Abstract
On 13 February 1979, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) marked its sixty-fifth year in operation as a performing-right licensing agency. Its rival, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), has been in existence for almost forty of those years. The two organizations hold primary responsibility for collecting and distributing the fees resulting from one of the most valuable rights granted by the copyright laws to the creator of a musical work: the exclusive right of public performance of copyrighted musical compositions. The idea that composers are entitled to authorize performances of their work and to share in any profits resulting from the use of their work, beyond the initial sale of a physical copy of the work, achieved late recognition in American copyright law. In 1856, Congress amended the Copyright Act of 1831 to grant exclusive performance rights in dramatic works and thereby to guard against unauthorized public performances, but did not extend the same protection to nondramatic musical works until 1897. The new amendment provided that:
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