Cable compulsory license

Overview
The cable compulsory license (17 U.S.C. §111) was enacted 35 years ago as part of the Copyright Act of 1976, in part because Congress found "that it would be impractical and unduly burdensome to require every cable system to negotiate with every copyright owner whose work was retransmitted by a cable system." H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 89 (1976); see also Cablevision Sys. Dev. Co. v. Motion Picture Ass’n of America, Inc., 836 F.2d 599, 602, 603 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (Congress adopted the Section 111 statutory license “to address a market imperfection” due to “transaction costs accompanying the usual scheme of private negotiations . . . .”), ''cert. denied,'' 487 U.S. 1235 (1988).