Cite as: 533 U. S. 483 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
copy of an Author's article directly to the public even if the Publisher also offered for individual sale all of the other articles 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 retrievable" 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 concluded that § 201(c) "does not permit the Publishers," acting without the author's consent, "to license individually copyrighted works for inclusion in the electronic databases," the court did not reach the question whether the § 201(c) privilege 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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