Court Opinion

ID: 9430156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:06.090106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.394172
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice and Justice White join, dissenting.
The Court holds today that 18 U. S. C §2314 does not apply to this case because the rights of a copyright holder are “different” from the rights of owners of other kinds of property. The Court does not explain, however, how the differences it identifies are relevant either under the language of § 2314 or in terms of the purposes of the statute. Because I believe that the language of § 2314 fairly covers the interstate transportation of goods containing unauthorized use of copyrighted material, I dissent.
Section 2314 provides for criminal penalties against any person who “transports in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud.” There is no dispute that the items Dowling transported in interstate commerce— bootleg Elvis Presley records — are goods, wares, or merchandise. Nor is there a dispute that the records contained copyrighted Elvis Presley performances that Dowling had no right to reproduce and distribute. The only issue here is whether the unauthorized use of a copyright may be “equate[d] with theft, conversion, or fraud” for purposes of §2314. Ante, at 217. Virtually every court that has considered the question has concluded that §2314 is broad *230enough to cover activities such as Dowling’s. See, e. g., United States v. Drum, 733 F. 2d 1503, 1505-1508 (CA11), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1061 (1984); United States v. Whetzel, 191 U. S. App. D. C. 184, 187, n. 10, 589 F. 2d 707, 710, n. 10 (1978); United States v. Berkwitt, 619 F. 2d 649, 656-658 (CA7 1980); United States v. Sam Goody, Inc., 506 F. Supp. 380, 385-391 (EDNY 1981). The only case cited by the Court that lends support to its holding is United States v. Smith, 686 F. 2d 234 (CA5 1982).1 The Court’s decision today is thus contrary to the clear weight of authority.
The Court focuses on the fact that “[t]he copyright owner . . . holds no ordinary chattel.” Ante, at 216. The Court quite correctly notes that a copyright is “comprise[d] ... of carefully defined and carefully delimited interests,” ibid., and that the copyright owner does not enjoy “ ‘complete control over all possible uses of his work,’” ante, at 217, quoting Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 432 (1984). But among the rights a copyright owner enjoys is the right to publish, copy, and distribute the copyrighted work. Indeed, these rights define virtually the entire scope of an owner’s rights in intangible property such as a copyright. Interference with these rights may be “different” from the physical removal of tangible objects, but it is not clear why this difference matters under the terms of § 2314. The statute makes no distinction between tangible and intangible property. The basic goal of the National Stolen Property Act, thwarting the interstate transportation of misappropriated goods, is not served by the judicial imposition of this distinction. Although the rights of copyright owners *231in their property may be more limited than those of owners of other kinds of property, they are surely “just as deserving of protection . . . United States v. Drum, supra, at 1506.
The Court concedes that § 2314 has never been interpreted to require that the goods, wares, or merchandise stolen and transported in violation of the statute remain in unaltered form. Ante, at 216. See also United States v. Bottone, 365 F. 2d 389, 393-394 (CA2 1966). It likewise recognizes that the statute is applicable even when the misappropriated item “owes a major portion of its value to an intangible component.” Ante, at 216. The difficulty the Court finds with the application of § 2314 here is in finding a theft, conversion, or fraudulent taking, in light of the intangible nature of a copyright. But this difficulty, it seems to me, has more to do with its views on the relative evil of copyright infringement versus other kinds of thievery, than it does with interpretation of the statutory language.
The statutory terms at issue here, i. e., “stolen, converted or taken by fraud,” traditionally have been given broad scope by the courts. For example, in United States v. Turley, 352 U. S. 407 (1957), this Court held that the term “stolen” included all felonious takings with intent to deprive the owner of the rights and benefits of ownership, regardless of whether the theft would constitute larceny at common law. Id., at 417. Similarly, in Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246 (1952), the Court stated that conversion “may be consummated without any intent to keep and without any wrongful taking, where the initial possession by the converter was entirely lawful. Conversion may include misuse or abuse of property. It may reach use in an unauthorized manner or to an unauthorized extent of property placed in one’s custody for limited use.” Id., at 271-272.
Dowling’s unauthorized duplication and commercial exploitation of the copyrighted performances were intended to gain for himself the rights and benefits lawfully reserved to the copyright owner. Under Turley, supra, his acts should be *232viewed as the theft of these performances. Likewise, Dowl-ing’s acts constitute the unauthorized use of another’s property and are fairly cognizable as conversion under the Court’s definition in Morissette.
The Court invokes the familiar rule that a criminal statute is to be construed narrowly. This rule is intended to assure fair warning to the public, e. g., United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 348 (1971); McBoyle v. United States, 283 U. S. 25, 27 (1931), and is applied when statutory language is ambiguous or inadequate to put persons on notice of what the legislature has made a crime. See, e. g., United States v. Bass, supra; Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971); Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81, 83 (1955). I disagree not with these principles, but with their application to this statute. As I read § 2314, it is not ambiguous, but simply very broad. The statute punishes individuals who transport goods, wares, or merchandise worth $5,000 or more, knowing “the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud.” 18 U. S. C. §2314. As noted above, this Court has given the terms “stolen” and “converted” broad meaning in the past. The petitioner could not have had any doubt that he was committing a theft as well as defrauding the copyright owner.2
The Court also emphasizes the fact that the copyright laws contain their own penalties for violation of their terms. But the fact that particular conduct may violate more than one federal law does not foreclose the Government from making a choice as to which of the statutes should be the basis for an indictment. “This Court has long recognized that when an act violates more than one criminal statute, the Govern*233ment may prosecute under either so long as it does not discriminate against any class of defendants.” United States v. Batchelder, 442 U. S. 114, 123-124 (1979).
Finally, Congress implicitly has approved the Government’s use of §2314 to reach conduct like Dowling’s. In adopting the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act of 1982, Pub. L. 97-180, 96 Stat. 91, Congress provided that the new penalties “shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.” 18 U. S. C. §2319(a) (emphasis added). The Senate Judiciary Committee specifically added the italicized language to clarify that the new provision “supplement[s] existing remedies contained in the copyright law or any other law.” S. Rep. No. 97-274, p. 2 (1981) (emphasis added). Many courts had used §2314 to reach the shipment of goods containing unauthorized use of copyrighted material prior to the enactment of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act. By choosing to make its new felony provisions supplemental, Congress implicitly consented to continued application of §2314 to these offenses.
Dowling and his partners “could not have doubted the criminal nature of their conduct . . . .” United States v. Bottone, supra, at 394. His claim that § 2314 does not reach his clearly unlawful use of copyrighted performances evinces “the sort of sterile formality” properly rejected by the vast majority of courts that have considered the question. United States v. Belmont, 715 F. 2d 459, 462 (CA9 1983), cert. denied, 465 U. S. 1022 (1984). Accordingly, I dissent.

 In United States v. Drum, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit considered and rejected the arguments offered in United States v. Smith and reiterated by the Court today. I agree with Drum that neither the language nor purpose of § 2314 supports the view that the statute does not reach the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyrighted material.

 Indeed, there was stipulated testimony by a former employee of petitioner’s, himself an unindieted co-conspirator, that petitioner and his partner “were wary of any unusually large record orders, because they could be charged with an interstate transportation of stolen property if they shipped more than $5,000 worth of records.” App. A19-A20 (stipulation regarding testimony of Aca “Ace” Anderson).