FILED

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

 JUNE 30, 2008

THOMAS K. KAHN

CLERK

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 05-16964

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 97-03924-CV-AMS

JERRY GREENBERG, 

individually, 

Plaintiff–Appellee, 

IDAZ GREENBERG, 

individually, 

Plaintiff, 

versus 

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, 

a District of Columbia corporation, 

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ENTERPRISES, INC., 

a corporation, 

MINDSCAPE, INC., 

a California corporation, 

Defendants–Appellants. 

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

_________________________

 (June 30, 2008)
 Judge Frank M. Hull recused and did not participate in this case. Senior U.S. Circuit 1

Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch elected to participate in this matter pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(c). 

 National Geographic Society is one of three Appellants in this case. The other two 2

Appellants are National Geographic Enterprises, Inc. and Mindscape, Inc. Mindscape is the

creator of the computer program underlying the “The Complete National Geographic”—the

product at issue in this case. Collectively, the three Appellants are referred to throughout this

opinion as “National Geographic.” 

 Specifically, Greenberg’s photographs appeared in the January 1962, February 1968, 3

May 1971, and July 1990 issues. In each instance, after their initial publication in the Magazine,

Greenberg regained ownership of the copyrights in the photographs he originally assigned to

National Geographic. 

2

Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, TJOFLAT, ANDERSON, BIRCH,

DUBINA, BLACK, CARNES, BARKETT, MARCUS, WILSON, PRYOR and

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.1

BARKETT, Circuit Judge:

Appellant National Geographic Society is a nonprofit scientific and

educational organization that has published a monthly magazine since 1888. The 2

Society also produces televised programs and computer software as well as other

educational products through National Geographic Enterprises, a wholly-owned

and for-profit subsidiary of the Society. Appellee Jerry Greenberg is a freelance

photographer, some of whose photographs were published in four issues of the

National Geographic Magazine.3

For decades, the Society has reproduced back issues of the Magazine in

bound volumes, microfiche, and microfilm. In 1997, National Geographic
 CD-ROM is an abbreviation for “Compact-Disc Read-Only Memory.” 4

3

produced “The Complete National Geographic” (“CNG”), a thirty-disc CD-ROM4

set containing each monthly issue of the Magazine, as it was originally published,

for the 108 years from 1888 through 1996—roughly 1200 issues of the Magazine. 

In addition, the CNG includes a short opening montage and a computer program

that allows users to search the CNG, zoom into particular pages, and print.

Greenberg sued National Geographic, alleging that it had infringed his

copyrights by reproducing in the CNG the print magazine issues that included his

photographs. The district court disagreed and granted summary judgment in favor

of National Geographic, holding that because the CNG constituted a “revision” of

the print issues of the Magazine, the reproduction of Greenberg’s photographs in

the CNG was privileged under 17 U.S.C. § 201(c) of the Copyright Act and did not

constitute an infringement of Greenberg’s copyrights. However, a panel of this

Court in Greenberg v. National Geographic Society (Greenberg I), 244 F.3d 1267,

1275–76 (11th Cir. 2001), reversed and remanded for the district court to

“ascertain the amount of damages and attorneys fees that are, if any, due as well as

any injunctive relief that may be appropriate.” After a jury trial on damages, the

jury returned a verdict against National Geographic in the amount of $400,000. 

National Geographic appealed again, this time arguing that the intervening
 Subsequent to the Tasini decision, the Second Circuit also decided a case involving the 5

CNG with nearly identical facts to this case. See Faulkner v. Nat’l Geographic Enters. Inc., 409

F.3d 26, 36 (2d Cir. 2005) (“[The Greenberg I] decision addressed the application of Section

201(c) to a case virtually identical on the facts and law to the instant matter.”). In that case, the

Second Circuit found that (1) Greenberg I did not have preclusive effect because “the Tasini

approach so substantially departs from the Greenberg analysis that it represents an intervening

change in law rendering application of collateral estoppel inappropriate,” id. at 37, and (2)

“because the original context of the [National Geographic] Magazines is omnipresent in the

CNG and because it is a new version of the Magazine, the CNG is a privileged revision,” id. at

38. 

4

decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S.

483 (2001), decided after Greenberg I, mandated a reversal of the jury verdict

against it. A second panel of this Court agreed, finding that Tasini compelled a

reversal of the jury verdict because, under Tasini’s rationale, National Geographic

was privileged to reproduce its print magazines in digital format pursuant to

§ 201(c) of the Copyright Act. See Greenberg v. Nat’l Geographic Soc’y

(Greenberg II), 488 F.3d 1331 (11th Cir. 2007). This Court then vacated the 5

Greenberg II panel opinion and granted rehearing en banc to address the question

of whether National Geographic’s use of Greenberg’s photographs in the CNG is

privileged. 

I. DISCUSSION

The section of the Copyright Act that is relevant to the question before us,

17 U.S.C. § 201(c), was added to the copyright statute as part of the 1976

amendments to the 1909 Act, and provides:
5

(c) Contributions to collective works. Copyright in each separate

contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the

collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the

contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or

of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is

presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and

distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work,

any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in

the same series.

Prior to 1976, whenever freelance authors contributed to a collective work, they

risked losing their copyright in their individual works absent a printed copyright

notice in the author’s name. A freelance author could not just assign the publisher

the right of publication in the collective work while preserving her copyright in the

individual work. The amended 1976 Copyright Act—including § 201(c)—rejected

this idea of copyright “indivisibility,” instead reframing copyright as a bundle of

discrete “exclusive rights.” See Tasini, 533 U.S. at 494–96; see also 17 U.S.C.

§§ 106, 201(d)(2). Thus, as part of its recasting of copyright as a bundle of

exclusive rights, Congress added § 201(c) to the Copyright Act in order to protect

both the copyrights of freelance authors in their individual contributions to a

collective work as well as the copyright of the publisher in the collective work

itself: 

When . . . a freelance author has contributed an article to a “collective

work” such as a newspaper or magazine, . . . the [Copyright Act]

recognizes two distinct copyrighted works: “Copyright in each

separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in
6

the collective work as a whole . . . .” Copyright in the separate

contribution “vests initially in the author of the contribution” (here,

the freelancer). Copyright in the collective work vests in the

collective author (here, the newspaper or magazine publisher) and

extends only to the creative material contributed by that author, not to

“the preexisting material employed in the work.”

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 493–94 (citations omitted). Congress intended this limitation

on what the author is presumed to give away primarily to keep publishers from

“revis[ing] the contribution itself or includ[ing] it in a new anthology or an entirely

different magazine or other collective work” without the author’s consent. Id. at

497 (emphasis added) (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 122–23 (1976),

reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5659, 5738).

Thus, pursuant to § 201(c), and as Tasini notes, a magazine publisher is

privileged to reproduce or distribute an article—or photographs, in this

instance—contributed by a freelancer, “absent a contract otherwise providing, only

‘as part of’ any (or all) of three categories of collective works: (a) ‘that collective

work’ to which the author contributed her work, (b) ‘any revision of that collective

work,’ or (c) ‘any later collective work in the same series.’” Id. at 496. 

National Geographic argues that it should be able to reproduce and distribute the

CNG under either the first or second prongs of § 201(c). Greenberg, on the other

hand, argues that the CNG should be considered a “new collective work” which, he

asserts, is not entitled to any privilege under § 201(c). 
 The third prong of the § 201(c) privilege—“the owner of copyright in the collective 6

work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the

contribution as part of . . . any later collective work in the same series”—is not at issue in this

case, and National Geographic has not argued that the CNG falls within this third prong. 

 Judge Birch devotes nearly half of his dissent to two substantive issues that have never 7

been raised in this case. In Parts B and C of his dissent, he finds that National Geographic

impermissibly transferred its § 201(c) privileges to third-parties and the § 201(c) privilege does

not extend to the “public display” of Greenberg’s photographs, a copyright owner’s exclusive

right under § 106(5). While neither of these arguments has merit, it is inappropriate to consider

these issues for the first time en banc. The parties have been briefing this case for over a decade

now and not once has either party argued that either of these issues is dispositive in deciding

whether National Geographic is entitled to the § 201(c) privilege. Furthermore, the district court

never ruled on these issues and we did not ask the parties to brief these issues. Finally, in Parts

B and C of his dissent, Judge Birch relies on Tasini in finding that the § 201(c) privilege is nontransferable and “public display” is not covered under § 201(c), even though the Supreme Court

explicitly stated that it “neither decide[d] nor express[ed] any view” on either issue, one of

which was only raised by an amicus. 533 U.S. at 496 n.5, 498 n.8. 

7

Accordingly, we must decide whether the reproduction of the National

Geographic Magazines from print to CD-ROM falls within either (a) “that

particular collective work” privilege, and/or (b) the “revision of that collective

work” privilege. Because we conclude that the CNG is a “revision” of the original 6

“collective works” under the second prong of § 201(c) based on Tasini’s definition

of “revision” in conjunction with its discussion of microform, we need not address

whether it is also privileged under the first prong of § 201(c).

7

The Copyright Act defines “collective work” as a “work, such as a

periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions,

constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a

collective whole.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. Under the definition of “compilation,” which
8

includes “collective works,” a “collective work” is an “original work of

authorship” insofar as it involves the selection, coordination, or arrangement of

preexisting materials or data. Id.; see also id. § 102(a) (“Copyright protection

subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of

expression . . . .”). 

With respect to a “collective work,” copyright extends only to materials

contributed by the compiling author, as opposed to preexisting materials. Id. 

§ 103(b). A copyright in a “collective work” does not imply an exclusive right in

the preexisting material. Id. Here, each individual National Geographic Magazine

issue—including the January 1962, February 1968, May 1971, and July 1990 print

issues in which Greenberg’s photographs first appeared—is a “particular collective

work,” and each of Greenberg’s photographs is “part of” one of those collective

works. National Geographic has the privilege of reproducing these individual

magazine issues in print as often as it wishes, and Greenberg retains his copyrights

in his individual photographs. At the same time, National Geographic has a

copyright in the collective work as a whole—to wit, the individual magazine

issues.

The Copyright Act does not define “revision,” but Tasini does. Tasini

defines “revision” as a “new ‘version,’ and a version is, in [the § 201(c)] setting, a
 The New York Times provided its articles to both computer database 8

companies—LEXIS/NEXIS and University Microfilms International (UMI). Newsday and

Time, Inc.—the publisher of Sports Illustrated—only provided their articles to LEXIS/NEXIS. 

See Tasini, 533 U.S. at 488–90. LEXIS/NEXIS reproduced the articles in its NEXIS electronic

database and UMI reproduced the articles on two CD-ROM products—the New York Times

OnDisc (NYTO) and General Periodicals OnDisc (GPO). Id. at 489–90.

9

‘distinct form of something regarded by its creators or others as one work.’” 533

U.S. at 500 (emphases added) (quoting Webster’s Third New International

Dictionary 1944, 2545 (1976)).

In Tasini, the articles at issue—written by freelance authors—originally

appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, and Sports Illustrated. Pursuant to

licensing agreements with two computer database companies, the publishers of the

three periodicals provided to the database companies all the separate articles from

each periodical which were then placed in electronic databases, isolated from the

context of the original print publications in which they first appeared. Id. at

487–89. The reproduction of all articles took place without any of the freelance 8

authors’ consent. Id. at 489.

To resolve the case, the Court focused on whether the articles were removed

from their original context and now isolated in an entirely different context. Id. at

503. It noted that the three databases in question—NEXIS, the NYTO, and the

GPO—have certain differences but are all similar in that a user of any of the three

databases can only view articles in isolation of the context of their original print
 In his dissent, Judge Anderson points to the Supreme Court’s discussion in Tasini 9

regarding the databases (specifically, the NYTO) to find that the CNG is not a “revision” under

§ 201(c). Judge Anderson notes that, similar to the CNG, the NYTO contains all the articles

from one edition of the New York Times along with all the articles from other editions of that

periodical on CD-ROM. However, Judge Anderson fails to take into account the main problem

with the NYTO in making his analogy—that is, like the CNG, the NYTO may have placed all

the articles from one edition of the New York Times together on CD-ROM along with all the

articles from other editions of the New York Times, but unlike the CNG, the individual articles

were never preserved in their original context. Thus, the analogy is wanting. 

10

publications. For example, in NEXIS, each article appears as a “separate, isolated

‘story’—without any visible link to the other stories originally published in the

same newspaper or magazine edition. NEXIS does not contain pictures or

advertisements, and it does not reproduce the original print publication’s

formatting features such as headline size . . . .” Id. at 490. Like NEXIS, the

NYTO shows articles with “identifying information (author, title, etc.), but without

original formatting or accompanying images.” Id. Finally, the GPO did show 9

each article exactly as it appeared in print, with photographs and advertisements,

“but without any material published on other pages of the original periodical.” Id.

at 500. 

After finding that the individual articles were presented “clear of the context

provided either by the original periodical editions or by any revision of those

editions,” the Supreme Court concluded that the three electronic databases did not

reproduce or distribute the freelance authors’ works “as part of” either the original

editions or as a “revision” of those editions. Id. at 499–500. Because the freelance
 Judge Birch explains in his dissent how a user of the CNG could extract a photograph 10

from a scanned page of an issue of the Magazine, thereby removing it from its original context. 

However, this is no different from material in microform where a user can print only a portion of

what is contained on a microform roll or a microfiche sheet. More importantly, this is not the

proper inquiry under Tasini. The question is whether the reproduction of a collective work

“perceptibly presents” a freelancer’s contribution as part of a revision of that collective work. If

the user’s manipulation of a collective work, after it has been initially presented to the user, were

the deciding factor in a contextual inquiry under § 201(c), then National Geographic—or any

other publisher—would never be able to revise an edition of its Magazine and reproduce and/or

distribute it, even in print, because a user could easily cut and isolate a photograph out of the

Magazine issue. He or she could then copy and scan the photograph and transmit it free of its

11

authors’ articles were “presented to, and retrievable by, the user in isolation, clear

of the context of the original print publication,” id. at 487 (emphases added), the

publishers could not claim a privilege under § 201(c). Thus, the “crucial fact” for

the Supreme Court was the databases’ ability to “store and retrieve articles

separately within a vast domain of diverse texts.” Id. at 503 (emphasis added). 

The articles were presented to the user “standing alone and not in context.” Id. at

488.

The Supreme Court found that by presenting the articles outside of their

original context, the databases were not mere revisions of the original collective

works because the publishers had done more than create a “distinct form of

something regarded by its creators or others as one work.” Id. at 500. “Under

§ 201(c), the question is not whether a user can generate a revision of a collective

work from a database, but whether the database itself perceptibly presents the

author’s contribution as part of a revision of that collective work.” Id. at 504.10
original context. Moreover, with existing technology, there is nothing to prevent an individual

from scanning an existing document and isolating a portion of that document. 

 Tasini does not decide, nor need we, at what point elements of novelty or “newness” 11

make a republished collective work more than a “revision.” In this case, we simply find that the

degree of novelty here does not reach that level. 

12

Therefore, “[i]n determining whether the [a]rticles have been reproduced and

distributed ‘as part of’ a ‘revision’ of the collective works in issue, we focus on the

[a]rticles as presented to, and perceptible by, the user of the [d]atabases.” Id. at

499 (emphasis added); see also Faulkner, 409 F.3d at 38.

In sum, the teachings of Tasini are twofold. First, the concept of “revision”

necessarily includes some element of novelty or “newness” as defined by the

Court, and second, consideration of the context in which the contributions are

presented is critical in determining whether that novelty is sufficient to defeat the

publisher’s § 201(c) privilege.11

Through its discussion of microform reproductions, the Supreme Court

elaborated on the difference between revisions of collective works and collective

works where the individual contributions have been taken out of context. See

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 501. It explained that “[m]icroforms typically contain

continuous photographic reproductions of a periodical in the medium of

miniaturized film. Accordingly, articles appear on the microforms, writ very

small, in precisely the position in which the articles appeared in the newspaper.” 
13

Id. And although “the microfilm roll contains multiple editions, and the microfilm

user can adjust the machine lens to focus only on [an article], to the exclusion of

surrounding material, . . . the user first encounters [the articles] in context.” Id. 

Based on this fidelity to context, the Supreme Court reasoned that the reproduction

of print publications in microform would be privileged under § 201(c). Id. at

501–02. Unlike the “conversion of newsprint to microfilm, the transfer of articles

to the [d]atabases [in Tasini did] not represent a mere conversion of intact

periodicals (or revisions of periodicals) from one medium to another.” Id. at 502.

Applying Tasini to the facts before us, we find that the CNG is analogous to

the microforms discussed therein. Similar to microfilm or microfiche, the CNG

uses the identical selection, coordination, and arrangement of the underlying

individual contributions as used in the original collective works. 17 U.S.C. § 101;

Greenberg I, 244 F.3d at 1269; Greenberg II, 488 F.3d at 1335; Faulkner, 409 F.3d

at 38. The CNG’s image-based reproduction of the Magazine is like microform. 

The CNG presents two pages of an issue at a time, with the Magazine fold in the

middle, and with the page numbers in the lower outside corners, exactly as they are

presented in the print version. See Faulkner, 409 F.3d at 38. In addition to the

layout of the Magazine issues, the content of the CNG is also in the same position

as in the print versions of the Magazine. As we noted in Greenberg I, “[w]hat the
 See Faulkner, 409 F.3d at 30–31 (“[T]here are no changes in the content, format, or 12

appearance of the issues of the magazine. The pages appear as they do in the print version,

including all text, photographs, graphics, advertising, credits and attributions. Issues of the

Magazine appear chronologically with the first issue published appearing at the beginning of the

first disk and the last appearing at the end of the last disk. The individual images and texts are

therefore viewed in a context almost identical—but for the use of a computer screen and the

power to move from one issue to another and find various items quickly—to that in which they

were originally published.”). 

14

user of the CNG sees on his computer screen . . . is a reproduction of each page of

the Magazine that differs from the original only in the size and resolution of the

photographs and text[,] [with] [e]very cover, article, advertisement, and

photograph appear[ing] as it did in the original paper copy of the Magazine.” 244

F.3d at 1269; see also Greenberg II, 488 F.3d at 1335. That is, an author’s 12

contribution is viewed within its original context, with each page containing the

articles, photographs, and/or advertisements as they originally appeared in the

Magazine’s print versions. No alteration in positioning has been made in the CNG. 

A user of the CNG can focus on a particular page or parts of a page, but this is

similar to microform, where the user “can adjust the machine lens to focus only on

the [a]rticle, to the exclusion of surrounding material.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at 501. 

Thus, Greenberg’s photographs do not appear disconnected from their original

context. Rather, they are firmly positioned within their original context, and a user

of the CNG cannot move or alter the photographs.

The CNG is also distinct from the GPO CD-ROM of Tasini. The GPO is an
 Judge Anderson’s dissent finds little difference between the CNG and GPO. While the 13

“flip” function of the GPO may not make a large difference from a marketing standpoint, it does

from a legal perspective. The GPO isolates an article clear of the context of its original print

publication whereas the CNG presents an article within the Magazine’s larger context as a user

of the CNG can easily scroll through an entire issue of the Magazine without having to conduct

an indefinite number of searches trying to retrieve each individual article from an issue, each of

which is only viewable to the user standing alone. 

15

image-based system which shows “each article exactly as it appeared on printed

pages, complete with photographs, captions, advertisements, and other surrounding

materials,” id. at 491, making it the most similar of the three databases in Tasini to

the CNG. When a user conducts a search using the GPO, a computer program will

search available indexes and abstracts, and a user may view each article within the

search result. However, “[t]he display of each article provides no links to articles

appearing on other pages of the original print publications” and a user cannot

simply “flip” to another article. Id. at 491 & n.2. In the GPO, the original context

of the print publication is not perceptible to the user. This is in direct contrast to

the CNG where the user is free to flip through the pages or issues of the Magazine

after conducting a search, thereby preserving the original and complete context of

the print issues.13

Moreover, the aggregation of multiple issues of the Magazine in the CNG is

no different from the aggregation of multiple editions or issues in microform.

Aggregation is permissible if the original context of the individual contribution is

preserved. The Supreme Court in Tasini recognized that although “the microfilm
 We find unavailing Greenberg’s attempt to distinguish this case from Tasini by arguing 14

that Tasini was a disassembly case (i.e., removing individual contributions from collective works

in which they originally appeared) whereas this case is an assembly case (i.e., taking collective

works with their individual contributions intact within those collective works and putting the

collective works into a larger collective work). Greenberg argues that Tasini involved

completely unrelated facts from this case, and that Tasini’s contextual inquiry is simply a

threshold question in any § 201(c) analysis. Tasini, however, never placed a caveat on the

contextual inquiry by describing it as a “starting point” in a § 201(c) analysis. The Court clearly

stated, without qualification, that “[u]nder § 201(c), the question is . . . whether the database

itself perceptibly presents the author’s contribution as part of a revision of the collective work.” 

533 U.S. at 504. Thus, the contextual inquiry laid out in Tasini does not turn on this assemblydisassembly dichotomy such that it need not be addressed for an assembly case. Nor is it

somehow simply a threshold inquiry for any § 201(c) analysis. It is the contextual inquiry that is

of fundamental import in any § 201(c) analysis.

16

roll contains multiple editions” of a publication, the relevant consideration was that

“the user first encounters [the articles] in context.” Id. at 501. The Court focused

on the ability of a user to isolate an individual copyrightable article from its

original collective work. Id. at 503–04. In the CNG, a user cannot “isolate” an

article from its original context. Thus, that concern does not apply here. 

Aggregating editions or issues of one magazine into a larger collective work of that

same magazine is permissible under § 201(c) insofar as the individual

contributions are presented and perceivable to viewers in their original context. 

14

The legislative history supports this conclusion because it reveals that

Congress intended the § 201(c) privilege to allow publishers to make revisions to

collective works, but not to the individual contributions themselves. As part of the

Roundtable Discussions in 1964 regarding § 201(c), a prominent author captured

this sentiment: 
 See also H.R. Rep. No. 89-2237, at 117 (1966); S. Rep. No. 94-473, at 106 (1975), 15

reprinted in 8 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright app. 4A-171 (2007). 

Similarly, the Register of Copyrights, which drafted § 201(c) at Congress’s request, noted that

“the [§ 201(c)] privileges . . . are not intended to permit revisions in the contribution itself or to

allow inclusion of the contribution in anthologies or other entirely different collective works.” 

Staff of H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., Copyright Law Revision pt. 6, Supplementary

Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law: 1965

17

I have but one question with reference to the wording, and that is with

respect to the wording at the end of subsection (c): “ . . . and any

revisions of it.” If that means “any revisions of the collective work”

in terms of changing the contributions, or their order, or including

different contributions, obviously the magazine writers and

photographers would not object. But there is an implication, or at

least an ambiguity, that somehow the owner of the collective work has

a right to make revisions in the contributions to the collective work. 

This is not and should not be the law, and consequently I suggest that

the wording at the end of subsection (c) be changed or eliminated to

make that absolutely clear. 

S. 3008, H.R. 11947, H.R. 12354, 89th Cong. § 14(c) (1965), reprinted in

Copyright Law Revision pt. 5, 1964 Revision Bill with Discussions and Comments

152 (Comm. Print 1965), quoted in Tasini v. N.Y. Times Co., 972 F. Supp. 804,

819 (S.D.N.Y. 1997). Congress responded by changing § 201(c) from privileging

“any revisions of it” to “any revision of that collective work.” Compare Copyright

Law Revision pt. 5, at 152, with 17 U.S.C. § 201(c). And the House and Senate

Reports indicate that Congress intended that language to prevent publishers from

“revis[ing] the contribution itself or includ[ing] it in a new anthology or an entirely

different magazine or other collective work.” H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 122

(emphasis added).15
Revision Bill 69 (Comm. Print 1965) (emphasis added), reprinted in 9 Nimmer on Copyright

app. 15-97. 

 In addition to not appearing at all in the legislative history, the phrase “new collective 16

works” appears only once in the Tasini opinion. The Supreme Court stated that “[i]t 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.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at

497. This is the only time the Court uses the phrase “new collective works.” Taken within the

context of the passage in which it appears, the Supreme Court surely did not mean that the

addition of any new element to a collective work or the placement of a “revised” collective work

within a larger collective work by the same publisher deprives that publisher of its § 201(c)

privilege. Within the very same sentence in which “new collective works” appears, the Court

cites to the same House Report which states that a publisher cannot include the author’s

contribution in a “new anthology or an entirely different magazine or other collective work.” 

H.R. Rep. No. 122-23 (emphasis added). Furthermore, in support of the Tasini sentence in

question, the Supreme Court cites to a law review article. However, the page cited to by the

Supreme Court does not use the phrase “new collective work” and deals solely with the danger

of interpreting “revision” such that it swallows the third prong of § 201(c)—i.e., “a later

collective work in the same series.” See Wendy J. Gordon, Fine-Tuning Tasini: Privileges of

Electronic Distribution and Reproduction, 66 Brook. L. Rev. 473, 484 (2000). The phrase “new

collective work” is only used once in the law review article as well, in a sentence regarding the

“distribution” of collective works which reads: “Even if a privilege were available to allow a

new collective work to be made, § 201 would not cover distribution of the individually-owned

articles, except in connection with the whole collective work.” Id. at 499. 

18

Moreover, the legislative history exposes the flaw in Greenberg’s claim that

the CNG is a “new collective work,” and therefore unprivileged. Even assuming

that the CNG is a “new collective work,” Congress intended for publishers to retain

their § 201(c) privilege unless the republication constituted an “entirely different”

collective work. Id. Nowhere does the legislative history suggest that publishers

16

lose their § 201(c) privilege on account of some novelty or “newness” in the

republication of a collective work. Any “revision” of a collective work is, strictly

speaking, a “new” collective work. Tasini, 533 U.S. at 500 (defining “revision” as
 We are not persuaded by Greenberg’s extension of this argument that the addition of 17

any independently copyrightable element to a collective work renders it unprivileged. Merely

adding an independently copyrightable foreword to a collective work would not necessarily

forfeit the publisher’s privilege in the work. See 2 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright § 5:139

(2007) (“[A] revision may still include new elements such as an index, as well as some new

material.” (footnote omitted)). Contrary to Judge Birch’s contention in his dissent, the addition

of two independently copyrightable computer programs does not divest National Geographic of

its § 201(c) privilege. Even when the degree of novelty of such an addition is sufficient to forfeit

the privilege, that determination would not turn simply on the independent copyrightability of

the additional element.

 In Judge Anderson’s dissent, he gives the example of placing the March 2000 monthly 18

edition of National Geographic devoted entirely to the geography and natural beauty of Africa

into a larger book entitled “The Complete Intellectual History of Africa from 1900 to 2008” as

an impermissible reproduction. Under this opinion’s reasoning, that reproduction and/or

distribution would not survive the contextual analysis either and I would reach the same result. 

19

a “new” version). Although Greenberg’s photographs can be reproduced as part of

the original Magazines in which they appeared, they cannot be removed from their

original context and printed in an entirely different magazine or database. 

Greenberg misses the mark when he argues that the CNG is not privileged

because new elements have been added to the original print publications of the

Magazine. If simply adding a new element to a collective work, such as an index,

table of contents or a new foreword, creates a “new collective work” outside the

purview of § 201(c), then the “revision” prong is effectively nullified. The 17

addition of new material to a collective work will not, by itself, take the revised

collective work outside the privilege, and the pertinent question for a court is

whether the new material so alters the collective work as to destroy its original

context. 

18
As noted earlier, a revision includes something “new” and the amount of “newness” will

certainly impact the contextual inquiry. While the context of the individual contribution within

its original collective work may have been preserved in the above example, that context is

infected to the extent that a “user” of the larger collective work will not readily perceive the

individual contribution within its original context. Thus, Tasini’s contextual analysis is also

dispositive in the above example and not simply a threshold inquiry. 

20

Looking at the new elements of the CNG, we find that they do not bring the

CNG outside the scope of the § 201(c) privilege. First, the brief twenty-five

second montage of the introductory sequence, which serves as nothing more than a

“brief visual introduction” to the image-based collection of the Magazine, does not

infect the CNG such that it destroys the original context of the more than 1200

digitally reproduced issues of the Magazine. As a “virtual cover” for the

Magazines, the introductory sequence in no way alters the context in which the

original photographs were presented, just as a new cover on an encyclopedia set

would not change the context of the entries in the encyclopedia. See Faulkner, 409

F.3d at 38 (noting that the “additional elements [of the CNG], such as, among other

things, the Moving Cover Sequence . . . do not substantially alter the original

context which, unlike that of the works at issue in Tasini, is immediately

recognizable”). The use of Greenberg’s January 1962 cover photograph in the

introductory sequence, which is not just Greenberg’s photograph taken apart from

its original context but rather the entire original cover, does not nullify National
 Even though the introductory sequence does not deprive National Geographic of its 

19

§ 201(c) privilege, we are only deciding that the CNG as a whole is privileged.

21

Geographic’s privilege under § 201(c).19

In addition to the introductory sequence, the computer program’s elements,

such as the search function or zoom capacity, do not take the CNG outside the

§ 201(c) privilege. The CNG is no different than other CD-ROM products, in that

all CD-ROMs contain an operating computer program that directs their

functionality. The CNG’s computer program simply compresses and

decompresses the digital images of the Magazine issues while allowing a CNG

user to search an electronic index of the Magazines. The search function of the

computer program is akin to a traditional index, except that it is a by-product of the

medium in which it finds its functionality. Just as a reader of a bound-volume of

previous issues of National Geographic might look to an index to find all the pages

in which the phrase “global warming” appears, a user of the CNG’s search function

can enter the phrase “global warming” and the program will retrieve for the user all

those same pages. The CNG user is then free to flip through other pages of the

issues without having to conduct a new search. Similarly, the zoom function,

while allowing a CNG user to focus on a specific part of a page, does not deprive

National Geographic of its privilege because, just like adjusting a lens to look at a

specific part of a page of a publication reproduced on microform, the page in
 Greenberg seeks to distinguish microform from the CNG based primarily on an 20

economically-driven argument—he argues that microform has no commercial value. However,

there is nothing in the record to suggest that microform has no commercial value. The question

of whether the reproduction of a collective work creates a “new market” is legally irrelevant to a

§ 201(c) privilege analysis. The protection afforded an author’s individual contribution does not

vary with the market value of the collective work or a revision of the collective work in which it

appears. Contrary to Judge Birch’s view, this case is not simply “about who gets the money.” 

The fact that a publisher can resell a collective work for a profit with a freelancer’s individual

contribution in it is not determinative of whether that reproduction and/or distribution of the

collective work is privileged as a “revision” under § 201(c). Under an extension of Judge

Birch’s view, republishing an old magazine issue in its original format to a younger, new market

would not be permissible. The economic inquiry is clearly not the question. Rather, it is a

question of whether the publisher has a privilege to reproduce and/or distribute “that particular

work,” not whether that reproduction and/or distribution is targeted at a new market. 

22

question first appears to the reader in context. See Tasini, 533 U.S. at 501. These

added features only serve to provide functionality to “the CNG’s raison

d’être”—i.e., the intact collected issues of the Magazine. See Greenberg I, 244

F.3d at 1269. The CNG’s new elements are no different than microform’s “new”

elements, such as a zoom lens or the ability to print only a portion of a document. 

These additional features do not destroy the original context of the collective

works. 

We see no material distinction between the CD-ROMs at issue here and the

permissible “revision” of a collective work into microform as discussed in Tasini. 

The fact that the CNG is on CD-ROMs in digital form does not make the

microform analogy any less relevant. The conversion of magazine issues from 20

print to digital form—as opposed to their conversion from print to print, or print to

microform—does not create a different balance of copyright protection under
23

§ 201(c) between individual authors and publishers because copyright protection is

media neutral. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (noting that “[c]opyright protection subsists

. . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression,

now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or

otherwise communicated . . .” (emphasis added)). Tasini explained that the longembraced doctrine of media neutrality mandates that the “transfer of a work

between media does not alter the character of that work for copyright purposes.” 

533 U.S. at 502 (internal quotations and brackets omitted); see also Faulkner, 409

F.3d at 40 (“The transfer of a work from one medium to another generally does not

alter its character for copyright purposes.”). 

To this end, Congress adopted broad statutory language including within

copyright’s ambit all existing and later developed media through which works

could be communicated either directly or with the aid of a device. See 17 U.S.C.

§§ 101, 102(a). The legislative history underscoring the adoption of this doctrine

explains:

This broad language is intended to avoid the artificial and largely

unjustifiable distinctions . . . under which statutory copyrightability in

certain cases has been made to depend upon the form or medium in

which the work is fixed. Under the bill it makes no difference what

the form, manner, or medium of fixation may be—whether it is in

words, numbers, notes, sounds, pictures, or any other graphic or

symbolic indicia, whether embodied in a physical object in written,

printed, photographic, sculptural, punched, magnetic, or any other
24

stable form, and whether it is capable of perception directly or by

means of any machine or device “now known or later developed.”

H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 5665. Because the principle of media neutrality is a

staple of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), Tasini, 533 U.S. at 502, it is

incorrect to say that an exact digital replica of a print magazine is somehow a “new

collective work.” 

Furthermore, the fact that a computer program allows CNG users to search

and access—without altering—the collective works in their exact original form and

context does not change our § 201(c) analysis. As technology progresses and

different mediums are created through which copyrightable works are introduced

to the public, copyright law must remain grounded in the premise that a difference

in form is not the same as a difference in substance. “No one doubts that [a

publisher] has the right to reprint its issues in Braille, in a foreign language, or in

microform, even though such revisions might look and feel quite different from the

original. Such differences, however, would largely result from the different

medium being employed.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at 512–13 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 

Thus, the revision of a magazine by reproducing it in its original context in a new

“distinct form”—i.e., a digital version—is not a difference that would undo a

publisher’s privilege under § 201(c). See id. at 500. 

With publications continuously being reproduced in new mediums, courts 
25

should not disapprove of the reproduction or distribution of collective works in

those mediums without evaluating whether the publisher has violated the

contextual fidelity of the original collective work or revised the individual

contribution itself. Courts must determine whether the addition of new materials to

the reproduction creates an “entirely different” collective work which falls outside

§ 201(c)’s privilege, not whether the medium itself presumptively creates a “new

collective work.” Greenberg’s copyrights in his individual contributions to the

National Geographic Magazine issues and National Geographic’s copyrights in the

collective works—and National Geographic’s privilege of reproducing and

distributing the collective works—were not determined thirty years ago based on

the medium in which they were produced, and they should not be determined on

that basis today. 

 II. CONCLUSION

In the light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Tasini that the bedrock of any

§ 201(c) analysis is contextual fidelity to the original print publication as presented

to, and perceivable by, the users of the revised version of the original publication,

we agree with the Second Circuit in Faulkner and find that National Geographic is

privileged to reproduce and distribute the CNG under the “revision” prong of 

§ 201(c). 
 The only issue addressed en banc is whether the CNG itself is privileged under 21

§ 201(c). We adopt and reiterate the holding of the panel in Greenberg II that the introductory

sequence itself is not privileged under § 201(c). 488 F.3d at 1339. On remand, the district court

must consider National Geographic’s other defenses not yet adjudicated with respect to its

liability for the use of the 1962 cover photograph in the introductory sequence. Likewise,

because the CNG is privileged and other defenses relating to the introductory sequence have not

been adjudicated, we also adopt the Greenberg II panel’s holding that the district court

erroneously permitted the jury to find that National Geographic willfully violated § 201(c). Id.

at 1341. 

26

The CNG—albeit in a different medium than print or microform—is a

permissible reproduction of the National Geographic Magazine. Greenberg’s

photographs are preserved intact in the CNG and can only be viewed as part of the

original collective works in which they appeared. Similar to the microforms of

Tasini, which preserve the context of multiple issues of magazines, the CNG’s

digital CD-ROMs faithfully preserve the original context of National Geographic’s

print issues. The CNG’s additional elements—such as its search function, its

indexes, its zoom function, and the introductory sequence—do not deprive

National Geographic of its § 201(c) privilege in that they do not destroy the

original context of the collective work in which Greenberg’s photographs appear. 

21

We REVERSE and REMAND to the district court for proceedings

consistent with this opinion. 
 The 1976 Copyright Act was supposed to reverse two hundred years of publishers’

1

exploitation of authors under the 1909 Copyright Act. See Barbara Ringer, First Thoughts on

Copyright Act of 1976, 22 N.Y.U. Sch. L. Rev. 477, 490 (1977) (“Barbara Ringer, the Register

of Copyrights, more than any other single person, is responsible for the content of the new law . .

.” Melville Nimmer, Preface to the 1978 Comprehensive Treatise Revision of 1 Melville

Nimmer, The Law of Copyright, at vi (1983)). Marybeth Peters, a later Register of Copyrights,

echoed this in her 2001 letter to Congress regarding New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S.

483, 121 S. Ct. 2381 (2001): 

Section 201(c) was intended to limit a publisher’s exploitation of freelance

27

BIRCH, Circuit Judge, dissenting, in which WILSON, Circuit Judge, joins, and in

which EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, join in Part

A only:

I respectfully dissent. I also concur in Judge Anderson’s dissent.

The controlling issues and facts in this case have not been fully identified by

the majority --- hence, it is not surprising that it reaches the wrong conclusions. 

Putting aside the legal analysis or rationales in play in this case, the reader

should understand the pecuniary or commercial positions of the parties and their

constituencies in this dispute. On one side there are the artists, authors, and other

creators of copyrightable works who argue that their creative contributions to

collective works already exploited by publishers should not be further exploited by

those publishers without sharing the profits realized by that further commercial

exploitation. These authors, artists, and other creators contend that the publishers

now want to ignore the economic compromise — the balancing of equities — that

is reflected in 17 U.S.C. § 201(c) of the 1976 Copyright Act. Hereinafter, all 1
authors’ works to ensure that authors retained control over subsequent

commercial exploitation of their works. 

In fact, at the time § 201 came into effect, a respected attorney for a major

publisher observed that with the passage of § 201(c), authors “are much more able

to control publishers’ use of their work” and that the publishers’ rights under §

201(c) are “very limited.” Indeed, he concluded that “the right to include the

contribution in any revision would appear to be of little value to the publisher.”

Kurt Steele, “Special Report, Ownership of Contributions to Collective Works

under the New Copyright Law.” Legal Briefs for Editors, Publishers, and Writers

(McGraw-Hill, July 1978).

In contrast, the interpretation of § 201(c) advanced by publishers in Tasini

would give them the right to exploit an article on a global scale immediately

following its initial publication, and to continue to exploit it indefinitely. Such a

result is beyond the scope of the statutory language and was never intended

because, in a digital networked environment, it interferes with authors’ ability to

exploit secondary markets. Acceptance of this interpretation would lead to a

significant risk that authors will not be fairly compensated as envisioned by the

compromises reached in the 1976 Act. The result would be an unintended

windfall for publishers of collective works.

147 Cong. Rec. E182-02 (2001) (Letter from Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights of the

United States of America, to Representative James P. McGovern, United States House of

Representatives (Feb. 14, 2001)). See Jessica D. Littman, Copyright Compromise, And

Legislative History, 72 Cornell L. Rev. 857, 893-96 (Interpreting Bargains) (1987).

28

statutory citations are to Title 17 of the U.S. Code, unless otherwise indicated.

On the opposite side, the publishers are seeking to generate new revenues by

repackaging an old product — the “old wine in new bottles” paradigm; updated in

this instance with an easier access twist-off metal cap rather than a cork. Here the

new packaging of the old content, replicated but unrevised, in electronic medium is

both cost-efficient, profitable, and attractive to a new, computer-savvy generation

of consumers. Moreover, the profits are enhanced exponentially when the
 It should be emphasized that the proper copyright analysis examining this commercial 2

product, the “The Complete National Geographic” (“CNG”), should be no different than if the

collection were of Playboy or Hustler magazines. Just as the medium is “neutral” so is the

content for copyright purposes.

29

publisher can exclude the contributing artists, authors, and creators of the content

from sharing in those profits. At the end of the day this case is not about

education, access by the masses, or efficient storage and preservation — it is about

who gets the money. The legal arguments and non-legal arguments on both sides,

not surprisingly in a free enterprise society, reduced to these essentials are all about

who is paid for their contributions and efforts. Accordingly, it is probative and

pertinent to examine the Congressional motivation for passage of the statutory

section — §201(c) — central to the present dispute. If the motivating idea and

intent of Congress was to require the publishers to share profits from a new or

different product (in copyright terms — a “work”) placed on the market, then the

authors, artists, and creators win. If the intent of Congress was to allow an up-todate, modern, handy, and desirable incarnation of the previously exploited work,

then the publishers win. I will endeavor to demonstrate that the authors, artists,

and creators should share in the publisher’s profits and that the arguments, both

legal and policy, by the publishers are bereft of logic, legal merit, and are totally

disingenuous.2

There are at least three distinct legal rationales that support affirmance of the
30

judgment of the district court which followed our court’s directions in Greenberg

v. Nat’l Geographic Soc’y, 244 F.3d 1267 (11th Cir. 2001) (“Greenberg I”). Each

of these legal rationales are based upon core copyright law principles applied to the

facts existing in this record. Application of each such rationale demonstrates the

erroneous conclusions and logic of the majority. The three rationales, succinctly

stated, are as follows:

(A) the CNG is a “new,” “entirely different” collective work to which the

putative § 201(c) privilege does not attach and does not reproduce and

distribute articles as “part of that collective work” or “any revision”

thereof;

(B) the National Geographic Society (“the Society”) cannot transfer its

privilege to third parties to exercise; and,

(C) the Society and its co-infringers have undertaken to display

Greenberg’s protected works publicly by means of projection on a

computer screen, a non-privileged exercise by a § 201(c) grantee.

In the corresponding sections of my dissent, I shall demonstrate that the Society

and its co-defendants have infringed the registered copyrights of plaintiff

Greenberg. I shall endeavor to demonstrate the CNG is a non-qualifying (per §

201(c)) “new collective work,” not due to its “revision” or “non-revision” status,
 National Geographic Interactive is a division of National Geographic Enterprises, Inc. 3

National Geographic Enterprises, Inc. was a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of National

Geographic Ventures, Inc., which was a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of the Society. 

National Geographic Ventures, Inc. has since been dissolved. Faulkner v. Nat’l Geographic

Enter., 409 F.3d 26, 31 (2d Cir. 2005). National Geographic Interactive and National

Geographic Enterprises, Inc., along with National Geographic Holdings, Inc., are now

incorporated as NGHT, Inc., a wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary of the Society. Id. at n.4.

31

but because it is a rote copy of the magazines scanned onto CD-ROMs (an

analogous replica to a microform replica) which has been combined with at least

two copyrightable computer programs, each a free-standing and sui generis

copyrightable work.

Necessary to my discussion that follows are some material record facts

which have been omitted by the majority. In September 1996, National

Geographic Interactive (“NGI”) entered into a Distribution Agreement with 3

Mindscape, Inc., a Delaware corporation. “Mindscape is a computer software

publisher and distributor which collaborates with the Society in its efforts to bring

its products to the public in the digital environment.” R1-19 at 2. Pursuant to the

Distribution Agreement, the Society and Mindscape developed the product

marketed as the CNG. The CNG is a thirty CD-ROM compendium that collects an

edition of each issue of The National Geographic Magazine (“the Magazine”)

(“that particular collective work”) from 1888 to 1996. Under the “Distribution
 The parties stipulated that the Society would “receive royalties on all sales [of the CNG] 4

by Mindscape.” RAcc#2-230 at 10. However, upon a reading of the Distribution Agreement, it

appears that NGI, not the Society, received such royalties. R5-284, Joint Trial Exh. 323 at 13-

15. This appears to be consistent with the apparent rationale for the Society in creating for-profit

subsidiaries in order to avoid direct receipt of disqualifying income by a non-profit corporation. 

 A copyright notice appearing on the packaging of the CNG states that the Society holds 5

the copyright in the CNG, and that the CNG “was produced from an archive of magazines

32

Agreement,” NGI would receive royalties on sales of the CNG by Mindscape.4

R5-284, Joint Trial Exh. 323 at 13-15. 

In December 1996, the Society entered into a “Trademark and Copyright

License Agreement” (“License Agreement”) with National Geographic Ventures,

Inc. (“NGV”), a for-profit subsidiary of the Society. The License Agreement was

premised upon the Society’s decision to “to establish its electronic publishing and

cartographic operations as units of a separate but wholly owned taxable

subsidiary.” R5-284, Joint Trial Exh. 323 at 1. Under the License Agreement, the

Society granted NGV a “royalty bearing license for certain . . . copyrighted

materials of [the Society],” including “[t]he Archive of National Geographic

Magazine for reproduction in archival form only, without manipulation or

alteration.” Id. at 1, Att. B (emphasis mine). 

To create the CNG, the Society entered into an agreement with Dataware

Technologies, Inc. (“Dataware”), dated 15 August 1996, to digitally scan the pages

of the Magazine. The agreement authorized Dataware to “develop a custom CD- 5
collected in a central repository and is not representative of any single regional edition of

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine.” R1-20, Exh. A. 

 It is not disputed that a computer program is a form of literary work, and thus is 6

copyrightable. See Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, 2 Nimmer on Copyright § 2.04[C]

(2008). The 1980 amendments to the Copyright Act brought computer programs within the

scope of copyright by adding them to the list of defined works and providing for limitations on

the reproduction and adaptation rights in favor of owners of copies of programs. See §§ 101,

117. These amendments were recommended by the Commission on New Technological Uses of

Copyrighted Works which concluded that computer programs were the proper subject matter of

copyright. See Nat'l Comm. on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, Final Report 1

(1978). Moreover, courts have recognized the audiovisual displays produced by a computer

programs as a separate copyrightable work. See Stern Elecs. Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852 (2d

Cir. 1982). Electronic media inherently pose problems in delineating the by-products of

original works, such as derivative works, collective works, and revisions. Bits of computer code

may represent content (text, graphic images, and the like) or encode functional, stand-alone

computer programs – thereby intertwining content and method of delivery. See Micro Star v.

Formgen, Inc., 154 F.3d 1107 (9th Cir. 1998).

33

ROM template, including integration of a custom set of interfaces to display

magazine pages and . . . JPEG images of the scanned pages.” R4-203 at 8. “Each

issue [of the Magazine] was [] scanned, page by page, into a computer system. 

The scanning process created an exact image of each page as it appeared in the

Magazine. R1-23 at 2 (emphasis mine). 

Mindscape developed a computer program (the “Program”), which is

contained on each CD-ROM of the CNG, to allow the user of the CNG to select,

view, and navigate through the images of the Magazine replica (the “pages” of the

magazines) on the CD-ROM. Greenberg I, 244 F.3d at 1269. Without the 6

Program, the pages could be stored on a CD-ROM, but they would not be

efficiently accessible to the user. Id. at 1270. In creating the Program, Mindscape
 In 1988, National Geographic published a “100-year index.” That index is a separately 7

bound volume consisting of an index to the first 100 years of National Geographic Magazine. 

R11 at 183-84 [Idaz Greenberg - Jury Trial Cross Examination]. There are “[v]ery little

similarities” between the CD-ROM index and the print index. “When you have the paper index,

the year’s index, you can find anything in the world that you want to find there, but you’re not

going to be able to print it out and you’re not going to have access to it, and it’s not going to be

right there at our fingertip. Whereas, when you have the product, the CD-ROM [CNG],

whatever you find in the search engine you can immediately access and immediately print [and]

copy.” R11 at 143-44 (Idaz Greenberg - unrefuted Jury Trial Direct Testimony).

34

incorporated two separate, copyrighted computer programs: the “CD Author

Development System,” which is a search engine created by Dataware, and the

“PicTools Development Kit,” which is a storage mechanism created by Pegasus

Imaging Corp. for compressing and decompressing the images scanned onto each

disc. Id. at 1269-70. Mindscape has not registered a copyright in the Program,

id. at 1270 n.3, but the claims of copyright for both the CD Author Development

System and the PicTools Development Kit, respectively, have been registered with

the Copyright Office. Id. at 1269-70. 

Part of the Program consists of “a search engine based on the National

Geographic Society proprietary indexing scheme.” R1-20 at Ex. B, p. 2. The 7

search engine “contains the same information as the print indices published by the

Society,” RAcc#2-230 at 10, and it allows the user of the CNG to access articles

“by topic, title, key word, or contributor.” Greenberg I, Appellants’ Br. at 7. The

Program also contains “a feature for saving search results,” R4-203 at 10, which
35

would allow a user to repeatedly access the results of a former search, but “[t]here

is no text-based search capability.” Greenberg I, Appellees’ Br. at 25.

Using any CD-ROM of the CNG, a user therefore can locate, isolate, copy,

and print or transmit any photograph through the following steps. First, run the

CD-ROM using Windows Explorer® (extant at the publication of the CNG) and

open the folder labeled “IMAGES” from within the CD-ROM. Then, open one of

the subfolders contained in the IMAGES folder. Each image contained in the

subfolder will be displayed, and each such image is a single scanned page of an

issue of the Magazine. Next, right-click on an image, place the cursor over “Open

With,” and then choose “Paint.” Using the “Select” tool provided by “Paint,”

select only the photograph, omitting all other material contained in the image. 

Right-click in the selected photograph and choose “Copy.” Then, from the “File”

menu in the toolbar, left-click “New,” which creates a new blank document. 

Within the new document, right-click and choose “Paste.” The new document will

now contain only the photograph extracted from the scanned page, free of any of

the other material originally contained on the page as it was scanned into the CDROM. Copies of the photograph now can readily be made and printed or

transmitted. See R1-20, Exh. A.
36

A. 

The holding in New York Times Company, Inc. v. Tasini (“Tasini”), 533

U.S. 483, 488, 121 S. Ct. 2381, 2384-85 (2001) is as follows:

In agreement with the Second Circuit, we hold that § 201(c) does

not authorize the copying at issue here. The publishers are not

sheltered by § 201(c), we conclude, because the databases

reproduce and distribute articles standing alone and not in context,

not “as part of that particular collective work” to which the author

contributed, “as part of . . . any revision” thereof, or “as part of . . .

any later collective work in the same series.” Both the print

publishers and the electronic publishers, we rule, have infringed

the copyrights of the freelance authors.

(emphasis mine).

The Society desires to license the use of certain photographs in a new

assembly of its previously published magazine series, but does not want to pay the

contributing photographers to do so. To succeed, the CNG must qualify for the

protection of the privilege extended by § 201(c). However, the assembly of

“[those] particular collective work[s]” – 1,200 magazines – is a far different

undertaking, in a practical as well as a copyright sense, than the permitted § 201(c)

reproduction or republication of “that particular collective work” – each issue of

the magazine. 

Until the case returned to our court for oral argument, generally the
 The appellants have changed their legal position in this case more than a politician 8

running for election. In February of 1998 in the district court they argued: “CD-ROM 108 [the

CNG] thus does not qualify as a new collective work for purposes of § 201(c) because it does not

differ in any material creative respect from paper copies of the Magazine. As a straightforward

reprint of the Magazine, the Society is entitled to publish it pursuant to § 201(c) . . . Thus,

revisions of a particular collective work and later collective works in the same series --- both

explicitly authorized by § 201(c) --- are clearly ‘new’ collective works. For example, ‘a

“revision” can alter a preexisting work by a sufficient degree to give rise to a new original

creation.” [citing the Tasini district court opinion]. Reply Memorandum of Law in Support of

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Count II And to Dismiss for Summary Judgment on Counts IIIV of Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint. R1-28 at 4-5 (emphasis mine). In their November 1999

“Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Plaintiffs Motion to Vacate Order Granting in Part

Defendants’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, and for other Relief,” R1-62, appellants

made the following statement in judicio: “CD-ROM 108 [the CNG] is merely a republication,

not a revision, of the Magazine . . . CD-ROM 108 is nothing more than a collection of issues of

the Magazine in a different medium . . .” Id. at 7-8. In their initial brief to our court in

Greenberg I, appellants continued to assert and concede that CNG is indeed a “new” collective

work but qualified that concession by claiming that: “SECTION 201(c) OF THE COPYRIGHT

ACT PERMITS THE SOCIETY TO PUBLISH CD-ROM 108 [THE CNG] AS A REVISION

EVEN IF IT IS A NEW COLLECTIVE WORK, NOTWITHSTANDING THE SECOND

CIRCUIT’S OPINION IN TASINI . . . Thus, revisions of a particular collective work and later

collective works in the same series . . . are clearly ‘new’ collective works.” Brief in Opposition

to Initial Brief of Jerry Greenberg and Idaz Greenberg, 19-20. To further fortify their concession

appellants added the following definition: “To ‘revise’ something means to ‘make a new,

amended, improved, or up-to-date version’ of it. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary at

p. 1010.” Id. at 22. Just as the chamaeleon politician changes position with the most recent poll,

our appellants have changed their legal position and rationales as the Tasini case worked its way

through the courts. However, as I have endeavored to demonstrate in this dissent, the CNG is a

non-qualifying (per § 201(c)) new collective work, not due to its “revision” or “non-revision”

status, but because the essentially archival copy of Magazines scanned into CD-ROMs (the most

analogous replica to the microform replica) has been combined with at least two copyrightable

(and in one case registered) computer programs — each a free-standing, sui generis copyrighteligible work. Thus, as the appellants correctly conceded in their zig-zag argument trail, the

CNG is not any sort of revision — it is an exact replica placed in a different medium; which

mere placement does not constitute a “revision.” Moreover, the act of scanning is all that is

necessary to place the rote copy of the Magazine into the digital medium. The “assembly” of

these, “separate and independent works in themselves” [the replica and the computer programs]

constitute a “new” and, even “completely different,” collective work. See § 101 definition of

“collective work” which in pertinent part provides: “A ‘collective work’ is a work . . . , in which

a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are

assembled into a collective whole.”

37

appellants traveled on the “revision” prong of § 201(c). Now, glossing over or 8
 “The term ‘compilation’ includes collective works.” § 101. The definition of 9

“collective work,” per § 101 in pertinent part: “. . . is a work, such as a[n] . . .. anthology . . .in

which a number of contributions, consisting of separate and independent works in themselves

[here, each issue of the magazine as well as at least two computer programs], are assembled into

38

misstating the meaning of “that particular collective work” (which is limited to,

and descriptive of, each individual issue of the magazine), they claim the Society

may license a reproduction or republication of all issues, collectively in a new

anthology or aggregation, so long as each replication is in “context” per Tasini. 

Recall, however, that Tasini factually was a “disassembly” case not an “assembly”

case. The Court focused on textual and pictorial context, in a threshold

examination, to determine whether a “particular collective work” even existed in

order to ascertain whether the § 201(c) “revision privilege” was available. The

Court determined that it was not, and it never reached the controlling issue

presented in our case as to whether an assemblage is privileged under § 201(c). As

discussed below, an assemblage of a replica and copyrightable computer programs

is not privileged because a “new collective work” is expressly not included in §

201(c) per House Report No. 94-1476, at 122, as reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N.

5659, 5737 (hereinafter “H.R. Rep.”) and each “particular collective work” (each

issue of the Magazine) is not part of a “revision.” Thus the Society has failed to

grapple with the reality that such a heretofore non-existent aggregation of the 1,200

magazines has now been assembled into what constitutes a “new collective work.”9
a collective whole [here, the CNG].” 

 H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 122-23; Tasini v. New York Times Co., 206 F.3d 161, 167 10

(2d Cir. 2000); Tasini, 533. U.S. at 495, 121 S. Ct. at 2388; Greenberg I, 244 F.3d at 1273.

 “A revision is commonly understood as a purposeful alteration of content undertaken 11

for some substantive reason . . . . Likewise when an exact replica of the original work is

produced the result is not a revision because nothing has been ‘revised.’” Lateef Mtima, Tasini

and its Progeny: Exclusive Right or Fair Use On the Electronic Publishing Frontier?, 14

Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J., 369, 423-26 (Winter 2004) (hereinafter “Mtima”).

39

The Society represented, in its claim of copyright for the CNG (“108 Years of

National Geographic Magazine on CD-ROM”), that the CNG is a “Compilation of

Pre-Existing Material Primarily Pictorial” under section 6 [entitled “Derivative

Work Or Compilation”]. Per H. R. Rep., cited by the Second Circuit, the Supreme

Court, and the Greenberg I panel, this assemblage actually constitutes a “new

collective work” which is not embraced, and is expressly excluded, from the scope

of § 201(c). This assemblage is a new product and a public dissemination that 10

totally eviscerates the economic value of the contributors’ rights under § 201(c). If

the Society is also relying on the second, or “revision” prong of § 201(c), as it has

(from time to time) until now, its argument fails because no revisions have been

made to the magazines. No revisions have been made because nothing has been

“revised.” Accordingly, since § 201(c) specifically provides that a reproduction 11

and distribution can only occur “as part of” a later edition or revision, a publisher

infringes a freelance contributor’s work by either a reproduction or a distribution
Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright 12

in the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution. In the

absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright

in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and

distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revision of that

collective work, and any later collective work in the same series.

 As will be discussed below, only appellant Society (a non-profit entity) holds the § 13

201(c) privilege. However, the record is clear that a separate legal entity, National Geographic

Enterprises, Inc. a for-profit subsidiary corporation, together with an independently owned

corporation, Mindspring, Inc., actually reproduced and distributed the CNG. As explained

below, the § 201(c) privilege is personal to the Society and may not be transferred to another

person (i.e., legal entity). Yet it is these two other legal entities that are commercially exploiting

the plaintiff’s copyright and contributions or works, purportedly under the auspices and cover of

the § 201(c) privilege as to which the law negates their putative claim.

40

that takes place not “as part of a revision.” Ryan v. Carl Corp., 23 F. Supp. 2d

1146, 1149 n.2 (N.D. Cal. 1998) (Judge Fern Smith got this important aspect of the

case right even before the Second Circuit and Supreme Court in Tasini).

As the appellants have conceded and recognized they must demonstrate that

the CNG constitutes a “collective work” that each of the defendants are

12

privileged under § 201(c) to reproduce and distribute. By its express terms, § 13

201(c) protects and refers to only “collective works” and confers a “privilege” only

to “the owner of the copyright in the collective work.” § 201(c) (emphasis mine);

see also H.R. Rep. (referencing § 201(c) and the definition of “collective work” in

§ 101 and stating that § 201(c) “deals with the troublesome problem of ownership

of copyright in contributions to ‘collective works.’” Under these statutory
 A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, 14

in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves,

are assembled into a collective whole. A “computer program” is a set of statements or

instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result. 

§ 101 (emphasis mine). 

 H.R. Rep. at 122-23 (. . . the publisher could not revise the contribution itself or 15

include it in a new anthology or entirely different magazine or other collective work.” (emphasis

mine). See Tasini, 533 U.S. at 495, 121 S. Ct. at 2388; Tasini v. New York Times Co., 206 F.3d

at 167; Greenberg I, 244 F.3d at 1273.

41

definitions, as clarified by the referenced legislative history, the CNG is a “new 14

collective work.” Before examining why the CNG is a new collective work, recall

that the Tasini case involved a factual situation that was totally different from the

facts in this case. That case was a disassembly case not an assembly case — as is

this case. This assemblage know as “the CNG” does not constitute a privileged

revision because it is, at the very least not a revision and, moreover, is a new and

different collective work that Congress expressly exempted from the coverage of §

201(c) and does not constitute a revision, much less “part of . . . any revision” of 15

“that particular collective work.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at 488, 121 S. Ct. at 2384-85.

The Second Circuit decision in Tasini, affirmed by the Supreme Court,

began with the undisputed assumption that: “[T]he electronic databases are neither

the original collective work — the particular edition of the periodical — in which

the [a]uthors’ articles were published[,] nor a later collective work in the same

series.” Tasini, 206 F.3d 161, 166 (2d Cir. 2000), aff’d, 533 U.S. 483, 121 S.Ct.
 The “work” referred to in § 201(c) is the individual periodical or encyclopedia, not a 16

collection of periodicals or sets of volumes over dozens of years. The drafters of the statute

clearly had in mind the narrower idea of a single issue of a periodical, not the entire series of

periodicals. The terminology “that particular collective work” certainly suggests this: The

legislative history refers to individual “editions” and “volumes.” See H.R. Rep. at 122-23 (under

section 201(c) “a publishing company could reprint a contribution from one issue in a later issue

of its magazine . . . .”) (emphasis mine). Section 101 of the Copyright Act refers to a “a

periodical issue” in the definition of a collective work. See also Tasini, 206 F.3d at 167 (“‘that

particular collective work’ means a specific edition or issue of a periodical”) (emphasis mine). 

To the question “if the publishers can publish revisions issue by issue, then why can’t they put

all the issues together[?];” the answer would be: “the resulting compilation is a new anthology

or new collective work, rather than a revision of ‘that collective work.’”

42

2381 (2001). That reasoning left only the “revision” prong of § 201(c) remaining 16

to the publishers. Then, the Second Circuit rejected the publishers’ contention

“that each database constitutes a ‘revision’ of the particular collective work in

which each [a]uthor’s” contribution first appeared. Id. at 166. The Second Circuit

correctly explained – just as our Greenberg I opinion agreed — “[t]he most natural

reading of the ‘revision’ of ‘that collective work’ clause is that Section 201(c)

protects only later editions of a particular issue of a periodical, such as the final

edition of a newspaper.” Id. at 167.

This analysis by the Second Circuit also correctly observed, interpreting the

legislative history explaining the introduction of § 201 into the then-new 1976

Copyright Act, that: “the ‘revision’ clause in Section 201(c) was not intended to

permit the inclusion of previously published freelance contributions ‘in a new

anthology or an entirely different magazine or other collective work,’ i.e., in later
43

collective works not in the same series.” Id. (citing H.R. Rep. at 122-23). The

panel emphasized that: permissible uses under § 201(c) “are an exception to the

general rule that copyright vests initially in the author of the individual

contribution”; and warned that “[w]ere the permissible uses under Section 201(c)

as broad and as transferable as [publishers] contend, it is not clear that the rights

retained by the [a]uthors could be considered ‘exclusive’ in any meaningful sense.” 

Id. at 168. The Tasini panel also noted in a footnote that: “Section 201(c) grants

collective works authors ‘only’ a ‘privilege’ rather than a ‘right.’ Each of these

terms connotes specialized legal meanings, and they were juxtaposed by Congress

in the same sentence of Section 201(c).” Id. at 168 n.3. 

Thus, both the Second Circuit in Tasini and our court in Greenberg I

concluded that a “new anthology” or “new collective work” was not within the

“revision” privilege of § 201(c) or otherwise protected within the limited scope of

§ 201(c). The Supreme Court’s affirmance of the Second Circuit’s opinion in

Tasini, not only failed to diminish the force and effect of both the Second and

Eleventh Circuit opinions that had issued before the Court ruled, but rather

fortified those respective courts’ analyses of how new collective works (“other
 See Mtima, at 425 (“The content-altered digital re-publications in Tasini and 17

Greenberg were held to virtually extinguish any secondary market for the contributory works

contained therein, because once available online, there would be little need for alternative access

to the works. An exact digital replica of a collective work, particularly when disbursed into an

online commercial database, would likely have the same effect. Accordingly, exact digital

replicas can be disqualified from § 201(c) revision status on the same market impact grounds as

the content-altered digital re-publications at issue in Tasini.”). [T]he [Tasini] Court ruled that to

allow the digital re-publications as privileged revisions would defeat the legislative objective

underlying § 201(c) . . . the Court found that the development of digital technology has resulted

in the creation of a secondary ‘stand alone’ market for the individual contributions to collective

works and construed that Congress intended that the contributory authors, as opposed to the

publishers, be the ones to benefit from such new markets . . . . [T]hus the secondary, ‘stand

alone’ re-publication market that § 201(c) restores to individual contributing authors had been

usurped by the publishers.” Id. at 388-89 (citations omitted); see also, Thomas Dallal, Faulkner

v. National Geographic Enterprises, Inc.: Driving a Truck Through the Eye of a Needle, 15 Tex.

Intell. Prop. L.J. 63, 82-84 (2006) (“A recent article . . . defines ‘media neutrality’ to mean that a

‘copyright owner’s rights should be the same regardless of the form, whether analog or digital, in

which the work may be embodied or fixed.’ . . . Because the Second Circuit in Faulkner held that

the CNG was a permissible revision, it raised the issue of media neutrality only in passing and

only in the context of whether the plaintiffs’ contracts explicitly forbade the challenged CNG

uses. . . . [T]he Second Circuit dodged the central issue of whether the CNG was a ‘other later

collective work’ or anthology by declaring microform and microfiche a permissible revision and

then analogizing the CNG to microform. In Greenberg, on the other hand, the Eleventh Circuit

undertook the required analysis, determined that the CNG possessed substantial indicia of

originality, and emphasized that the Society had admitted as much by registering it with the

copyright office as a new compilation. It then correctly, and consistently with the Second

Circuit and Supreme Court Tasini decisions, concluded that the CNG was ‘a new product (“an

original work of authorship”), in a new medium.’”); Alice Haemmerli, Commentary: Tasini v.

New York Times Co., 22 Colum. J. L. & Arts 129 (Winter 1998) (to the same effect).

44

collective works”) are beyond the scope of the § 201(c) privilege. Specifically, 17

the Court explained that:

§ 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.

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 485, 121 S. Ct. at 2383 (emphasis mine). The Court stressed
 The Supreme Court used the word “compendium” here. “Compendium” is defined as: 18

“1. a brief treatment or account of a subject, esp. an extensive subject; concise treatise; 2. a

summary, epitome, or abridgement; 3. a full list or inventory. Random House Unabridged

Dictionary 417 (2d ed. 1987). Presumably, the Court relied upon the third definition. In order to

45

that a principal component of the underlying policy rationale for finding that the

publisher did not enjoy any § 201(c) privilege was that:

It would scarcely “preserve the author’s copyright in a contribution”

as contemplated by Congress, [H.R. Rep. at 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.

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 497, 121 S. Ct. at 2389 (citation omitted) (emphasis mine). The

Tasini Court emphasized this copyright policy in protecting the author’s (here

photographers’) rights by observing:

The [p]ublishers’ encompassing construction of the § 201(c) privilege

is unacceptable, we conclude, for it would diminish the [a]uthors’

exclusive rights in the [a]rticles.

Id. With that policy in mind, the Court moved to the actual test to be applied “[i]n

determining whether the [a]rticles have been reproduced and distributed ‘as part

of’ a ‘revision’ of the collective works in issue.” Id. (emphasis mine). The Court

stated that it “focus[es] on the [a]rticles as presented to, and perceptible by, the

user of the [d]atabases.” Id. at 499, 121 S. Ct. at 2390.

Under this analytical approach, the Court explained:

One might view the articles as parts of a new [aggregation] –

18
avoid confusion, because the more favored definitions of the word – emphasizing brevity and

conciseness – are inappropriate to the database at issue in our case, reproducing, as it does, the

complete National Geographic with each issue as originally published rather than shortened or

summarized in any way, I have instead used the word “aggregation.”

 Tasini, 206 F.3d at 167; Tasini, 533. U.S. at 495, 121 S. Ct. at 2388; Greenberg I, 244 19

F.3d at 1273.

46

namely, the entirety of works in the [d]atabase. In that [aggregation],

each edition of each periodical represents only a miniscule fraction of

the ever-expanding [aggregation]. The [aggregation] no more

constitutes a “revision” of each constituent edition than a 400-page

novel quoting a sonnet in passing would represent a “revision” of that

poem. “Revision” denotes a new “version,” and a version is, in this

setting, a “distinct form of something regarded by its creator or others

as one work. The massive whole of the [aggregation] is not

recognizable as a new version of its every small part.”

Id. at 500, 121 S. Ct. at 2391 (citation omitted). The Court concluded: “Those

[d]atabases [the aggregation] simply cannot bear characterization as a ‘revision’ of

any one periodical edition.” Id. at 501 n.9, 121 S. Ct. at 2391 n.9 (emphasis mine).

A review of the Tasini opinions, both in the Second Circuit and the Supreme

Court, as well as our Greenberg I opinion, discloses that all three opinions cite to

the same House Judiciary Committee Report for interpretation of the last clause of

§ 201(c), the meaning of “revision,” and the definition of its scope. The relevant 19

House Report passage explains:

The basic presumption of section 201(c) is fully consistent with

present law and practice, and represents a fair balancing of equities. 

At the same time, the last clause of the subsection, under which the

privilege of republishing the contribution under certain limited

circumstances would be presumed, is an essential counterpart of the
 “Anthology” is defined as: “[A] collection of literary pieces, such as poems, short 20

stories, or plays,” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 114 (2d ed.

1982); or “[a] book or other collection of selected writings by various authors, usually in the

same literary form, of the same period, or on the same subject.” The Random House Dictionary

of the English Language 88 (2d ed. 1987). The only reference to “anthology” in the Copyright

Act appears in the § 101 definition of “collective work”: “a work, such as a periodical issue,

anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and

independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.” 

47

basic presumption. Under the language of this clause a publishing

company could reprint 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. at 122-23 (emphasis mine). Based upon a straight-forward reading of

that legislative history, the two Tasini opinions and our Greenberg I opinion

concluded that § 201(c) does not extend protection for a publisher to include an

author’s or photographer’s contribution in a collective work in a new aggregation,

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 500, 121 S. Ct. at 2391, or anthology (a “later collective work”

in § 201(c) parlance). Tasini, 206 F.3d at 169; Tasini 533 U.S. at 496-97, 121 S.

Ct. at 2389-90. Under this analysis, Greenberg’s copyrights have been infringed.

If only the Second Circuit had followed its earlier, affirmed approach in

Tasini when it decided Faulkner, it would have stayed on the correct track. In

stark contrast to the later Faulkner decision, the Tasini Second Circuit panel had

clearly held that: “If the republication is a ‘new anthology’ or a different 20

collective work, it is not within Section 201(c).” Id. at 169 (citing H.R. Rep. at
 “Collective work” is a copyright term of art defined in Section 101 of the Act. See fn 21

12 & 14, supra. By that definition, a “collective work” is a species or type of copyrightable

work different from the other two types of copyrightable works; such as, a creative work (like a

novel or drama) and a derivative work (like a motion picture based upon a novel). Thus the

conflation of “work[s]” and generic usage by the Faulkner district judge, and others, distorts the

correct interpretive process.

 After publication of both the Tasini opinion and the Faulkner opinion, Professor 22

Deborah Tussey made the following insightful and pertinent observation:

The NYTO and GPO CDs, on the other hand, were distributed as

compilations of original issues, requiring a more extensive inquiry into whether

they were functional equivalents of revisions or new collective works. Congress,

in the legislative history, indicated that a publishing company could reprint a

48

122-23 (1976)). It should be noted that appellants in their briefs to this court have

attempted to perpetuate an inappropriate and inaccurate analysis originally

introduced by the wrong question by the trial court in the Faulkner case, which is: 

“What then distinguishes a ‘revision’ from an ‘entirely different’ work?” Faulkner

v. Nat’l Geographic Soc’y, 294 F. Supp. 2d 523, 539 (S. D. N.Y. 2003). The

correct inquiry, reading the plain text of § 201(c) is, rather: “What distinguishes a

‘revision’ from an ‘other collective work? ’” The House Report defines it not 21

solely as an “entirely different work,” as Judge Kaplan framed the question, but as

a “new anthology or an entirely different magazine or other collective work.” H.R.

Rep. at 122-23. The Faulkner court, using an attenuated microform analogy from

Tasini dicta, avoided the obvious alternate conclusion that the CNG is a new

compendium, anthology, or “other collective work” and not a “revision” under §

201(c). The Society and Mindscape cannot point to any single issue of the some 22
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, but

publishers could not revise the contribution itself or include it in a new anthology

or an entirely different magazine or other collective work. Since GPO included

publications other than those taken from the New York Times, it clearly

constitutes a new anthology and, hence, a new collective work under section

201(c). NYTO, which accumulated only issues of the New York Times, presents

a more difficult case. The Faulkner court read the “entirely different” language to

indicate that a collective work which is merely somewhat different from the

original is privileged and relies on Tasini dictum regarding microforms to

conclude that accumulations of issues of the same periodical are permissible. One

can as easily read the passage, standing alone, to indicate that an accumulation of

issues, like NYTO, is a new anthology collecting multiple, previous compilations

(the individual issues). In the absence of clear direction from Congress, the court

should have resolved the question by emphasizing the policy underlying section

201(c).

The legislative history of section 201(c) clearly supports the majority's

interpretation of Congress's intent to equalize the balance of power between

individual authors and publishers. The overriding policy issue reflected in that

history is fairness in the allocation of incentives for creation, not, as Justice

Stevens argues, efficiency of dissemination. The majority offers sufficient

empirical evidence to support that policy analysis, based on the impact on the

authors’ markets for new anthologies. Had the court emphasized this argument

and clarified the question whether accumulation of multiple issues was

permissible, it might have avoided the result in Faulkner, which undercuts the

policy protecting authors. Indeed, the combination of Tasini, Faulkner, and the

publishers' new practice of requiring that freelancers license all conceivable rights

as a prerequisite to publication, suggests that if Congress retains any interest in

protecting powerless freelancers against overreaching publishers, it must devise a

better mechanism than section 201(c).

The court would have done well to pursue an alternative argument, urged

by the Register of Copyrights, that the critical right infringed in Tasini was the

right of public display. The Register argued “vigorously” that the display of

individual articles to users violated the authors’ right to public display and that

since section 201(c) provides publishers no display privilege, the defendants

should be held liable. This approach, had the court taken it, might have avoided

the difficulty of defining copies and revisions, and their functional equivalents, in

the electronic context. When combined with the policy analysis, it would also

have provided a more satisfactory rationale for the result.

Deborah Tussey, Technology Matters: The Courts, Media Neutrality, and New Technologies, 12

49
J. Intell. Prop. L. 427, 484-85 (2005).

50

1,200 separate collective work magazines that bears anything anyone could term a

“revision.” Each issue of the magazine has been slavishly and identically

reproduced and lodged in a different more compact and portable/storable digital

medium accompanied by a completely new moving sequence with audiovisual

accompaniment (a derivative work), which is displayed on the computer screen

and plays each and every time a constituent CD-ROM is booted-up on the

computer. Assembled with the unedited/unrevised copies are separately

copyrightable computer programs (i.e., the CD Author Development System and

the PicTools Development Kit). Recall that the 25-second audiovisual clip consists

of 10 different Magazine covers morphing into each other with music and sound

effects including Greenberg’s “diver” photograph (a contribution or work). This

sequence, which is little-discussed in the appellants’ many pages of briefs,

manifestly infringed upon Greenberg’s, and the other contributing photographers’,

exclusive derivative work rights under § 106(2) by using his work in new ways.

Thus, assuming arguendo that the Society can invoke the § 201(c) privilege

on behalf of infringing third parties as well as defense of its own conduct, the

question becomes: Does the creation of a work that never before existed (the

CNG) by combining an exact, unrevised digital replica of 1,200 pre-existing
51

collective works (i.e., the magazines) together with at least two independently

created and owned copyrightable computer programs into a single integrated

commercial product (the CNG) constitute either: (1) a new anthology; or, (2) other

collective work? If it is a new anthology or other collective work, then it is

precluded from being privileged under § 201(c) by the express language of H.R.

Rep 94-1476. See H.R. Rep., supra. However, the majority at footnote 11 cites a

supplementary report by the Register of Copyrights from 1965 for the inaccurate

and inartful proposition that what Congress really meant in legislative history

which states that a publisher cannot include an author’s contribution in a “new

anthology or an entirely different magazine or other collective work” really should

be read as an ‘entirely different’ collective work.” See Maj. Opin. at 16-17.

The majority places great weight upon its comparison of a microform

version of the Magazine pursuant to the putative approval, albeit in dicta, by the

Tasini Court under the § 201(c) privilege of a reproduction of print publications in

microform. The majority states: “Based on this fidelity to context, the Supreme

Court reasoned that the reproduction of print publications in microform would be

privileged under § 201(c).” Id. at 12. At the outset of its discussion of the

microform analogy argument by the publishers in Tasini the Court stated: “The
 Recall that the “GPO” (General Periodicals OnDisc) in Tasini, similar to the CD- 23

ROMs here, were included in the term “Databases.”

 See Appendix A (Text on CNG boxes of CDs) and Appendix B (shrinkwrapped 24

“License Agreement And Limited Warranty”).

 Maj. Opin. at 22. This so-called “staple of the Copyright Act” actually appears for the 25

first time in a Supreme Court opinion in Tasini, 533 U.S. 483, 502, 121 S.Ct. 2381, 2392.

52

Publishers press an analogy between the Databases, on the one hand, and 23

microfilm and microfiche, on the other. We find the analogy wanting.” Tasini,

533 U.S. at 501, 121 S. Ct. at 2391 (emphasis mine). The majority then proceeds

to find the CNG “analogous” to these forms of microform. On the heels of that

tenuous “analogy,” the majority is dismissive of the addition of the copyrightable

computer programs incorporated by Mindscape into the CNG --- the CD Author

Development System and the PicTools Development Kit. After describing and 24

lumping together all of these independent and free-standing copyrightable

computer programs the majority summarily concludes that: “[T]he computer

program’s elements . . . do not take the CNG outside the § 201(c) privilege.” Maj.

Opin. at 19. These copyrightable computer programs are referred to by the

majority as “the search function,” “zoom capacity,” and a “computer program

[that] simply compresses and decompresses the digital images.” Id. at 19-20. The

majority invoking the “a staple of the Copyright Act” – “the principle of media

neutrality”

25

 – observes that: “The CNG is no different than other CD-ROM
 Maj. Opin. at 19-20. The statement that “[a]ll CD-ROMs contain an operating 26

computer program” is incorrect; CDs are commonly used to store music, data and photograph

files without incorporation of any computer program. It is possible to save pictures, images,

songs, or videos onto a CD-ROM without adding a separate computer program to the disk. As

noted above, by using only “Windows Explorer®” on a host computer, without a compression or

decompression computer program or a search-engine computer program, a user can view each

and every page and isolate and copy any photograph on the CD-ROM — thereby destroying any

freelance contributors ability to economically benefit from the sale thereof. Moreover, the

appellants use of the JIF (or Jpeg Interchange Format) provides easy, unencumbered access to

the individual images of the Magazines on the CNG’s constituent CD-ROMs. So easy that this

abacus-age judge could accomplish it with only a little coaching from his law clerks! Moreover,

Professor Patry even refers to me as a “Luddite” in his recent copyright treatise edition. 2

William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright, § 5:142.95 (2007)

53

products, in that all CD-ROMs contain an operating computer program that directs

its functionality;” and, “These added features only serve to provide functionality 26

to the ‘CNG’s raison d’etre.’” Id. (emphasis mine). Confronted with a similar

argument the Supreme Court majority in Tasini stated: “We lack the dissent’s

confidence that the current form of the Databases is entirely attributable to the

nature of the electronic media, rather than the nature of the economic market

served by the Databases. In any case, we see no grounding in § 201(c) for a

‘medium-driven’ necessity defense . . . to the Authors’ infringement claims.” 

Tasini, 533 U.S. at 502 n.11, 121 S. Ct. at 2392 n.11.

First and foremost, the majority’s analogy of the CNG to microfilm and

microfiche is far too comprehensive. A valid analogy would be to a reproduction

of the Magazines by scanning them onto a CD-ROM in digital format using the

mechanical operating software embedded in a scanning device — similar to the
 Media neutrality means that a copyright owner enjoys the same protection in any form 27

where his work is fixed. Stated differently, “media neutrality” conveys the concept that the

copyright law should not favor any particular technology over another, such that the subject

matter of copyright includes works fixed on both existing media and future media. This broad

54

photographic microfilming of the pages of a publication. At that point, without the

benefit of a compression computer program, one would have essentially a “digital

microfilm” stored and capable of display on a computer screen truly analogous to

microfilm. The problem for the Society and its co-infringers, however, is that that

digital reproduction would likely consume several hundred CDs by assembling it

without a compression computer program. Such a reproduction would place the

Magazines’ images in context, readable and displayable by a computer — but it

would not be a marketable product to the present computer-savvy generation, “the

economic market served by the [CNG].” Id. The same can be said for the searchengine computer program. Without it the microform-like collection of CDs would

not be marketable. Stated differently, the old wine without the new bottles with

the twist off cap would be an unmarketable product. The tech-savvy consumer of

today would be better off pulling the old editions of the National Geographic

Magazine from their parents’ and grandparents’ closets, basements, or attics and

viewing them for free!

The copyright principle in play here is that the nebulous concept of “media

neutrality” that has its principal focus on the owner of the copyright right, not the 27
protection encourages authors to create more works and thereby advance the progress of science

and useful arts. Thus, the purpose of media neutrality is to shape a more flexible copyright law

to fit new technology without revising the statutory copyright law in the future. H.R. Rep. at 52. 

Media neutrality language also appears in a series of statutory definitions (e.g., “audiovisual

works,” “copies,” “fixed,” “literary works,” “phonorecords” and “sound recordings”). See §

101. However, such language is conspicuously absent from the definitions of “derivative works”

and “compilations.” See § 101. Section 201(c) also lacks media neutrality language. Wendy J.

Gordon, Fine-Tuning Tasini: Privileges of Electronic Distribution and Reproduction, 66 Brook.

L. Rev. 473, 485 n.65 (2000).

55

grantee of a privilege. That concept cannot trump the codified and

constitutionally-based rights of a copyright owner. The statutory definition of

collective work clearly applies to the “assembly” --- the aggregation --- of

distinctly copyrightable works into “a collective whole;” here, the CNG. Thus,

when the distinct, separable, copyrightable computer programs (some of which

have registered claims of copyright predating the creation of the CNG) have been

intentionally incorporated into the commercial product known as the CNG together

with the existing components of the collective works — the unrevised individual

issues of the National Geographic Magazines — there then exists an “other

collective work” or surely, even under the majority’s (mis)interpretation, “an

entirely different collective work” that fails to qualify for inclusion within the §

201(c) privilege.

B.

The Society claims the benefit of a privilege for a group of third parties that

actually compiled and published the CNG. The Society relies on putative transfers
 “The matter of what questions may be taken up and resolved for the first time on 28

appeal is one left primarily to the discretion of the courts of appeals, to be exercised on the facts

of individual cases.” Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 121, 96 S. Ct. 2868, 2877 (1976). 

Courts have generally been amenable to exercising their inherent power to consider unbriefed

threshold issues when they arise. See U.S. Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am. Inc.,

508 U.S. 439, 447, 113 S. Ct. 2173, 2178 (1993) (“[A] court may consider an issue ‘antecedent

to . . . and ultimately dispositive of’ the dispute before it, even an issue the parties fail to identify

and brief.”) (quoting Arcadia v. Ohio Power Co., 498 U.S. 73, 77, 111 S. Ct. 415, 418 (1990)). 

Moreover, it is an axiom of appellate review that the judgment of a district court may be

affirmed upon any adequate ground, even if it is other than the one on which the court actually

relied. See Smith v. Allen, 502 F.3d 1255, 1280 (11th Cir. 2007).

 The Society must rely upon the privilege in § 201(c) because it does not hold exclusive 29

right to Greenberg’s photographs. Under § 103(b), a copyright in a compilation does not extend

to the compiler any exclusive rights in the preexisting materials brought together in the

collective work. Greenberg’s photographs were produced and submitted to the Society before

the periodicals were published. Therefore, the photographs were preexisting works in which the

Society owned no rights at all absent a written transfer. This delineation is further reinforced by

the Copyright Office in its Circular 62 on the registration of copyrights in serials, where it states:

If the serial issue includes any independently authored contributions in which all

rights have not been transferred by the contributor to the claimant for the serial

issue as a whole, those contributions are not included in the claim being

registered, because the claimant in these contributions is different from the

claimant in the entire serial issue.

Copyright Office Circular No. 62 (Serials) at 4 (“The Claimant and the Extent of the Claim”). 

56

to those third-parties of the § 201(c) privilege to insulate it from liability for its

contributory infringement and to protect its partners in publication from liability.

Although the issue of the transferability of the privilege accorded under

§201(c) was not squarely briefed by the parties, it was identified directly by the 28

Supreme Court in Tasini. See Tasini, 533 U.S. at 496 n.5, 121 S. Ct. at 2389 n.5. 

29

Here, the Society, as the owner of the copyright in the collective works (the

Magazines), is the statutory grantee and holder of the privilege. However, the
57

record reflects that the Society, through taxable subsidiaries, contracted with an

unaffiliated third party, Mindscape, to reproduce and distribute the Magazines on

CD-ROMs. RAcc#2-230 at 9. Mindscape incorporated two independently owned

and copyrighted computer programs (CD Author Development Kit and the

PicTools Development Kit owned by DataWare, Inc. and Pegasus Imaging

Corporation, respectively) onto each CD-ROM of the CNG.

The question is straightforward: once it has been established who owns the

copyright in a particular collective work, who may exercise the § 201(c) privilege? 

The answer is equally straightforward: the exercise of privilege accorded the owner

of a collective work under § 201(c) is limited to that owner. As the Act makes

clear, the § 201(c) grant, is a privilege, not a right. As such, it is not transferrable. 

Thus, as a threshold matter, the invocation in this case of the § 201(c) privilege is

not authorized by the law on this record.

“Section 201(c) does not and cannot grant rights (since only [§ 106] does

that); instead, it provides (rebuttable) presumptive privileges where the owner of a

collective work does not have a transfer of exclusive rights from a free-lancer.” 

William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright (hereinafter “Patry”) § 5:138 (2007). 

“Section 201(c) grants specified privileges that can be exercised only by the owner

of the original collective work (or an agent acting on behalf of the collective work
 See Chesapeake & Ohio Ry. v Miller, 114 U.S. 176, 186, 5 S. Ct. 813, 818 (1885) 30

(immunity from taxation enjoyed by railroad was a privilege and as such was “personal, and

incapable of transfer without express statutory direction,” and thus did not pass to purchaser of

tract of railroad land); Wilson v. Gaines, 103 U.S. 417, 420-21 (1880) (same); Morgan v.

Louisiana, 93 U.S. 217, 223 (1876) (same); Am. Pelagic Fishing Co. v. United States, 379 F.3d

1363, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (fishing permits issued by the government not transferable); FDIC v.

58

owner) and cannot, without free-lancers’ permission, be transferred to third

parties.” Id. Privileges are lesser even than non-exclusive licenses. 

As a result, there can be no doubt that collective owners do not own a

transferable copyright ownership interest in freelance authors’

separate contributions and that authorization to third parties to include

those contributions in an entirely different collective work exceeds the

collective work owners’ authority under Section 201(c). Only if the

copyright owner in the collective work owns an exclusive right can it

authorize third parties to reproduce and distribute freelance authors’

separate contributions. 

Patry § 5:141 (emphasis mine).

In the original proceeding in district court in Tasini, the trial judge

concluded that any § 201(c) “privilege” was, under §201(d)(2), a “subdivision of

any of the rights specified by section 106.” Tasini v. New York Times Co., 972 F.

Supp. 804, 815-16 (S.D.N.Y. 1997). Thus, he concluded that it could be

transferred. Id. However, as noted, “[t]he only ‘rights’ granted in the Copyright

Act are [contained] in Section 106, not in chapter 2.” Patry § 5:141 n.2. That the

term “privilege,” in turn, appears only in § 201(c) shows that Congress recognized

a difference between a right and a privilege. Further, “in general law,” privileges

are “regarded as personal and not transferable.” Id. 30
Morrison, 747 F.2d 610, 613-14 (11th Cir. 1984) (“statutory right of redemption” under

mortgage was “a personal privilege, not a transferable property right”) (alterations omitted);

United States v. Murdock, 919 F. Supp. 1534, 1541 (D. Utah 1996), aff’d, 132 F.3d 534 (10th

Cir. 1997) (under tribal law principles, “hunting and fishing privilege within the Ute reservation

is a personal right of user, ‘neither inheritable nor transferable’”); Herbert v. Newton Mem’l

Hosp., 933 F. Supp. 1222, 1230-31 (D. N.J. 1996), aff’d, 116 F.3d 468 (3d Cir. 1997) (doctor’s

hospital privileges not transferable); Fulton v. United States, 825 F. Supp. 261, 262 (D. Nev.

1993) (grazing permit as to federal lands “is a revocable privilege issued by the government; it is

neither a transferable nor an assignable right”). The Restatement of the Law, Property, is also

helpful on this point, to wit:

A privilege, as the word is used in this Restatement, is a legal freedom on the part

of one person as against another to do a given act or a legal freedom not to do a

given act.

Comment:

a. Correlative absence of right. The relation indicated by the word

“privilege” may also be stated from the point of view of the person against whom

the privilege exists. From the point of view of this other person it may be said

that there is no right on his part that the first person should not engage in the

particular course of action or of nonaction in question.

Illustration:

1. A is the lessee of a farm. The least contains a covenant with the

landlord B that A will cultivate field one, and that he will not cultivate field two,

and has no covenant as to field three. As between A and B, A has both the duty

and the privilege of cultivating field one; he has both the duty and the privilege of

not cultivating field two; except so far as he is affected by the law of waste, he

has the privilege of cultivating and the privilege of not cultivating field three.

Restatement (First) of Property § 2 (1936).

59

If one examines the pertinent copyright definitions in § 101 and the usage of

“privilege” and “right” throughout the Act, the error of the Tasini district court —

and the appellants here invoking it — becomes clear. For instance, § 101 defines

copyright ownership and transfer as follows: 

“Copyright owner”, with respect to any one of the exclusive rights

comprised in a copyright, refers to the owner of that particular right.
§ 201. Ownership of copyright 31

* * *

(d) Transfer of Ownership.– 

(1) The ownership of a copyright may be transferred in

whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of

law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property

by the applicable laws of intestate succession.

(2) Any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright,

including any subdivision of any of the rights specified by section

106, may be transferred as provided by clause (1) and owned

separately. The owner of any particular exclusive right is entitled,

to the extent of that right, to all of the protection and remedies

accorded to the copyright owner by this title. 

60

A “transfer of copyright ownership” is an assignment, mortgage,

exclusive license, or any other conveyance, alienation, or

hypothecation of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights

comprised in a copyright, whether or not it is limited in time or place

of effect, but not including a nonexclusive license.

§ 101. As noted, “ownership” and “transfer” thereof are addressed only in the

context of the § 106 “exclusive rights.” Nowhere is either of these terms used in

connection with a “privilege.” Incidentally, the forms of transfer mentioned in the

above definition and in § 201(d)(1) are familiar forms of property transfer. Just 31

as with most property transfers, any interest in copyright that is transferable must

be accomplished in a writing, to wit:

§ 204. Execution of transfers of copyright ownership

(a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law,

is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or

memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of

the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.

§ 204 (emphasis mine). Again, only an “owner” may effect a transfer. Thus, it is
 See notes 1 &17, supra.

32

61

important and significant that under § 201(c) “the owner of copyright in a

collective work,” not a transferee or sub-grantee, is specified as having: 

only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribution

[for which copyright ownership is vested in the author] as part of that

particular collective work [for which copyright ownership is vested in

the publisher], any revision of that collective work, and any later

collective work in the same series. 

§ 201(c) (emphasis mine). A clear distinction is drawn between the “owner” of the

contribution and the “owner” of the particular collective work — the only person

privileged to reproduce and distribute said contribution. 

Here we have a publisher, the Society (a not-for-profit corporation),

allegedly transferring its “revision” privilege(s) to a wholly-owned, for-profit

corporation, which then putatively re-transfers the “revision” privilege(s) to

Mindscape, Inc. in order to exploit the contributor’s independently copyrighted

work in a manner never intended by § 201(c). However, as emphasized, the 32

limited §201(c) “privilege” cannot be exercised by anyone other than the “owner of

the [original] collective work” — here the Society. 

This limitation as to any transfer of the § 201(c) privilege gains further

support through a study of other uses of “privilege” in the Act. If a particular word

of a section of a statute is not otherwise expressly defined, that word’s use
62

elsewhere in the statute is indicative of how that word should be interpreted within

the section itself. See Dep’t of Revenue of Or. v. ACF Indus., Inc., 510 U.S. 332,

333, 114 S. Ct. 843, 845 (1994) (requiring courts to give words which are used in

more than one place in a statute interpretations that are consistent). The word

“privilege” appears only three times in the entire 1976 Copyright Act: in § 201(c),

and in §§ 109(d) and 111(d). Section 109(d) provides that persons other than the

two express recipients (buyers and libraries) of the “privileges” described therein

cannot exercise those privileges:

(d) The privileges prescribed by subsections (a) and (c) do not, unless

authorized by the copyright owner, extend to any person who has

acquired possession of the copy or phonorecord from the copyright

owner, by rental, lease, loan, or otherwise, without acquiring

ownership of it.

§ 109(d) (emphasis mine). That is, the § 109(d) “privileges,” as exceptions to the §

106 rights, are given by express statutory language only to buyers of copyrighted

works and to libraries. Such privileges do not extend to third parties, such as nonowners or library patrons who merely borrowed or rented the works unless

“authorized by the copyright owner.” Id. Similarly, § 111(d)(1)(B)(i) defines the

consideration (a compulsory licensing fee) that cable systems must pay for the

“privilege” of retransmitting television broadcasts. Once paid for, the privilege is

particular to the cable system in question. § 111(d)(1)(B)(i).
63

Interpreting “privilege” in § 201(c) in accordance with that term’s use in §§

109(d) and 111(d), clarifies that the § 201(c) privileges cannot be transferred to the

subs, NGE/National Geographic Interactive and Mindscape, Inc. The contributing

owner (here Greenberg) never authorized the transfer. Like the privileges provided

for in § 109(d) and § 111(d), the express limitations on the privilege in § 201(c)

exist in the statutory language itself. Only the “owner of the copyright in that

collective work” (here each Magazine) has the authority to exercise any of the §

201(c) privileges.

The legislative history of the 1976 Copyright Act also informs the nontransferability of privileges. The 1961 draft stated:

The copyright secured by the publisher in the composite work as a

whole should cover all of the contributions not separately

copyrighted; but the publisher should be deemed to hold in trust for

the author all rights in the author’s contribution, except the right to

publish it in a similar composite work and any other rights expressly

assigned.

Register of Copyrights for the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 88th Cong., Copyright

Law Revision Part 2, 230 (Comm. Print. 1963) (emphasis mine). In stark contrast,

a 1964 draft stated:

The owner of copyright in the collective work shall, in the absence of

an express transfer of the copyright or of any exclusive rights [of the

author] under it, be presumed to have acquired only the privilege of

publishing the contribution in that particular collective work.
64

Staff of H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 88th Cong., Copyright Law Revision Part 3,

15 (Comm. Print 1964) (emphasis mine). In addition to demonstrating that a

statutory privilege is personal to the statutorily defined recipient thereof, the drafts

of § 201(c) demonstrate that the privileges were not meant to be transferable. The

change in language from “right” (in the 1961 draft) to “privilege” (in the 1964

draft) confirms the drafters’ intent to provide publishers with something less than a

right — a mere privilege that was not transferable.

The subject matter of § 201 is “copyright ownership and transfer.” 

Throughout the section, the words “right” and “copyright” are used in connection

with authors or their surrogates (employers for hire). In that section, the only time

the word “privilege” is used at all in is connection with publishers. § 201 et seq.

This usage reveals an intent to limit a publisher’s entitlements. If Congress had

wanted to give publishers a “right” to transfer authors’ contributions to third

parties, the word “privilege” would not have been substituted for the word “right”

in § 201(c). Congress required “express transfers” in the “works-made-for-hire”

and “transfer of ownership of copyright”definitions in §§ 101 and 204. Section

201(c), however, is premised on the non-existence of an “express transfer of the

copyright or of any rights under it.” § 201(c). Accordingly, Congress intended the

word “privilege” to be less than a right and non-transferable, analogous to a
 In the appellants’ en banc brief, at page 6, under “STATEMENT OF THE ISSUE,” 33

they state the following:

In its Order of September 19, 2007, the en banc Court directed the parties

to address the following issue:

Is Greenberg entitled to copyright protection for the subject work

subsequent to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in New

York Times Co. v. Tasini, 433 U.S. 483 (2001)?

The corollary question is:

65

nonexclusive license. 

For all of these reasons, it should be clear that the “privilege” of § 201(c) is

not transferable but resides only with the copyright owner of the collective work —

here the Society. Accordingly, only the Society may claim shelter from

infringement under § 201(c) and then only if it exercised the two specific

privileges in the manner permitted — which it did not.

C.

Another determinative issue has been ignored by the appellants and omitted

from consideration by the majority — the “public display” issue. Simply stated, if

indeed the appellants enjoy a § 201(c) privilege it does not include the privilege of

publicly displaying Greenberg’s protected photographs.

The Court in Tasini, 533 U.S. at 498 n.8, 121 S. Ct. at 2390 n.8, expressly

stated that it did not reach the display issue. Appellants are relying upon the

privilege they contend that the Society has solely under § 201(c). Section 201(c) 33
Whether, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Tasini,

National Geographic is entitled to the privilege of 17 U.S.C. §

201(c) when it reproduced Greenberg’s photographs as part of an

exact digital replica of the entire National Geographic magazine

series, within which those photographs first appeared in print?

As a general matter, the answer to the first question is yes. Greenberg

retains his copyright protection for his individual works. Those copyrights,

however, have not been infringed in this case because National Geographic, as the

owner of the collective work copyright, is entitled to reproduce Greenberg’s

pictures in the CNG by virtue of § 201(c).

(Emphasis mine).

66

provides:

In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or

of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the

collective work is presumed to have acquired only the

privilege of reproducing and distributing the

contribution as part of that particular collective work,

any revision of that collective work, and any later

collective work in the same series.

(emphasis mine) (“contribution” in this case refers to the photographs contributed

by Greenberg who has undisputed ownership of the copyrights for the photographs

that appear in the CNG product.).

As the Court observed in Tasini, “[t]he 1976 Act rejected the doctrine of

indivisibility, recasting the copyright as a bundle of discreet “exclusive rights,” 

each of which “may be transferred . . . and owned separately.” Id. at 495-96, 121

S. Ct. at 2388-89 (citations omitted). The Tasini Court, in its fourth footnote,
67

quotes the § 106 rights, including subpart “(5)” which reads:

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic

works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works,

including the individual images of a motion picture or other

audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly;

Id. at 496 n.4, 121 S. Ct. at 2389 n.4; § 106(5) (emphasis mine). An examination

of the other five descriptions of copyright rights disclose the following verb forms

with each enumeration: “(1) to reproduce; (2) to prepare derivative works; (3) to

distribute copies; (4) . . . to perform; . . . (6) . . . to perform . . . publicly by means

of a digital audio transmission.” Id. (emphasis mine).

Accordingly, a comparison between § 201(c) and § 106(1)-(6) discloses that

the § 201(c) “privilege” is confined only to two of the copyright owner’s exclusive

rights: that is, “(1) to reproduce” and “(3) to distribute copies.” Nowhere is the

right under § 106(5), the right to “display” a pictorial work, mentioned or included. 

Expressio unis est exclusio alterius.

Moreover, when one examines § 101, where the statutory definitions are set

out, one discovers that “display” has a definition that includes projection on a

computer screen -- which is exactly what takes place when a CNG CD-ROM is

inserted into the computer of a user:

To “display” a work means to show a copy of it, either directly or by

means of a film, slide, television image, or any other device or process

or, in the case of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to show
68

individual images nonsequentially.

§ 101 (emphasis mine). The statutory definition of “audiovisual work” under §

101, further clarifies the computerized “display”:

“Audiovisual works” are works that consist of a series of related

images which are intrinsically intended to be shown by the use of

machines, or devices such as projectors, viewers, or electronic

equipment, together with accompanying sounds, if any, regardless of

the nature of the material objects, such as films or tapes, in which the

works are embodied.

Id. (emphasis mine).

As observed above, the Tasini Court, at footnote 8, squarely raised the

“publicly display” issue. Such an issue presents itself in the resolution of the scope

of the § 201(c) privilege once we get past the initial hurdle of “context.” In the

very document cited by the Court, the “letter” of the Register of Copyrights,

Marybeth Peters, a recognized copyright scholar, states: 

The limited privilege in § 201(c) does not authorize publishers to

display authors’ contributions publicly, either in their original

collective works or in any subsequent permitted versions. It refers

only to “the privilege of reproducing and distributing the

contribution.” Thus, the plain language of the statute does not permit

an interpretation that would permit a publisher to display or authorize

the display of the contribution to the public.

. . . The other databases involved in the case, which are distributed on

CD-ROMs, also (but not always) involve the public display of the

works. Because the industry appears to be moving in the direction of

a networked environment, CD-ROM distribution is likely to become a

less significant means of disseminating information.
69

The Copyright Act defines “display” of a work as showing a

copy of a work either directly or by means of “any other device or

process.” The databases involved in Tasini clearly involve the display

of the authors’ works, which are shown to subscribers by means of

devices (computers and monitors). 

To display a work “publicly” is to display “to the public, by

means of any device or process, whether the members of the public

capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same

place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.” 

. . .

This conclusion is supported by the legislative history. The

House Judiciary Committee Report at the time § 203 was finalized

referred to “sounds or images stored in an information system and

capable of being performed or displayed at the initiative of individual

members of the public” as being the type of “public” transmission

Congress had in mind.

When Congress established the new public display right in the

1976 Act, it was aware that the display of works over information

networks could displace traditional means of reproduction and

delivery of copies. The 1965 Supplementary Report of the Register of

Copyrights, a key part of the legislative history of the 1976 Act,

reported on “the enormous potential importance of showing, rather

than distributing copies as a means of disseminating an author’s

work” and “the implications of information storage and retrieval

devices; when linked together by communications satellites or other

means,” they “could eventually provide libraries and individuals

throughout the world with access to a single copy of a work by

transmission of electronic images.” It concluded that in certain areas

at least, “‘exhibition’ may take over from ‘reproduction’ of ‘copies’ as

the means of presenting authors’ works to the public.” The Report

also stated that “in the future, textual or notated works (books,

articles, the text of the dialogue and stage directions of a play or

pantomime, the notated score of a musical or choreographic

composition etc.) may well be given wide public dissemination by

exhibition on mass communications devices.”
70

When Congress followed the Register’s advice and created a

new display right, it specifically considered and rejected a proposal by

publishers to merge the display right with the reproduction right,

notwithstanding its recognition that “in the future electronic images

may take the place of printed copies in some situations.” H.R. Rep.

No. 89-2237, at 55 (1966).

Thus, § 201(c) cannot be read as permitting publishers to make

or authorize the making of public displays of contributions to

collective works. Section 201(c) cannot be read as authorizing the

conduct at the heart of Tasini.

The publishers in Tasini assert that because the copyright law is

“media-neutral,” the § 201(c) privilege necessarily requires that they

be permitted to disseminate the authors’ articles in an electronic

environment. This focus on the “media-neutrality” of the Act is

misplaced. Although the Act is in many respects media-neutral, e.g.,

in its definition of “copies” in terms of “any method now known or

later developed” and in § 102's provision that copyright protection

subsists in works of authorship fixed in “any tangible medium of

expression,” the fact remains that the Act enumerates several separate

rights of copyright owners, and the public display right is independent

of the reproduction and distribution rights. The media-neutral aspects

of the Act do not somehow merge the separate exclusive rights of the

author.

147 Cong. Rec. E182-02 (2001) (Letter from Marybeth Peters, The Register of

Copyrights of the United States of America, to Representative James P. McGovern,

United States House of Representatives (Feb. 14, 2001)).

Clearly, users of the CNG CD-ROMs use their computers by virtue of 

operating code (“a process”) at different “times” and “places.” A House Judiciary

Committee report states: “In addition to the direct showings of a copy of the work
71

[here photograph], ‘display’ would include the projection of an image on a screen .

. . by any method, the transmission of an image by electronic or other means, and

the showing of an image on a cathode ray tube, or similar viewing apparatus

connected with any sort of information storage and retrieval system.” H.R. Rep.

No. 94-1476, reprinted in 17 U.S.C.A. § 106 (West 2005). Thus, a computer

image of the photograph(s) at issue would clearly constitute a “display.” The

report continues that: “The definition of ‘transmit’ . . . is broad enough to include

all conceivable forms and combinations of wired and wireless communications

media . . . .” That would certainly include a CD-ROM that is sold to the public at

large, to schools, to libraries, and to other downstream “displayers” for that very

purpose.

This interpretation is consistent with the judicial and academic interpretation

of that section. See, e.g., Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 487 F.3d 701, 716

(9th Cir. 2007) (“In sum, based on the plain language of the statute, a person

displays a photographic image by using a computer to fill a computer screen with a

copy of the photographic image fixed in the computer’s memory.”); ALS Scan,

Inc. v. RemarQ Cmtys., Inc., 239 F.3d 619, 622-26 (4th Cir. 2001) (observing that

website display of copyrighted photographs to internet subscribers was “public

display”); see generally R. Anthony Reese, The Public Display Right: The
 The term “distributed” has a very specific meaning in copyright law. The statutory 34

definition of “distribution” specifies distribution of “copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted

work to the pubic by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending.” 17

U.S.C. § 106(3) (emphasis mine). Archives maintained by media companies may be visited by

researchers (physically or virtually) without thereby being offered to the public by any of the

means specified in §106. Nor would they be distributed in the sense of being “published.” See

the definition in § 101 of “publication,” its relationship to distribution, and the differentiation of

“public display” from “publication” as a form of distribution.

72

Copyright Act’s Neglected Solution to the Controversy over RAM “Copies”, 2001

U. Ill. L. Rev. 83. (2001); David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 8.20 (2007).

Finally, I will address the amici’s histrionic speculation and contention that a

decision in favor of Greenberg would lead to the wholesale purging of their

electronic archives (information-destroying purges, loss of recorded history,

massive destruction of constitutionally protected information, etc.). See generally

Amici Briefs. This often-repeated but seldom-analyzed threat is totally specious. 

Archives, under a narrow construction of § 201(c) are not an unauthorized

“reproduction and distribution” because they are not “distributed.” See § 108

(“Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives”). 

Section 201(c) is aimed at protecting authors in the context of works reproduced

and distributed to the public. If archives are maintained primarily as a set of 34

records, they are unaffected by the holdings in Tasini and Greenberg I. One must

distinguish, however, between history being available to the public in archives, and

history as a consumer product sold to the public in mass-merchandised CD-ROMs
 See § 107 (fair use is permitted for purposes of scholarship, criticism, and teaching, 35

among other things). Under the statute, a purported fair use is analyzed on the basis of factors

including, but not limited to, (1) “the purpose and character of the use”; (2) “the nature of the

copyrighted work”; (3) the amount of the work used in relation to the copyrighted work as a

whole; and (4) “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted

work.” Id. Although factors (2) and (3) would favor the authors (whose work is creative and

reproduced in toto), factor (1), insofar as the archival use is noncommercial and for the purpose

of recording the article for posterity, would just as likely favor the archivist despite reproducing

the article unchanged. As for factor (4), it would not appear that access to archives would

adversely affect the value of the contributions to collective works. In addition, one can make

other arguments in favor of public access to archives on the basis of the public interest in being

fully informed. See, e.g., Time Inc. v. Bernard Geis Assocs., 293 F.Supp. 130, 146 (D.N.Y.

1968) (ostensibly using a fair use rationale to permit publication of drawings derived from

copyrighted photographs of the Kennedy assassination, but also stating that “[t]here is a public

interest in having the fullest information available on the murder of President Kennedy.”).

73

or databases. If publication is limited to the former, history need not be lost (or

even inconveniently stored); it just will not be a profitable commodity – as the

publishers here have endeavored to make it.

Moreover, even if such archives were technically not protected by § 201(c),

their inclusion of authors’ contributions would generally qualify as a fair use.

35

Because the contributions would not be made widely available to the general

public but would, rather, be included in records utilized primarily by researchers

and scholars, there would be little or no impact on the market for the authors’

contributions. Therefore, it is specious to assert that the purging of archives must

occur based upon an adverse ruling to the publishers. Thus, the doomsday cries of

a “loss of history” appear at best hyperbolic, and at worst, disingenuous.

The majority rationale, essentially adopting that of Faulkner, should be
74

rejected and the district court’s judgment should be affirmed on the basis of the

rationales set out above.
 Because Judge Birch’s Part A would be dispositive of the en banc issue, I need not 1

address Parts B and C of Judge Birch’s opinion.

75

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting, in which EDMONDSON, Chief Judge,

TJOFLAT, BIRCH, and WILSON, Circuit Judges, join:

Respectfully, I disagree with the majority. I agree with and join Part A of

Judge Birch’s dissent, but I write separately to emphasize a few points. 1

A.

Section 201(c) emphasizes that the “[c]opyright in each separate

contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work

as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution.” 17 U.S.C.

§201(c). The section goes on to explain that “the owner of copyright in the

collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and

distributing the contribution as part of [1] that particular collective work, [2] any

revision of that collective work, and [3] any later collective work in the same

series.” Id. (emphasis added). Congress limited the privilege of reproduction and

distribution so that publishers could not “revise the contribution itself or include it

in a new anthology or an entirely different magazine or other collective work”

without the author’s consent. N.Y. Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483, 497, 121 S.

Ct. 2381, 2389 (2001) (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 122-23 (1976), reprinted

in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5659, 5738). 
76

In the present case, Greenberg and the other freelancers allowed their

separate contributions – i.e., certain photos in the case of Greenberg – to be

included in specific collective works – i.e., individual issues of National

Geographic magazine. Years later, National Geographic republished the individual

contributions, within their original context but combined with other magazine

issues, in “The Complete National Geographic” (“the CNG”), and we must decide

whether the CNG is a privileged “revision” of the individual issues, as the majority

concludes, or instead, an unprivileged “new anthology or . . . entirely different

magazine or other collective work.” Although this admittedly is a close question,

for the reasons explained in Part A of Judge Birch’s dissent, and for the reasons set

out below, I conclude that the CNG constitutes the latter.

At the outset, my resolution of this question differs from the majority’s

because in my judgment, the contextual analysis set forth in Tasini does not fully

resolve the instant case. It is true, of course, that the Tasini Court’s analysis

definitively resolved the case before it. In Tasini, the republished newspaper and

magazine articles at issue did not appear in context, and therefore the contextual

analysis was decisive – i.e., the new publication was not privileged under §201(c). 

533 U.S. at 500, 121 S. Ct. at 2391. On the other hand, because individual articles

in the CNG appear in their original context, and because users may “flip” through
77

pages as they could with the original magazines, the re-publication of Greenberg’s

photos satisfies the threshold contextual analysis. Nonetheless, this case presents

an issue not addressed, and not answered, in Tasini – i.e., does satisfaction of the

contextual analysis always mean that the new publication enjoys the §201(c)

privilege? 

As a matter of common sense, it seems clear to me that the answer to that

question is: No. For example, suppose the March 2000 monthly edition of

National Geographic had been devoted entirely to the geography and natural

beauty of Africa; later, National Geographic included that March 2000 edition as a

chapter in a larger book entitled “The Complete Intellectual History of Africa from

1900 to 2008,” which purported to describe the historical development of every

aspect of African life – including inter alia (and in addition to the chapter

comprising the March 2000 edition on geography and natural beauty) the literature,

philosophy, music, and legal and economic aspects of African society. Of course,

my example is attempting to describe a work so entirely different in format,

purpose, and utility that everyone would agree that it would qualify as “an entirely

different collective work”; i.e., everyone would agree that it is not privileged. 

Because the individual contributions comprising the March 2000 edition in my

example are reproduced in context, and yet the new book would still constitute an
 Of course, National Geographic could secure the right to republish the individual 2

contributions through contract, but National Geographic has asserted no such agreement here. 

Instead, the extent of the rights National Geographic claims by virtue of contract is the right to

republish the individual contributions by virtue of §201(c)’s limited privilege.

78

entirely different collective work, it thus seems clear to me that Tasini’s contextual

analysis is merely a threshold issue. 

Notwithstanding the fact that this threshold is satisfied in this case, the

crucial issue remains whether the CNG is a “revision of that collective work” (to

which National Geographic’s privilege would extend), or whether it is “an entirely

different . . . or other collective work” (to which the privilege would not extend). 

Several aspects of the CNG convince me that it constitutes the latter, thus

exceeding the publisher’s §201(c) privilege.

B.

First, there is considerable doubt that §201(c) by itself confers upon National

Geographic the privilege of reproducing the individual contributions, even in their

original context, within the cumulative total of all National Geographic magazines. 

That is, putting aside the CD-ROM format of the CNG and its added features, I

doubt that §201(c) permits the publisher to bind together every single issue of

National Geographic magazine and sell the compilation as one comprehensive

(albeit unwieldy) volume without compensating the individual contributors or

obtaining their consent. Section 201(c) permits National Geographic to distribute 2
 I need not decide whether such a compilation is a “later work in the same series,” 3

because National Geographic has disavowed reliance on that prong of §201(c).

79

Greenberg’s photo as part of a particular collective work – a single issue of the

magazine – or as a part of a revision of that magazine, but surely the compilation

of all National Geographic issues does not constitute a “revision” of any single

issue. After all, the Tasini Court noted that placing all the articles from one 3

edition of the New York Times into a CD-ROM database along with all the articles

from other editions of that paper, does not constitute a revision of each edition:

“The Database no more constitutes a ‘revision’ of each constituent edition than a

400-page novel quoting a sonnet in passing would represent a ‘revision’ of that

poem.” 533 U.S. at 500, 121 S. Ct. at 2391. This explanation comports with the

Second Circuit’s explanation that the database of New York Times articles is “at

best a new anthology of innumerable editions of the Times, and at worst a new

anthology of innumerable articles from these editions,” and thus “cannot be said to

be a ‘revision’ of any (or all) particular editions.” Tasini v. N.Y. Times Co., Inc.,

206 F.3d 161, 169 (2d Cir. 2000). The point is, according to the Supreme Court,

that “[t]he massive whole of the Database is not recognizable as a new version of

its every small part.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at 500, 121 S. Ct. at 2391. Similarly, the

massive whole of the CNG is not recognizable as a new version of the individual

magazines in which Greenberg’s photos originally appeared. Notwithstanding the
 The publishers in Tasini had urged the comparison to microform under the assumption 4

that microform falls within the §201(c) privilege, see Tasini Supreme Court Br. for Pet’rs, 2001

WL 27573, at 45 (claiming, without citation of any authority, that the Second Circuit’s Tasini

opinion “cannot possibly be correct, because it would deem microfilm and microfiche to be

infringing”).

80

fact that Greenberg’s photographs appear in their original context, the CNG

remains at best a new anthology of the many editions of National Geographic. 

Publishing Greenberg’s photos in such a new anthology (or “other collective

work”) exceeds the limited privilege Congress established in §201(c). 

The mere fact that in dicta in Tasini the Supreme Court distinguished the atissue databases from microfilm and microfiche does not indicate, as the majority

seems to believe, that microforms, which often collect multiple editions of a

particular newspaper or magazine, constitute a privileged “revision” of each

individual edition. The Tasini Court merely rejected a comparison between the

databases and microforms because the databases, unlike microforms, failed the

threshold requirement that the article may only be distributed in its original

context. See 533 U.S. at 501-02, 121 S. Ct. at 2391092.4

Admittedly, microfilm and microfiche are longstanding means of publishing

collective works. Assuming that the publisher of a collective work does not

infringe the separate copyrights held by individual contributors when the publisher

sells microforms containing multiple editions of the collective work, I suggest that
81

the reason is more likely a contract reason, coupled with the doctrine of media

neutrality, as opposed to a §201(c) privilege. Fortunately, we need not decide

whether publishers’ sales of such microforms fall within the privilege granted by

§201(c), or are otherwise protected under the Copyright Act, because the issue is

not before us, just as it was not before the Tasini Court. At no point in Tasini did

the Supreme Court actually hold that microform copies of multiple editions qualify

for the §201(c) privilege. As such, although the CNG, like microforms, passes the

threshold contextual requirement, this fact does not end the analysis of whether

publishers may, pursuant to §201(c), distribute a collective work that is combined

with other collective works. 

Furthermore, even assuming that microform reproductions enjoy the §201(c)

privilege, the CNG contains significant differences from microforms that bolster

my opinion that the CNG is a new anthology or an entirely different other

collective work. As Judge Birch ably explains in his dissent, the CNG’s advanced

search function, compression/decompression program, and its digital format are

relevant to deciding whether the CNG constitutes an unprivileged new collective

work. Greenberg granted the right to include his pictures in several single monthly

editions. National Geographic claims in this case that its rights to the several

monthly magazines for casual reading is extended by virtue of §201(c) to the right
82

to publish an entirely new product – a sophisticated research tool capable of readily

accessing and isolating any article or subject matter that had been published in

National Geographic magazines for over 100 years – thus appealing to a new

market. I do not believe that §201(c) can encompass the magnitude of the changes

wrought here. Although the mere conversion from print to digital media, the

addition of new functionality, and/or the inclusion of other independently

copyrightable material may not always result in the creation of an entirely different

collective work, when National Geographic combined roughly 1,200 issues of a

magazine into a new product in a new format with these new features and these

new uses, the publisher has created a new collective work that exceeds its §201(c)

privilege. Assuming arguendo that the doctrine of media neutrality has some

operation in the context of a §201(c) privilege – as opposed to the usual context of

the copyright owner of the underlying articles – I doubt that the doctrine should

operate with such full force in this context as to nullify the significant changes and

assemblage wrought in this new product.

Finally, the fact that the Supreme Court in Tasini held that the §201(c)

privilege did not extend to the publication referred to as GPO provides strong

support for my position, and that of Judge Birch, that the §201(c) privilege also

does not extend to the CNG. Recall that the GPO “show[s] each article exactly as
 As the Court in Tasini noted, “it hardly follows” from my position that an injunction 5

should issue. 533 U.S. at 505, 121 S. Ct. at 2393 (suggesting that courts “may draw on

numerous models for . . . remunerating authors”). In my judgment, the circumstances of a case

like this call for care on the part of trial courts to ensure that a hold-out freelancer does not

83

it appeared on [the original] printed pages, complete with photographs, captions,

advertisements, and other surrounding materials.” 533 U.S. at 491, 121 S. Ct. at

2386. The difference between the GPO and the CNG is that the user of the former

may not flip from one article to another, whereas the CNG user can. As a matter of

common sense and common experience, that is not a difference that would make a

difference to the user, or to the publisher whose interest is marketing the new

product. The existence vel non of the flip feature is similarly irrelevant to the

authors of the individual articles. The value of Greenberg’s copyright is

undermined in a manner comparable to that of the individual authors in the GPO.

“It would scarcely preserve the author’s copyright in a contribution, as

contemplated by Congress . . . 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.” Tasini, 533 U.S. at 497, 121 S. Ct. at 2389

(internal quotation from the House Report omitted). Like the GPO, the CNG is a

new product, appealing to a new market.

For the foregoing reasons, and for the reasons expressed by Part A of Judge

Birch’s dissent, I respectfully dissent.5
exercise either veto power or blackmail power.

84
MiNIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

WINDOWS® 95 OR WINDOWS® 3.1 CD

• 80486DX 33 MHz processor

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ISBN O7L12b?1-4

a 24294 12671 a DO

© 1997 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved. Produced by National Geographic Interactive, Washington, D.C. 20036. Distributed by Mindscapc, Inc.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and the Yellow Border Design are registered trademarks ® of National Geographic Society. Marcas Registradas. Mindscape is a registered

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