Court Opinion

ID: 9426135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:57.316266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:59.257958
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the result.
My discomfort, now decisionally outdated to be sure, with the Court’s opinion and judgment is threefold:
1. My first discomfort is factual. Respondent Aiken hardly was an innocent “listener,” as the Court seems to characterize him throughout its opinion and particularly ante, at 162. In one sense, of course, he was a listener, for as he operated his small food shop and served his customers, he heard the broadcasts himself. Perhaps his work was made more enjoyable by the soothing and entertaining effects of the music. With this aspect I would have no difficulty.
But respondent Aiken installed four loudspeakers in his small shop. This, obviously, was not done for his personal use and contentment so that he might hear the broadcast, in any corner he might be, above the noise of commercial transactions. It was done for the entertainment and edification of his customers. It was part of what Mr. Aiken offered his trade, and it added, in his estimation, to the atmosphere and attraction of his estab*165lishment. Viewed in this light, respondent is something more than a mere listener and is not so simply to be categorized.
2. My second discomfort is precedential. Forty-four years ago, in a unanimous opinion written by Mr. Justice Brandéis, this Court held that a hotel proprietor’s use of a radio receiving set and loudspeakers for the entertainment of hotel guests constituted a performance within the meaning of § 1 of the Copyright Act, 17 U. S. C. § 1. Buck v. Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co., 283 U. S. 191 (1931). For more than 35 years the rule in Jewell-LaSalle was a benchmark in copyright law and was the foundation of a significant portion of the rather elaborate licensing agreements that evolved with the developing media technology. Seven years ago the Court, by a 5-1 vote, and with three Justices not participating, held that a community antenna television (CATV) station that transmitted copyrighted works to home subscribers was not performing the works, within the meaning of § 1 of the Copyright Act. Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists, 392 U. S. 390 (1968). The divided Court only briefly noted the relevance of Jewell-LaSalle and announced that that decision “must be understood as limited to its own facts.” Id., at 396-397, n. 18. I have already indicated my disagreement with the reasoning of Fortnightly and my conviction that it, rather than Jewell-LaSalle, is the case that should be limited to its facts. Teleprompter Corp. v. CBS, 415 U. S. 394, 415 (1974) (dissenting opinion.) I was there concerned about the Court’s simplistic view of television’s complications, a view perhaps encouraged by the obvious inadequacies of an ancient copyright Act for today’s technology. A majority of the Court, however, felt otherwise and extended the simplistic analysis rejected in Jewell-LaSalle, but embraced in Fortnightly, to even more complex arrangements in the CATV industry. Teleprompter Corp. v. CBS, supra.
*166I had hoped, secondarily, that the reasoning of Fortnightly and Teleprompter would be limited to CATV. At least in that context the two decisions had the arguably desirable effect of protecting an infant industry from a premature death. Today, however, the Court extends Fortnightly and Teleprompter into radio broadcasting, effectively overrules Jewell-LaSalle, and thereby abrogates more than 40 years of established business practices. I would limit the application of Teleprompter and Fortnightly to the peculiar industry that spawned them. Parenthetically, it is of interest to note that this is precisely the result that would be achieved by virtually all versions of proposed revisions of the Copyright Act. See, e. g., § 101 of S. 1361, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., which sought to amend 17 U. S. C. § 110 (5). See also §§48 (5) and (6) of the British Copyright Act of 1956, 4 & 5 Eliz. 2, c. 74, which distinguishes between the use of a radio in a public place and “the causing of a work or other subject-matter to be transmitted to subscribers to a diffusion service.”
Resolution of these difficult problems and the fashioning of a more modern statute are to be expected from the Congress. In any event, for now, the Court seems content to continue with its simplistic approach and to accompany it with a pragmatic reliance on the “practical unenforceability,” ante, at 162, of the copyright law against persons such as George Aiken.
3. My third discomfort is tactical. I cannot understand why the Court is so reluctant to do directly what it obviously is doing indirectly, namely, to overrule Jewell-LaSalle. Of course, in my view, that decision was correct at the time it was decided, and I would regard it as good law today under the identical statute and with identical broadcasting. But, as I have noted, the Court *167in Fortnightly limited Jewell-LaSalle “to its own facts,” and in Teleprompter ignored its existence completely by refusing even to cite it. This means, it seems to me, that the Court did not want to overrule it, but nevertheless did not agree with it and felt, hopefully, that perhaps it would not bother us anymore anyway. Today the Court does much the same thing again by extracting and discovering great significance in the fact that the broadcaster in Jewell-LaSalle was not licensed to perform the composition. I cannot join the Court’s intimation, ante, at 160 — surely stretched to the breaking point — that Mr. Justice Brandéis and the unanimous Court for which he spoke would have reached a contrary conclusion in Jewell-LaSalle in 1931 had that broadcaster been licensed. The Court dances around Jewell-LaSalle, as indeed it must, for it is potent opposing precedent for the present case and stands stalwart against respondent Aiken’s position. I think we should be realistic and forthright and, if Jewell-LaSalle is in the way, overrule it.
Although I dissented in Teleprompter, that case and Fortnightly, before it, have been decided. With the Court insisting on adhering to the rationale of those cases, the result reached by the Court of Appeals and by this Court is compelled. Accepting the precedent of those cases, I concur in the result.