USA / COPYRIGHT / PUBLIC PERFORMANCE

It is well established in US law, as well as in most other countries’ copyright laws, that the author of a protected work has the exclusive right to perform the work publicly or to authorize a public performance of the work: U.S.C. § 106 of the Copyright Act. But what is less clearly established is the meaning of "publicly"; that is, the circumstances and location making a performance public. In a witty and erudite article in Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal, Volume 26 No.1, entitled Public Performance Copyrights – A guide to Public Place Analysis, the author, John Kheit, provides textual and tabular answers to the questions raised by the concept of a public place and reinforces his analysis by reference to the PREI case (Professional Real Estate Investors Inc v Columbia Pictures Inc) and a wealth of other case law. He concludes that "like so many other problems created by the interaction of copyright law with a new technology, ‘there can be no really satisfactory solution to the problem presented here until Congress acts’". [20017]