- The Copyright Act of 1909 protected registered copyright publications. The problem with this was that software programs are not published in the same way as books and other copyrightable works. According to the Copyright Office, North American Aviation submitted a tape containing a computer program for registration in November 1961. This posed some issues for the Copyright Office, which couldn't decide if it could register it. In 1964, a Columbia law student tried to establish a route to registering software programs by submitting one program on a printout and the other on magnetic tape. The student's tape and printout, as well as the North American Aviation tape were all registered, and the Copyright Office decided that a software program was similar to a "how to" book and could be copyrighted like a book.
- In the Copyright Act of 1976, Congress made it clear that software was copyrightable. Section 101 of the act defines literary works -- which does not solely refer to works of literature -- and states that computer databases and programs "to the extent that they incorporate authorship in the programmer's expression of original ideas." However, this still didn't clarify the extent of the copyright protection and whether there should be exceptions to the exclusive rights of copyright owners. Congress appointed the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, referred to as CONTU, to investigate the situation and make recommendations.
- CONTU looked into photocopying and computer databases, as well as software programs. It recommended two changes to the Copyright Act in respect to programs. CONTU suggested that computer programs were more closely defined in Section 101 as "a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer," and added that these instructions should bring about a specific result. It also made recommendations to rewrite Section 117, which covers copying, to specify the conditions under which copies of a software program can and can't be made.
- Congress adopted CONTU's recommendations, and they became Public Law 96 - 517 in December 1980. One refinement changed the definition of "rightful possessor of a software program copy" to "owner of a copy." The reason for this change was to remove any gray areas of ownership. An example of such a problematic area is where people borrowing a copy of a software program from a library might copy the program onto a computer and not delete it when they return it. Without the change of definition, they could claim to be the "rightful possessor."
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