Cite as: 533 U. S. 483 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
a contribution from one issue in a later issue of its magazine, and could reprint an article from a 1980 edition of an encyclopedia 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 authorizing 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 commands 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 copyright in a contribution" as contemplated by Congress, H. R. Rep. 122, if a newspaper or magazine publisher were permitted to reproduce or distribute copies of the author's contribution in isolation or within new collective works. See Gordon, Fine-Tuning Tasini: Privileges of Electronic Distribution 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 collective 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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