Stevens, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
 No. 00-201
 NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY, INC., et al.,
PETITIONERS v. JONATHAN TASINI et al.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
[June 25, 2001]
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Breyer joins, dissenting.
This case raises an issue of first impression concerning the meaning of the word
"revision" as used in §201(c) of the 1976 revision of the Copyright Act of 1909 (1976
Act). Ironically, the Court today seems unwilling to acknowledge that changes in a
collective work far less extensive than those made to prior copyright law by the 1976
"revision" do not merit the same characterization.
To explain my disagreement with the Court's holding, I shall first identify Congress'
principal goals in passing the 1976 Act's changes in the prior law with respect to
collective works. I will then discuss two analytically separate questions that are blended
together in the Court's discussion of revisions. The first is whether the electronic versions
of the collective works created by the owners of the copyright in those works (Print
Publishers or publishers) are "revision[s]" of those works within the meaning of §17
U.S.C.  201 (c). In my judgment they definitely are. The second is whether the
aggregation by LEXIS/NEXIS and UMI (Electronic Databases) of the revisions with
other editions of the same periodical or with other periodicals within a single database
changes the equation. I think it does not. Finally, I will consider the implications of
broader copyright policy for the issues presented in this case.
I As the majority correctly observes, prior to 1976, an author's decision to publish her
individual article as part of a collective work was a perilous one. Although pre-1976
copyright law recognized the author's copyright in an individual article that was included
within a collective work, those rights could be lost if the publisher refused to print the
article with a copyright notice in the author's name. 3 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer,
Nimmer on Copyright §10.01[C][2], p. 10-12 (2001).

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
 No. 00-201
 NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY, INC., et al.,
PETITIONERS v. JONATHAN TASINI et al.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
[June 25, 2001]
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.
This copyright case concerns the rights of freelance authors and a presumptive privilege
of their publishers. The litigation was initiated by six freelance authors and relates to
articles they contributed to three print periodicals (two newspapers and one magazine).
Under agreements with the periodicals' publishers, but without the freelancers' consent,
two computer database companies placed copies of the freelancers' articles­along with
all other articles from the periodicals in which the freelancers' work appeared­into three
databases. Whether written by a freelancer or staff member, each article is presented to,
and retrievable by, the user in isolation, clear of the context the original print publication
presented.
The freelance authors' complaint alleged that their copyrights had been infringed by the
inclusion of their articles in the databases. The publishers, in response, relied on the
privilege of reproduction and distribution accorded them by §201(c) of the Copyright
Act, which provides:
"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."
§17 U.S.C.  201 (c).
Specifically, the publishers maintained that, as copyright owners of collective works, i.e.,
the original print publications, they had merely exercised "the privilege" §201(c) accords
them to "reproduc[e] and distribut[e]" the author's discretely copyrighted contribution.

        SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
            NEW YORK TIMES CO., INC., et al. v. TASINI et al.
     CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE
                                     SECOND CIRCUIT

                  No. 00-201. Argued March 28, 2001­Decided June 25, 2001
 Respondent freelance authors (Authors) wrote articles (Articles) for newspapers and a
magazine published by petitioners New York Times Company (Times), Newsday, Inc.
(Newsday), and Time, Inc. (Time). The Times, Newsday, and Time (Print Publishers)
engaged the Authors as independent contractors under contracts that in no instance
secured an Author's consent to placement of an Article in an electronic database. The
Print Publishers each licensed rights to copy and sell articles to petitioner LEXIS/NEXIS,
owner and operator of NEXIS. NEXIS is a computerized database containing articles in
text-only format from hundreds of periodicals spanning many years. Subscribers access
NEXIS through a computer, may search for articles using criteria such as author and
subject, and may view, print, or download each article yielded by the search. An article's
display identifies its original print publication, date, section, initial page number, title,
and author, but each article appears in isolation­without visible link to other stories
originally published in the same periodical edition. NEXIS does not reproduce the print
publication's formatting features such as headline size and page placement. The Times
also has licensing agreements with petitioner University Microfilms International (UMI),
authorizing reproduction of Times materials on two CD-ROM products. One, the New
York Times OnDisc (NYTO), is a text-only database containing Times articles presented
in essentially the same way they appear in LEXIS/NEXIS. The other, General Periodicals
OnDisc (GPO), is an image-based system that reproduces the Times' Sunday Book
Review and Magazine exactly as they appeared on the printed pages, complete with
photographs, captions, advertisements, and other surrounding materials. The two CD-
ROM products are searchable in much the same way as LEXIS/NEXIS; in both, articles
retrieved by users provide no links to other articles appearing in the original print
publications.