510
Stevens, J., dissenting
The majority is surely correct that the 1976 Act's new approach to collective works was an attempt to " 'clarify and improve the . . . confused and frequently unfair legal situation' " 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-à-vis the patron." Ante, at 495, n. 3. It does not follow, however, that Congress' efforts to "preserve the author's copyright in a contribution," 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 impact on the legal status of the copyrights of the respondents' individual contributions.6 By virtue of the 1976 Act, respondents remain the owners of the copyright in their individual works. Moreover, petitioners neither modified respondents' 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 result 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 copyright of value. See infra, at 521-522. Even on my view of this case, respondents retain substantial rights over their articles. Only the respondents, 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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