bears repetition here, see supra, at 493, that we neither decide nor
express any view on whether the § 201(c) “privilege” may be transferred.

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a contribution from one issue in a later issue of its magazine,
and could reprint an article from a 1980 edition of an encyclo-
pedia in a 1990 revision of it; the publisher could not revise
the contribution itself or include it in a new anthology or an
entirely different magazine or other collective work.” H. R.
Rep. 122–123.
Essentially, § 201(c) adjusts a publisher’s copyright in its
collective work to accommodate a freelancer’s copyright in
her contribution. If there is demand for a freelance article
standing alone or in a new collection, the Copyright Act
allows the freelancer to benefit from that demand; after au-
thorizing initial publication, the freelancer may also sell the
article to others. Cf. Stewart v. Abend, 495 U. S. 207, 229
(1990) (“[w]hen an author produces a work which later com-
mands a higher price in the market than the original bargain
provided, the copyright statute [i. e., the separate renewal
term of former 17 U. S. C. § 24] is designed to provide the
author the power to negotiate for the realized value of the
work”); id., at 230 (noting author’s “inalienable termination
right” under current 17 U. S. C. §§ 203, 302 (1994 ed. and
Supp. V)). It would scarcely “preserve the author’s copy-
right in a contribution” as contemplated by Congress, H. R.
Rep. 122, if a newspaper or magazine publisher were per-
mitted to reproduce or distribute copies of the author’s con-
tribution in isolation or within new collective works. See
Gordon, Fine-Tuning Tasini: Privileges of Electronic Dis-
tribution and Reproduction, 66 Brooklyn L. Rev. 473, 484
(2000). 6
6 The dissenting opinion suggests that a ruling for the Publishers today
would maintain, even enhance, authors’ “valuable copyright protection.”
Post, at 521 (opinion of Stevens, J.). We are not so certain. When the
reader of an article in a periodical wishes to obtain other works by the
article’s author, the Databases enable that reader simply to print out
the author’s articles, without buying a “new anthology . . . or other collec-
tive work,” H. R. Rep. 122–123. In years past, books compiling stories
by journalists such as Janet Flanner and Ernie Pyle might have sold less
well had the individual articles been freely and permanently available on

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III
In the instant case, the Authors wrote several Articles and
gave the Print Publishers permission to publish the Articles
in certain newspapers and magazines. It is undisputed that
the Authors hold copyrights and, therefore, exclusive rights
in the Articles.7 It is clear, moreover, that the Print and
Electronic Publishers have exercised at least some rights
that § 106 initially assigns exclusively to the Authors:
LEXIS/NEXIS’ central discs and UMI’s CD–ROMs “repro-
duce . . . copies” of the Articles, § 106(1); UMI, by selling
those CD–ROMs, and LEXIS/NEXIS, by selling copies of
the Articles through the NEXIS Database, “distribute cop-
ies” of the Articles “to the public by sale,” § 106(3); and the
Print Publishers, through contracts licensing the produc-
tion of copies in the Databases, “authorize” reproduction and
distribution of the Articles, § 106.8
line. In the present, print collections of reviews, commentaries, and re-
portage may prove less popular because of the Databases. The Register
of Copyrights reports that “freelance authors have experienced significant
economic loss” due to a “digital revolution that has given publishers [new]
opportunities to exploit authors’ works.” Peters Letter E182.
More to the point, even if the dissent is correct that some authors, in
the long run, are helped, not hurt, by Database reproductions, the fact
remains that the Authors who brought the case now before us have as-
serted their rights under § 201(c). We may not invoke our conception of
their interests to diminish those rights.
7 The Publishers do not claim that the Articles are “work[s] made for
hire.” 17 U. S. C. § 201(b). As to such works, the employer or person for
whom a work was prepared is treated as the author. Ibid. The Print
Publishers, however, neither engaged the Authors to write the Articles as
“employee[s]” nor “commissioned” the Articles through “a written instru-
ment signed by [both parties]” indicating that the Articles shall be consid-
ered “work[s] made for hire.” § 101 (1994 ed., Supp. V) (defining “work
made for hire”).
8 Satisfied that the Publishers exercised rights § 106 initially assigns ex-
clusively to the Author, we need resolve no more on that score. Thus, we
do not reach an issue the Register of Copyrights has argued vigorously.
The Register maintains that the Databases publicly “display” the Articles,

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Against the Authors’ charge of infringement, the Publish-
ers do not here contend the Authors entered into an agree-
ment authorizing reproduction of the Articles in the Data-
bases. See supra, at 489, n. 1. Nor do they assert that the
copies in the Databases represent “fair use” of the Authors’
Articles. See 17 U. S. C. § 107 (“fair use of a copyrighted
work . . . is not an infringement”; four factors identified
among those relevant to fair use determination). Instead,
the Publishers rest entirely on the privilege described in
§ 201(c). Each discrete edition of the periodicals in which
the Articles appeared is a “collective work,” the Publishers
agree. They contend, however, that reproduction and dis-
tribution of each Article by the Databases lie within the
“privilege of reproducing and distributing the [Articles] as
part of . . . [a] revision of that collective work,” § 201(c). The
Publishers’ encompassing construction of the § 201(c) privi-
lege is unacceptable, we conclude, for it would diminish the
Authors’ exclusive rights in the Articles.
In determining whether the Articles have been repro-
duced and distributed “as part of ” a “revision” of the collec-
tive works in issue, we focus on the Articles as presented
to, and perceptible by, the user of the Databases. See § 102
(copyright protection subsists in original works fixed in any
medium “from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or
otherwise communicated”); see also § 101 (1994 ed., Supp. V)
(definitions of “copies” and “fixed”); Haemmerli, Commen-
tary: Tasini v. New York Times Co., 22 Colum.-VLA. J. L. &
Arts 129, 142–143 (1998). In this case, the three Databases
present articles to users clear of the context provided either
by the original periodical editions or by any revision of those
editions. The Databases first prompt users to search the
universe of their contents: thousands or millions of files con-
§ 106(5); because § 201(c) does not privilege “display,” the Register urges,
the § 201(c) privilege does not shield the Databases. See Peters Letter
E182–E183.

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taining individual articles from thousands of collective works
(i. e., editions), either in one series (the Times, in NYTO) or
in scores of series (the sundry titles in NEXIS and GPO).
When the user conducts a search, each article appears as a
separate item within the search result. In NEXIS and
NYTO, an article appears to a user without the graphics,
formatting, or other articles with which the article was ini-
tially published. In GPO, the article appears with the other
materials published on the same page or pages, but without
any material published on other pages of the original periodi-
cal. In either circumstance, we cannot see how the Data-
base perceptibly reproduces and distributes the article “as
part of ” either the original edition or a “revision” of that
edition.
One might view the articles as parts of a new compen-
dium—namely, the entirety of works in the Database. In
that compendium, each edition of each periodical represents
only a miniscule fraction of the ever-expanding Database.
The Database no more constitutes a “revision” of each con-
stituent edition than a 400-page novel quoting a sonnet in
passing would represent a “revision” of that poem. “Revi-
sion” denotes a new “version,” and a version is, in this set-
ting, a “distinct form of something regarded by its creator
or others as one work.” Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary 1944, 2545 (1976). The massive whole of the
Database is not recognizable as a new version of its every
small part.
Alternatively, one could view the Articles in the Databases
“as part of ” no larger work at all, but simply as individual
articles presented individually. That each article bears
marks of its origin in a particular periodical (less vivid marks
in NEXIS and NYTO, more vivid marks in GPO) suggests
the article was previously part of that periodical. But the
markings do not mean the article is currently reproduced or
distributed as part of the periodical. The Databases’ repro-
duction and distribution of individual Articles—simply as

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individual Articles—would invade the core of the Authors’
exclusive rights under § 106.9
The Publishers press an analogy between the Databases,
on the one hand, and microfilm and microfiche, on the other.
We find the analogy wanting. Microforms typically contain
continuous photographic reproductions of a periodical in the
medium of miniaturized film. Accordingly, articles appear
on the microforms, writ very small, in precisely the position
in which the articles appeared in the newspaper. The
Times, for example, printed the beginning of Blakely’s “Re-
membering Jane” Article on page 26 of the Magazine in the
September 23, 1990, edition; the microfilm version of the
Times reproduces that same Article on film in the very same
position, within a film reproduction of the entire Magazine,
in turn within a reproduction of the entire September 23,
1990, edition. True, the microfilm roll contains multiple edi-
tions, and the microfilm user can adjust the machine lens to
focus only on the Article, to the exclusion of surrounding
material. Nonetheless, the user first encounters the Article
in context. In the Databases, by contrast, the Articles ap-
pear disconnected from their original context. In NEXIS
and NYTO, the user sees the “Jane” Article apart even from
the remainder of page 26. In GPO, the user sees the Article
within the context of page 26, but clear of the context of page
25 or page 27, the rest of the Magazine, or the remainder of
the day’s newspaper. In short, unlike microforms, the Data-
bases do not perceptibly reproduce articles as part of the
9 The dissenting opinion takes as its starting point “what is sent from
the New York Times to the Electronic Databases.” See post, at 512–516.
This case, however, is not ultimately about what is sent between Publish-
ers in an intermediate step of Database production; it is about what is
presented to the general public in the Databases. See supra, at 499–500.
Those Databases simply cannot bear characterization as a “revision” of
any one periodical edition. We would reach the same conclusion if the
Times sent intact newspapers to the Electronic Publishers.

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collective work to which the author contributed or as part of
any “revision” thereof.10
Invoking the concept of “media neutrality,” the Publishers
urge that the “transfer of a work between media” does not
“alte[r] the character of ” that work for copyright purposes.
Brief for Petitioners 23. That is indeed true. See 17
U. S. C. § 102(a) (copyright protection subsists in original
works “fixed in any tangible medium of expression”). But
unlike the conversion of newsprint to microfilm, the transfer
of articles to the Databases does not represent a mere con-
version of intact periodicals (or revisions of periodicals) from
one medium to another. The Databases offer users individ-
ual articles, not intact periodicals. In this case, media neu-
trality should protect the Authors’ rights in the individual
Articles to the extent those Articles are now presented
individually, outside the collective work context, within the
Databases’ new media.11
For the purpose at hand—determining whether the Au-
thors’ copyrights have been infringed—an analogy to an
10 The Court of Appeals concluded NEXIS was infringing partly because
that Database did “almost nothing to preserve the copyrightable aspects
of the [Print] Publishers’ collective works,” i. e., their original “selection,
coordination, and arrangement.” 206 F. 3d 161, 168 (CA2 1999). We do
not pass on this issue. It suffices to hold that the Databases do not con-
tain “revisions” of the Print Publishers’ works “as part of ” which the Arti-
cles are reproduced and distributed.
11 The dissenting opinion apparently concludes that, under the banner of
“media neutrality,” a copy of a collective work, even when considerably
changed, must constitute a “revision” of that collective work so long as the
changes were “necessitated by the . . . medium.” Post, at 514. We lack
the dissent’s confidence that the current form of the Databases is entirely
attributable to the nature of the electronic media, rather than the nature
of the economic market served by the Databases. In any case, we see no
grounding in § 201(c) for a “medium-driven” necessity defense, post, at 514,
n. 11, to the Authors’ infringement claims. Furthermore, it bears re-
minder here and throughout that these Publishers and all others can pro-
tect their interests by private contractual arrangement.

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imaginary library may be instructive.12 Rather than main-
taining intact editions of periodicals, the library would con-
tain separate copies of each article. Perhaps these copies
would exactly reproduce the periodical pages from which the
articles derive (if the model is GPO); perhaps the copies
would contain only typescript characters, but still indicate
the original periodical’s name and date, as well as the arti-
cle’s headline and page number (if the model is NEXIS or
NYTO). The library would store the folders containing the
articles in a file room, indexed based on diverse criteria, and
containing articles from vast numbers of editions. In re-
sponse to patron requests, an inhumanly speedy librarian
would search the room and provide copies of the articles
matching patron-specified criteria.
Viewing this strange library, one could not, consistent with
ordinary English usage, characterize the articles “as part of ”
a “revision” of the editions in which the articles first ap-
peared. In substance, however, the Databases differ from
the file room only to the extent they aggregate articles in
electronic packages (the LEXIS/NEXIS central discs or
UMI CD–ROMs), while the file room stores articles in spa-
tially separate files. The crucial fact is that the Databases,
like the hypothetical library, store and retrieve articles sepa-
rately within a vast domain of diverse texts. Such a storage
and retrieval system effectively overrides the Authors’ ex-
12 The Publishers have frequently referred to their products as “elec-
tronic libraries.” We need not decide whether the Databases come within
the legal coverage of the term “libraries” as used in the Copyright Act.
For even if the Databases are “libraries,” the Copyright Act’s special au-
thorizations for libraries do not cover the Databases’ reproductions. See,
e. g., 17 U. S. C. § 108(a)(1) (reproduction authorized “without any purpose
of direct or indirect commercial advantage”); § 108(b) (1994 ed., Supp. V)
(reproduction authorized “solely for purposes of preservation and security
or for deposit for research use”); § 108(c) (1994 ed., Supp. V) (reproduction
“solely for the purpose of replacement of a copy or phonorecord that is
damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen, or if the existing format in which
the work is stored has become obsolete”).

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clusive right to control the individual reproduction and dis-
tribution of each Article, 17 U. S. C. §§ 106(1), (3). Cf. Ryan
v. Carl Corp., 23 F. Supp. 2d 1146 (ND Cal. 1998) (holding
copy shop in violation of § 201(c)).
The Publishers claim the protection of § 201(c) because
users can manipulate the Databases to generate search re-
sults consisting entirely of articles from a particular periodi-
cal edition. By this logic, § 201(c) would cover the hypothet-
ical library if, in response to a request, that library’s expert
staff assembled all of the articles from a particular periodical
edition. However, the fact that a third party can manipulate
a database to produce a noninfringing document does not
mean the database is not infringing. Under § 201(c), the
question is not whether a user can generate a revision of a
collective work from a database, but whether the database
itself perceptibly presents the author’s contribution as part
of a revision of the collective work. That result is not ac-
complished by these Databases.
The Publishers finally invoke Sony Corp. of America v.
Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417 (1984). That de-
cision, however, does not genuinely aid their argument.
Sony held that the “sale of copying equipment” does not con-
stitute contributory infringement if the equipment is “capa-
ble of substantial noninfringing uses.” Id., at 442. The
Publishers suggest that their Databases could be liable only
under a theory of contributory infringement, based on end-
user conduct, which the Authors did not plead. The Elec-
tronic Publishers, however, are not merely selling “equip-
ment”; they are selling copies of the Articles. And, as we
have explained, it is the copies themselves, without any
manipulation by users, that fall outside the scope of the
§ 201(c) privilege.
IV
The Publishers warn that a ruling for the Authors will
have “devastating” consequences. Brief for Petitioners 49.
The Databases, the Publishers note, provide easy access to

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complete newspaper texts going back decades. A ruling for
the Authors, the Publishers suggest, will punch gaping holes
in the electronic record of history. The Publishers’ concerns
are echoed by several historians, see Brief for Ken Burns
et al. as Amici Curiae, but discounted by several other histo-
rians, see Brief for Ellen Schrecker et al. as Amici Curiae;
Brief for Authors’ Guild, Inc., Jacques Barzun et al. as
Amici Curiae.
Notwithstanding the dire predictions from some quarters,
see also post, at 520 (Stevens, J., dissenting), it hardly fol-
lows from today’s decision that an injunction against the in-
clusion of these Articles in the Databases (much less all free-
lance articles in any databases) must issue. See 17 U. S. C.
§ 502(a) (court “may” enjoin infringement); Campbell v.
Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569, 578, n. 10 (1994) (goals
of copyright law are “not always best served by automati-
cally granting injunctive relief ”). The parties (Authors and
Publishers) may enter into an agreement allowing continued
electronic reproduction of the Authors’ works; they, and if
necessary the courts and Congress, may draw on numerous
models for distributing copyrighted works and remunerating
authors for their distribution. See, e. g., 17 U. S. C. § 118(b);
Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System,
Inc., 441 U. S. 1, 4–6, 10–12 (1979) (recounting history of
blanket music licensing regimes and consent decrees gov-
erning their operation).13 In any event, speculation about
13 Courts in other nations, applying their domestic copyright laws, have
also concluded that Internet or CD–ROM reproduction and distribution of
freelancers’ works violate the copyrights of freelancers. See, e. g., Union
Syndicale des Journalistes Franc¸ais v. SDV Plurime´dia (T. G. I., Stras-
bourg, Fr., Feb. 3, 1998), in Lodging of International Federation of Jour-
nalists (IFJ) as Amicus Curiae; S. C. R. L. Central Station v. Association
Generale des Journalistes Professionnels de Belgique (CA, Brussels,
Belg., 9e ch., Oct. 28, 1997), transl. and ed. in 22 Colum.-VLA J. L. &
Arts 195 (1998); Heg v. De Volskrant B. V. (Dist. Ct., Amsterdam, Neth.,
Sept. 24, 1997), transl. and ed. in 22 Colum.-VLA J. L. & Arts, at 181.
After the French Plurime´dia decision, the journalists’ union and the

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506 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
Stevens, J., dissenting
future harms is no basis for this Court to shrink authorial
rights Congress established in § 201(c). Agreeing with the
Court of Appeals that the Publishers are liable for infringe-
ment, we leave remedial issues open for initial airing and
decision in the District Court.
* * *
We conclude that the Electronic Publishers infringed the
Authors’ copyrights by reproducing and distributing the Ar-
ticles in a manner not authorized by the Authors and not
privileged by § 201(c). We further conclude that the Print
Publishers infringed the Authors’ copyrights by authorizing
the Electronic Publishers to place the Articles in the Data-
bases and by aiding the Electronic Publishers in that en-
deavor. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of
Appeals.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Breyer joins,
dissenting.
This case raises an issue of first impression concerning
the meaning of the word “revision” as used in § 201(c) of the
1976 revision of the Copyright Act of 1909 (1976 Act). Ironi-
cally, the Court today seems unwilling to acknowledge that
changes in a collective work far less extensive than those
made to prior copyright law by the 1976 “revision” do not
merit the same characterization.
To explain my disagreement with the Court’s holding,
I shall first identify Congress’ principal goals in passing the
1976 Act’s changes in the prior law with respect to collective
works. I will then discuss two analytically separate ques-
newspaper-defendant entered into an agreement compensating authors for
the continued electronic reproduction of their works. See FR3 v. Syndi-
cats de Journalistes (CA, Colmar, Sept. 15, 1998), in Lodging of IFJ as
Amicus Curiae. In Norway, it has been reported, a similar agreement
was reached. See Brief for IFJ as Amicus Curiae 18.

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Stevens, J., dissenting
tions that are blended together in the Court’s discussion of
revisions. The first is whether the electronic versions of the
collective works created by the owners of the copyright in
those works (Print Publishers or publishers) are “revision[s]”
of those works within the meaning of 17 U. S. C. § 201(c). In
my judgment they definitely are. The second is whether the
aggregation by LEXIS/NEXIS and UMI (Electronic Data-
bases) of the revisions with other editions of the same peri-
odical or with other periodicals within a single database
changes the equation. I think it does not. Finally, I will
consider the implications of broader copyright policy for the
issues presented in this case.
I
As the majority correctly observes, prior to 1976, an au-
thor’s decision to publish her individual article as part of a
collective work was a perilous one. Although pre-1976 copy-
right law recognized the author’s copyright in an individual
article that was included within a collective work, those
rights could be lost if the publisher refused to print the
article with a copyright notice in the author’s name. 3 M.
Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 10.01[C][2],
p. 10–12 (2000).
This harsh rule was, from the author’s point of view, exac-
erbated by the pre-1976 doctrine of copyright “indivisibility,”
which prevented an author from assigning only limited publi-
cation rights to the publisher of a collective work while hold-
ing back all other rights to herself.1 Ibid. The indivisibil-
ity of copyright, in combination with the danger of losing
copyright protection, put significant pressure on an author
seeking to preserve her copyright in the contribution to
1 Contractual attempts to assign such limited rights were deemed by
courts to create mere licenses, such that the failure to accompany the
article with an individual copyright in the author’s name allowed the arti-
cle to pass into the public domain. See 3 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copy-
right § 10.01[A], p. 10–5; § 10.01[C][2], p. 10–12 (2000).

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transfer the entire copyright over to the publisher in trust.
See Kaminstein, Divisibility of Copyrights, Study No. 11, in
Copyright Law Revision Studies Nos. 11–13, prepared for
the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 86th Cong., 2d Sess.,
18–22 (1960) (hereinafter Kaminstein).2 Such authors were
often at the mercy of publishers when they tried to reclaim
their copyright. Id., at 21. 3
The 1976 Act’s extensive revisions of the copyright law
had two principal goals with respect to the rights of free-
lance authors whose writings appeared as part of larger col-
lective works. First, as the legislative history of § 201(c)
unambiguously reveals, one of its most significant aims was
to “preserve the author’s copyright in a contribution even if
the contribution does not bear a separate notice in the au-
thor’s name, and without requiring any unqualified transfer
of rights to the owner of the collective work.” H. R. Rep.
No. 94–1476, p. 122 (1976) (hereinafter H. R. Rep.) (discussing
the purpose of § 201(c)). Indeed, § 404(a) states that “a sin-
gle notice applicable to the collective work as a whole is suf-
ficient” to protect the author’s rights.
The second significant change effected by the 1976 Act
clarified the scope of the privilege granted to the publisher
of a collective work. While pre-1976 law had the effect of
encouraging an author to transfer her entire copyright to the
2 Cf. Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F. 2d 397 (CA2 1970)
(creating a legal fiction in which the publisher to whom an author gave
first publication rights was considered the legal owner of the author’s
copyright, which the publisher was deemed to hold in trust for the “bene-
ficial owner,” the author).
3 “Usually, publishers are perfectly willing to return copyright to the
author, at least with respect to everything except enumerated serial or
reprint rights. There have been allegations that smaller publishers some-
times believe that they are entitled to share in the subsidiary rights and
refuse to reassign, or insist upon sharing part of the profits of [the] sales
to motion picture, television or dramatic users. In these cases, the author
must undertake the burden of proving his contract with the publisher and
demonstrating his capacity to sue.” Kaminstein 21.

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publisher of a collective work, § 201(c) creates the opposite
incentive, stating that, absent some agreement to the con-
trary, the publisher acquires from the author only “the privi-
lege of reproducing and distributing the contribution as part
of that particular collective work, any revision of that collec-
tive work, and any later collective work in the same series.” 4
Congress intended this limitation on what the author is pre-
sumed to give away primarily to keep publishers from “re-
vis[ing] the contribution itself or includ[ing] it in a new an-
thology or an entirely different magazine or other collective
work.” H. R. Rep. 122–123.5
4 Respondents Garson and Robbins argue that the § 201(c) privilege is
completely nontransferable. See Brief for Respondents Garson et al. 26–
29. The District Court properly rejected this argument, see 972 F. Supp.
804, 815–816 (SDNY 1997), which, in my view, is supported by neither the
text nor the legislative history of § 201(c). Publishers obviously cannot
assign their publication privilege to another publisher such that the au-
thor’s work appears in a wholly different collective work, but nothing in
§ 201(c) clearly prohibits a publisher from merely farming out the mundane
task of printing or distributing its collective work or its revision of that
collective work. Because neither the majority nor the Court of Appeals
has reached this issue, however, see ante, at 493; 206 F. 3d 161, 165, and
n. 2 (CA2 2000), I will not address it further.
5 As the District Court observed, representatives of authors had ob-
jected to an earlier draft of the 1976 Act that might have been read to
give publishers the right to change the text of the contributions. That
version gave publishers the privilege to print the individual article “ ‘as
part of that particular collective work and any revisions of it.’ ” 972
F. Supp., at 819. Harriet Pilpel, “a prominent author representative,” ex-
pressed the following concern:
“ ‘I have but one question with reference to the wording, and that is with
respect to the wording at the end of subsection (c) ‘. . . and any revisions
of it.’ If that means ‘any revision of the collective work’ in terms of
changing the contributions, or their order, or including different contribu-
tions, obviously the magazine writers and photographers would not object.
But there is an implication, or at least an ambiguity, that somehow the
owner of the collective work has a right to make revisions in the contribu-
tions to the collective work. This is not and should not be the law, and
consequently I suggest that the wording at the end of subsection (c) be
changed to make that absolutely clear.’ ” 1964 Revision Bill with Discus-

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510 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
Stevens, J., dissenting
The majority is surely correct that the 1976 Act’s new ap-
proach to collective works was an attempt to “ ‘clarify and
improve the . . . confused and frequently unfair legal situa-
tion’ ” that existed under the prior regime. Id., at 122. It
is also undoubtedly true that the drafters of the 1976 Act
hoped to “enhance the author’s position vis-a` -vis the patron.”
Ante, at 495, n. 3. It does not follow, however, that Con-
gress’ efforts to “preserve the author’s copyright in a contri-
bution,” H. R. Rep. 122, can only be honored by a finding in
favor of the respondent authors.
Indeed, the conclusion that the petitioners’ actions were
lawful is fully consistent with both of Congress’ principal
goals for collective works in the 1976 Act. First, neither the
publication of the collective works by the Print Publishers
nor their transfer to the Electronic Databases had any im-
pact on the legal status of the copyrights of the respondents’
individual contributions.6 By virtue of the 1976 Act, re-
spondents remain the owners of the copyright in their indi-
vidual works. Moreover, petitioners neither modified re-
spondents’ individual contributions nor, as I will show in
Part II, published them in a “new anthology or an entirely
different magazine or other collective work.” Id., at 122–
123 (emphasis added). Because I do not think it is at all
obvious that the decision the majority reaches today is a re-
sult clearly intended by the 1976 Congress, I disagree with
the Court’s conclusion that a ruling in petitioners’ favor
sions and Comments, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 5, p. 9 (H. Comm. Print
1965), quoted in 972 F. Supp., at 819.
6 Nor is the majority correct that, even if respondents retained copyright
in their individual articles, the conclusion that petitioners could republish
their collective works on the Electronic Databases would drain that copy-
right of value. See infra, at 521–522. Even on my view of this case,
respondents retain substantial rights over their articles. Only the re-
spondents, for example, could authorize the publication of their articles in
different periodicals or in new topical anthologies wholly apart from the
context of the original collective works in which their articles appeared.

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Stevens, J., dissenting
would “shrink authorial rights” that “Congress [has] estab-
lished.” Ante, at 506 (emphasis added).
II
Not only is petitioners’ position consistent with Congress’
general goals in the 1976 Act, it is also consistent with the
text of § 201(c). That provision allows the publisher of a col-
lective work to “reproduc[e] and distribut[e] the contribution
as part of that particular collective work, any revision of that
collective work, and any later collective work in the same
series.” The central question in this case, then, is whether
petitioners are correct when they argue that publication of
the respondents’ articles in the various Electronic Databases
at issue in this case is nothing more than “reproduc[tion] and
distribut[ion] [of] the contribution as part of . . . revision[s]
of [the original] collective work[s]” in which respondents’ ar-
ticles appeared. I agree with petitioners that neither the
conversion of the Print Publishers’ collective works from
printed to electronic form, nor the transmission of those elec-
tronic versions of the collective works to the Electronic
Databases, nor even the actions of the Electronic Databases
once they receive those electronic versions does anything to
deprive those electronic versions of their status as mere “re-
vision[s]” of the original collective works.
A proper analysis of this case benefits from an incremen-
tal approach. Accordingly, I begin by discussing an issue
the majority largely ignores: whether a collection of articles
from a single edition of the New York Times (i. e., the batch
of files the Print Publishers periodically send to the Elec-
tronic Databases) constitutes a “revision” of an individual
edition of the paper. In other words, does a single article
within such a collection exist as “part of ” a “revision”? Like
the majority, I believe that the crucial inquiry is whether the
article appears within the “context” of the original collective
work. Ante, at 502. But this question simply raises the
further issue of precisely how much “context” is enough.

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Stevens, J., dissenting
The record indicates that what is sent from the New York
Times to the Electronic Databases (with the exception of
General Periodicals OnDisc (GPO)) is simply a collection of
ASCII text files representing the editorial content of the
New York Times for a particular day.7 App. 73a. Each in-
dividual ASCII file contains the text of a single article as
well as additional coding intended to help readers identify
the context in which the article originally appeared and to
facilitate database searches. Thus, for example, to the orig-
inal text of an article, the New York Times adds information
on the article’s “headline, byline and title,” “the section of
the paper in which the article had originally appeared,” and
“the page in the paper or periodical on which the article had
first appeared.” Id., at 75a–76a.8
I see no compelling reason why a collection of files corre-
sponding to a single edition of the New York Times, standing
alone, cannot constitute a “revision” of that day’s New York
Times. It might be argued, as respondents appear to do,
that the presentation of each article within its own electronic
file makes it impossible to claim that the collection of files as
a whole amounts to a “revision.” Brief for Respondents
Tasini et al. 34. But the conversion of the text of the overall
collective work into separate electronic files should not, by
itself, decide the question. After all, one of the hallmarks
of copyright policy, as the majority recognizes, ante, at 502,
is the principle of media neutrality. See H. R. Rep. 53.
No one doubts that the New York Times has the right
to reprint its issues in Braille, in a foreign language, or in
7 ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a
standard means for storing textual data. It assigns a unique binary code
for each letter of the alphabet, as well as for numbers, punctuation,
and other characters. It cannot be used to convey graphical informa-
tion. See C. Mackenzie, Coded Character Sets: History and Development
211–213 (1980).
8 Substantially the same process was used by the other Print Publishers
to prepare their files for electronic publication. App. 74a.

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microform, even though such revisions might look and feel
quite different from the original. Such differences, how-
ever, would largely result from the different medium being
employed. Similarly, the decision to convert the single col-
lective work newspaper into a collection of individual ASCII
files can be explained as little more than a decision that re-
flects the different nature of the electronic medium. Just as
the paper version of the New York Times is divided into
“sections” and “pages” in order to facilitate the reader’s navi-
gation and manipulation of large batches of newsprint, so
too the decision to subdivide the electronic version of that
collective work into individual article files facilitates the
reader’s use of the electronic information. The barebones
nature of ASCII text would make trying to wade through a
single ASCII file containing the entire content of a single
edition of the New York Times an exercise in frustration.9
Although the Court does not separately discuss the ques-
tion whether the groups of files that the New York Times
sends to the Electronic Databases constitute “revision[s],” its
reasoning strongly suggests that it would not accept such a
characterization. The majority, for example, places signifi-
cant emphasis on the differences between the various Elec-
tronic Databases and microform, a medium that admittedly
qualifies as a revision under § 201(c).10 As with the con-
version of individual editions into collections of separate
article files, however, many of the differences between the
9 An ASCII version of the October 31, 2000, New York Times, which
contains 287 articles, would fill over 500 printed pages. Conversely, in the
case of graphical products like GPO, the demands that memory-intensive
graphics files can place on underpowered computers make it appropriate
for electronic publishers to divide the larger collective work into manage-
ably sized subfiles. The individual article is the logical unit. The GPO
version of the April 7, 1996, New York Times Magazine, for example,
would demand in the neighborhood of 200 megabytes of memory if stored
as a single file, whereas individual article files range from 4 to 22 mega-
bytes, depending on the length of the article.
10 See Brief for Respondents Garson et al. 4–5, n. 3.

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514 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
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electronic versions and microform are necessitated by the
electronic medium. The Court therefore appears to back
away from principles of media neutrality when it implicitly
criticizes ASCII-text files for their inability to reproduce
“Remembering Jane” “in the very same position, within a
film reproduction of the entire Magazine, in turn within a
reproduction of the entire September 23, 1990, edition.”
Ante, at 501. 11
In contrast, I think that a proper respect for media neu-
trality suggests that the New York Times, reproduced as a
collection of individual ASCII files, should be treated as a
“revision” of the original edition, as long as each article ex-
plicitly refers to the original collective work and as long as
substantially the rest of the collective work is, at the same
time, readily accessible to the reader of the individual file.
In this case, no one disputes that the first pieces of informa-
tion a user sees when looking at an individual ASCII article
file are the name of the publication in which the article ap-
peared, the edition of that publication, and the location of the
article within that edition. I agree with the majority that
such labeling alone is insufficient to establish that the in-
dividual file exists as “part of ” a revision of the original col-
lective work. See ante, at 500–501. But such labeling is
not all there is in the group of files sent to the Electronic
Databases.
In addition to the labels, the batch of electronic files con-
tains the entire editorial content of the original edition of
the New York Times for that day. That is, while I might
agree that a single article, standing alone, even when coded
with identifying information (e. g., publication, edition date,
11 The majority’s reliance on the fact that the GPO user cannot “flip” the
page to see material published on other pages, ante, at 491, n. 2, and that
the text database articles “appear disconnected from their original con-
text,” ante, at 501, appears to be nothing more than a criticism of Elec-
tronic Databases’ medium-driven decision to break down the periodicals it
contains into smaller, less unwieldy article units. See n. 9, supra.

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headline, etc.), should not be characterized as a “part of ” a
larger collective work, I would not say the same about an
individual article existing as “part of ” a collection of articles
containing all the editorial content of that day’s New York
Times. This is all the more true because, as the District
Court correctly noted, it is the Print Publishers’ selection
process, the editorial process by which the staff of the New
York Times, for example, decides which articles will be in-
cluded in “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” that is the most
important creative element they contribute to the collective
works they publish. 972 F. Supp. 804, 823 (SDNY 1997).12
While such superficial features as page placement and col-
umn width are lost in ASCII format, the Print Publishers’
all-important editorial selection is wholly preserved in the
collection of individual article files sent to the Electronic
Databases.
To see why an electronic version of the New York Times
made up of a group of individual ASCII article files, standing
alone, may be considered a § 201(c) revision, suppose that,
instead of transmitting to NEXIS the articles making up a
particular day’s edition, the New York Times saves all of the
individual files on a single floppy disk, labels that disk “New
York Times, October 31, 2000,” and sells copies of the disk
to users as the electronic version of that day’s New York
Times. The disk reproduces the creative, editorial selection
of that edition of the New York Times. The reader, after
all, has at his fingertips substantially all of the relevant con-
tent of the October 31 edition of the collective work. More-
over, each individual article makes explicit reference to that
selection by including tags that remind the reader that it is
a part of the New York Times for October 31, 2000. Such a
disk might well constitute “that particular collective work”;
it would surely qualify as a “revision” of the original collec-
12 “The New York Times perhaps even represents the paradigm, the epit-
ome of a publication in which selection alone reflects sufficient originality
to merit copyright protection.” 972 F. Supp., at 823.

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tive work. Yet all the features identified as essential by the
majority and by the respondents would still be lacking. An
individual looking at one of the articles contained on the disk
would still see none of the original formatting context and
would still be unable to flip the page.
Once one accepts the premise that a disk containing all the
files from the October 31, 2000, New York Times can consti-
tute a “revision,” there is no reason to treat any differently
the same set of files, stored in a folder on the hard disk of a
computer at the New York Times. Thus, at least before it
is republished by the Electronic Databases, the collection of
files that the New York Times transmits to them constitutes
a revision, in electronic form, of a particular edition of the
New York Times.
III
The next question, then, is whether anything that the
Electronic Databases do to the transmitted “revision” strips
it of that status. The heart of the Court’s reasoning in this
respect, as I understand it, is that, once received and pro-
cessed by Electronic Databases, the data transmitted by the
New York Times cannot be viewed as “revisions” within the
meaning of § 201(c) because of the way that data is stored
and made available to the public by those Databases. First,
the Court points to the fact that “the three Databases pre-
sent articles to users clear of the context provided either by
the original periodical editions or by any revision of those
editions.” Ante, at 499. I have already addressed these
formatting concerns. Second, and not wholly unrelated
to the first point, however, the Court appears to think
that the commingling of my hypothetical collection of ASCII
article files from the October 31, 2000, New York Times
with similar collections of files from other editions of the
New York Times (or from other periodicals) within one data-
base would deprive that collection of revision status. See
ante, at 501, n. 9. Even if my imaginary floppy disk could,
in isolation, be considered a revision, the majority might

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Stevens, J., dissenting
say, that status would be lost if the floppy disk were to con-
tain, not only the files from the October 31, 2000, New York
Times, but also from the New York Times for every other
day in 2000 (and other years) and from hundreds of other
periodicals. I disagree.
If my hypothetical October 31, 2000, floppy disk can be a
revision, I do not see why the inclusion of other editions and
other periodicals is any more significant than the placement
of a single edition of the New York Times in a large public
library or in a bookstore. Each individual file still reminds
the reader that he is viewing “part of ” a particular collective
work. And the entire editorial content of that work still
exists at the reader’s fingertips.13
It is true that, once the revision of the October 31, 2000,
New York Times is surrounded by the additional content, it
can be conceptualized as existing as part of an even larger
collective work (e. g., the entire NEXIS database). See
ante, at 500. The question then becomes whether this abil-
ity to conceive of a revision of a collective work as existing
within a larger “collective work” changes the status of the
original revision. Section 201(c)’s requirement that the arti-
cle be published only as “part of . . . any revision of that
collective work” does not compel any particular answer to
that question. A microfilm of the New York Times for Octo-
ber 31, 2000, does not cease to be a revision of that individual
collective work simply because it is stored on the same roll
of film as other editions of the Times or on a library shelf
containing hundreds of other microfilm periodicals. Nor
does § 201(c) compel the counterintuitive conclusion that the
microfilm version of the Times would cease to be a revision
simply because its publishers might choose to sell it on rolls
of film that contained a year’s editions of both the New York
Times and the Herald-Tribune. Similarly, the placement of
13 In NEXIS, for example, the reader can gather all the content of the
October 31, 2000, New York Times by conducting the following simple
search in the correct “library”: “date (is 10/31/2000).”

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our hypothetical electronic revision of the October 31, 2000,
New York Times within a larger electronic database does
nothing to alter either the nature of our original electronic
revision or the relationship between that revision and the
individual articles that exist as “part of ” it.
Finally, the mere fact that an individual user may either
view or print copies of individual articles stored on the Elec-
tronic Databases does not change the nature of the revisions
contained within those databases. The same media-specific
necessities that allow the publishers to store and make avail-
able the original collective work as a collection of individual
digital files make it reasonable for the Electronic Databases
to enable the user to download or print only those files in
which the user has a particular interest. But this is no dif-
ferent from microfilm. Just as nothing intrinsic in the na-
ture of microfilm dictates to a user how much or how little
of a microform edition of the New York Times she must copy,
nothing intrinsic in the Electronic Databases dictates to a
user how much (or how little) of a particular edition of the
New York Times to view or print. It is up to the user in
each instance to decide whether to employ the publisher’s
product in a manner that infringes either the publisher’s or
the author’s copyright. And to the extent that the user’s
decision to make a copy of a particular article violates the
author’s copyright in that article, such infringing third-party
behavior should not be attributed to the database.14 See
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464
U. S. 417, 434 (1984).
IV
My reading of “revision,” as encompassing products like
the Electronic Databases, is not the only possible answer to
14 The majority finds that NEXIS infringes by “cop[ying]” and “distrib-
ut[ing]” copies of respondents’ articles to the public. Perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that NEXIS makes it possible for users to make and
distribute copies. In any event, the Court has wisely declined to reach
the question whether the Electronic Databases publicly “display” the arti-
cles within the meaning of § 106. Ante, at 498, and n. 8.

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the complex questions presented by this case. It is, never-
theless, one that is consistent with the statutory text and
entirely faithful to the statute’s purposes. Respect for the
policies motivating its enactment, to which I now turn,
makes it wrong for the Court to reject this reading of
§ 201(c).
It is likely that the Congress that enacted the 1976
revision of the law of copyright did not anticipate the de-
velopments that occurred in the 1980’s which gave rise
to the practices challenged in this litigation. See Miller,
Copyright Protection for Computer Programs, Databases,
and Computer-Generated Works: Is Anything New Since
CONTU?, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 977, 979 (1993) (in 1976, “Con-
gress . . . decided to avoid grappling with technological issues
that obviously required more study than the legislative proc-
ess was then willing to give them”).15 Thus, in resolving
ambiguities in the relevant text of the statute, we should be
mindful of the policies underlying copyright law.
Macaulay wrote that copyright is “a tax on readers for
the purpose of giving a bounty to writers.” T. Macaulay,
Speeches on Copyright 11 (A. Thorndike ed. 1915). That tax
restricts the dissemination of writings, but only insofar as
necessary to encourage their production, the bounty’s basic
objective. See U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 8. In other
words, “[t]he primary purpose of copyright is not to reward
the author, but is rather to secure ‘the general benefits
derived by the public from the labors of authors.’ ” 1 M.
Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copyright § 1.03[A] (2000) (quoting
Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 U. S. 123, 127 (1932)); see
also Breyer, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of
15 See also H. R. Rep. 116. In the quarter century since the 1976 Act
became law, “the databases [in existence] have grown by a factor of 39 . . . .
In 1975, the 301 databases in existence contained about 52 million records.
The 11,681 databases in 1999 contained nearly 12.86 billion records for a
growth by a factor of 242.” Williams, Highlights of the Online Database
Industry and the Internet: 2000, in Proceedings of the 21st Annual Na-
tional Online Meeting 1 (M. Williams ed. 2000).

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Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs,
84 Harv. L. Rev. 281, 282 (1970) (discussing the twin goals of
copyright law—protecting the reader’s desire for access to
ideas and providing incentives for authors to produce them).
The majority’s decision today unnecessarily subverts this
fundamental goal of copyright law in favor of a narrow focus
on “authorial rights.” Ante, at 506. Although the desire to
protect such rights is certainly a laudable sentiment,16 copy-
right law demands that “private motivation must ultimately
serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of
literature, music, and the other arts.” Twentieth Century
Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U. S. 151, 156 (1975) (emphasis
added).
The majority discounts the effect its decision will have on
the availability of comprehensive digital databases, ante, at
504–505, but I am not as confident. As petitioners’ amici
have persuasively argued, the difficulties of locating individ-
ual freelance authors and the potential of exposure to statu-
tory damages may well have the effect of forcing electronic
archives to purge freelance pieces from their databases.17
“The omission of these materials from electronic collections,
for any reason on a large scale or even an occasional basis,
undermines the principal benefits that electronic archives
offer historians—efficiency, accuracy and comprehensive-
ness.” 18 Brief for Ken Burns et al. as Amici Curiae 13.
16 But see Breyer, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copy-
right in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, 84 Harv. L. Rev.
281, 286–290 (1970) (criticizing the use of copyright as a means of protect-
ing authorial rights).
17 Indeed, today’s decision in favor of authors may have the perverse
consequence of encouraging publishers to demand from freelancers a com-
plete transfer of copyright. If that turns out to be the case, we will have
come full circle back to the pre-1976 situation.
18 If the problem is as important as amici contend, congressional action
may ultimately be necessary to preserve present databases in their en-
tirety. At the least, Congress can determine the nature and scope of the

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Stevens, J., dissenting
Moreover, it is far from clear that my position even de-
prives authors of much of anything (with the exception of
perhaps the retrospective statutory damages that may well
result from their victory today).19 Imagine, for example,
that one of the contributions at issue in this case were a
copyrighted version of John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn,
published on page 29 of our hypothetical October 31, 2000,
New York Times. Even under my reading of § 201(c), Keats
retains valuable copyright protection. No matter how well
received his ode might be, it is unlikely—although admit-
tedly possible—that it could be marketed as a stand-alone
work of art. The ode, however, would be an obvious candi-
date for inclusion in an anthology of works by romantic
poets, in a collection of poems by the same author, or even
in “a 400-page novel quoting a [poem] in passing,” ante, at
500. The author’s copyright would protect his right to com-
pensation for any such use. Cf. Stewart v. Abend, 495 U. S.
207, 228 (1990) (discussing the value to authors of derivative
works). Moreover, the value of the ode surely would be en-
hanced, not decreased, by the accessibility and readership of
the October 31, 2000, edition of the New York Times. The
ready availability of that edition, both at the time of its first
publication and subsequently in libraries and electronic data-
bases, would be a benefit, not an injury, to most authors.
Keats would benefit from the poem’s continued availability
to database users, by his identification as the author of the
piece, and by the database’s indication of the fact that the
poem first appeared in a prestigious periodical on a certain
date. He would not care one whit whether the database in-
problem and fashion an appropriate licensing remedy far more easily than
can courts. Cf. 17 U. S. C. § 108(d)(1).
19 It is important to remember that the prospect of payment by the Print
Publishers was sufficient to stimulate each petitioner to create his or her
part of the collective works, presumably with full awareness of its in-
tended inclusion in the Electronic Databases.

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522 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
Stevens, J., dissenting
dicated the formatting context of the page on which the
poem appeared. What is overwhelmingly clear is that maxi-
mizing the readership of the ode would enhance the value of
his remaining copyright uses.
Nor is it clear that Keats will gain any prospective benefits
from a victory in this case. As counsel for petitioners repre-
sented at oral argument, since 1995, the New York Times
has required freelance authors to grant the Times “electronic
rights” to articles. Tr. of Oral Arg. 7. And the inclusion of
such a term has had no effect on the compensation authors
receive. See ibid. This is understandable because, even if
one accepts the majority’s characterization of the Electronic
Databases as collections of freestanding articles, demand for
databases like NEXIS probably does not reflect a “demand
for a freelance article standing alone,” ante, at 497, to which
the publishers are greedily helping themselves. Cf. Ryan v.
Carl Corp., 23 F. Supp. 2d 1146, 1150–1151 (ND Cal. 1998)
(“[T]he value added by the publisher to a reproduced article
is significant”).
Instead, it seems far more likely that demand for the Elec-
tronic Databases reflects demand for a product that will pro-
vide a user with the means to quickly search through scores
of complete periodicals. The comments of historian Douglas
Brinkley are instructive in this respect:
“ ‘As an historian, when I want to write a biography, if
I’m going to write a biography of Bill Clinton, the first
thing I would do would be to index The New York
Times. I would work through [the] microfiche and get
any time Bill Clinton’s name ever appeared in The New
York Times. I’d get a copy of that. So, you’d have
boxes of files. So for each month, here’s Clinton this
month. . . . You then would fill that in with . . . other
obvious books or articles from Foreign Affairs or For-
eign Policy or The New Yorker, or the like and you’d
start getting your first biography of Bill Clinton.’ ”
Panel Discussion: The Observer’s View (D. Brinkley, M.

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523 Cite as: 533 U. S. 483 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
Frankel, H. Sidey), White House Historical Association
(Nov. 16, 2000) (C–SPAN Archives No. 160577) (quoted
in Brief for Ken Burns et al. as Amici Curiae 17).
Users like Douglas Brinkley do not go to NEXIS because it
contains a score of individual articles by Jonathan Tasini.20
Rather, they go to NEXIS because it contains a comprehen-
sive and easily searchable collection of (intact) periodicals.
20 Even assuming, as the majority does, see ante, at 497–498, n. 6, that
the existence of databases like NEXIS may have some adverse effect on
the market for stand-alone compilations of authors’ contributions to collec-
tive works, I fail to see how, on that basis, electronic databases are any
different from microform. With respect to effects on the market for
stand-alone works, the only difference between the two products is the
speed with which digital technology allows NEXIS users to retrieve the
desired data. But the 1976 Act was not intended to bar the use of every
conceivable innovation in technology that might “ ‘giv[e] publishers [new]
opportunities to exploit authors’ works.’ ” Ante, at 498, n. 6. Copyright
law is not an insurance policy for authors, but a carefully struck balance
between the need to create incentives for authorship and the interests
of society in the broad accessibility of ideas. See U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8,
cl. 8 (in order to promote production, Congress should allow authors and
inventors to enjoy “exclusive Right[s],” but only “for limited Times”
(emphasis added)); see also supra, at 519–520. The majority’s focus on
authorial incentive comes at the expense of the equally important (at least
from the perspective of copyright policy) public interest.
Moreover, the majority’s single-minded focus on “authorial rights” ap-
pears to lead it to believe that, because some authors may benefit from its
decision, that decision must be the one intended by Congress. It cites
the “ ‘economic philosophy behind the [Copyright Clause]’ ” as consistent
with its view that Congress adjusted “the author/publisher balance” pre-
cisely to avoid the types of uses embodied in the Electronic Databases.
See ante, at 495, n. 3. But, as I have already argued, see supra, at 519,
there is no indication that Congress ever considered the issue presented
in this case. It thus simply begs the question for the majority to argue
that the right not to have a work included within the Electronic Databases
is an “authorial right” that “Congress [has] established,” ante, at 506 (em-
phasis added), or that—given Congress’ failure clearly to address itself to
the question—a decision allowing such inclusion would amount to “dimin-
ish[ing]” authorial “rights” on the basis of “our conception of their inter-
ests,” ante, at 498, n. 6 (emphasis added).

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524 NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. TASINI
Stevens, J., dissenting
See id., at 8 (“The efficiency, accuracy, reliability, comprehen-
siveness and immediacy of access offered by searchable full-
text digital archives are but a few of the benefits historians
and other researchers have reaped from the advancement in
the technology of information”).
Because it is likely that Congress did not consider the
question raised by this case when drafting § 201(c), because
I think the District Court’s reading of that provision is rea-
sonable and consistent with the statute’s purposes, and
because the principal goals of copyright policy are better
served by that reading, I would reverse the judgment of the
Court of Appeals. The majority is correct that we cannot
know in advance the effects of today’s decision on the com-
prehensiveness of electronic databases. We can be fairly
certain, however, that it will provide little, if any, benefit to
either authors or readers.