17 U.S.C. § 118 — Scope of exclusive rights: Use of certain works in connection with noncommercial broadcasting

(a) This section limits the exclusive rights under section 106 for the works listed in subsection (b) and the activities listed in subsection (d), subjecting them to this section's conditions and limits. (b) Owners of copyright in published nondramatic musical works and published pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works, and public broadcasting entities, may negotiate royalty rates and terms themselves - this is allowed despite antitrust laws - and may divide the fees among copyright owners and use common agents to negotiate, agree, pay, or receive payments. (1) Any copyright owner or public broadcasting entity may submit proposed license terms to the Copyright Royalty Judges. (2) If copyright owners and public broadcasters voluntarily agree on license terms, and file the agreement with the Copyright Royalty Judges within 30 days of signing, that agreement controls instead of any judge-set rate. (3) A negotiation started by a petition under section 804(a) to set rates and terms must cover a 5-year period starting January 1 of the second year after the petition is filed. Each side pays its own costs. (4) If no voluntary agreement is reached, the Copyright Royalty Judges must hold a proceeding and publish a rate schedule in the Federal Register. This schedule binds all copyright owners covered by subsection (b) and all public broadcasting entities, even those who didn't submit proposals. The judges may look at rates from comparable voluntary agreements when setting these rates. The judges must also set requirements for how copyright owners get notice of the use of their works, and how public broadcasters must keep records of that use. (c) Following any voluntary agreement under (b)(2) or (3), and the rates the judges set under (b)(4), a public broadcasting entity may - for published nondramatic musical works and published pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works - (1) perform or display the work as part of a transmission by a noncommercial educational broadcast station (defined in subsection (f)); (2) produce a transmission program, and reproduce and distribute copies of it, if a nonprofit institution does this solely to support the transmissions in (1); and (3) let a government body or nonprofit make copies of a transmission program at the same time it airs, and perform or display that program's contents under the conditions in section 110(1) - but only if the copies are used for no more than seven days from the original airing and are destroyed by the end of that period. Someone who supplies these copies to a government body or nonprofit under paragraph (2) is not liable if that body or institution fails to destroy the copy, as long as the supplier notified them of the destruction requirement. But if the body or institution itself fails to destroy the copy, it is treated as having infringed the copyright. (d) This section applies only to the works named in subsection (b), with one exception: owners of copyright in nondramatic literary works and public broadcasting entities may voluntarily negotiate and agree on royalty terms among themselves without antitrust liability. Any such agreed terms take effect once filed with the Copyright Royalty Judges, following their regulations under section 803(b)(6). (e) Nothing in this section allows, beyond what fair use under section 107 already allows: an unauthorized dramatization of a nondramatic musical work, a transmission program drawing heavily from a published compilation of pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, or unauthorized use of any part of an audiovisual work. (f) In this section, "public broadcasting entity" means a noncommercial educational broadcast station as defined in section 397 of title 47, and any nonprofit institution or organization that does the activities described in subsection (c)(2).