## Facts

- Twentieth Century Music Corp. and Mary Bourne owned copyrights in musical compositions broadcast on radio.
- George Aiken owned and operated a small fast-service restaurant in Pittsburgh where patrons typically stayed briefly.
- Aiken played a standard radio through four small ceiling speakers so employees and customers could hear ordinary radio programming.
- A local radio station, licensed to publicly perform the songs, broadcast the copyrighted works; the broadcast was received and audibly played in Aiken’s restaurant.
- Aiken did not hold a separate public-performance license from ASCAP.
- The copyright owners sued, alleging infringement of their exclusive right to perform the works publicly for profit under the then-current Copyright Act.

## Issues

1. Whether a small business “performs” copyrighted musical works “publicly for profit” by receiving and audibly playing a licensed radio broadcast for customers through conventional equipment.
2. Whether treating such reception and internal diffusion as a separate public performance would be consistent with the statutory purpose and administrability of copyright law.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Third Circuit and held that Aiken did not infringe.
- Aiken’s reception and audible playing of the licensed radio broadcast did not constitute a separate “performance” of the copyrighted songs.
- The Court disapproved the contrary approach of Buck v. Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co., which had treated similar redistribution of radio broadcasts as a separate performance.
- Justice Blackmun concurred in the judgment, expressing reservations about the broader doctrinal path but agreeing the result fit the case’s limited facts.
- Chief Justice Burger dissented (joined by Justice Douglas), concluding that Aiken publicly performed the works for profit in a commercial setting.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Court’s interpretation of “performance” and “public,” an entity that merely receives and makes audible a licensed broadcast using conventional equipment functions like a listener rather than a separate performer.
- Copyright law should not be construed to create a practically unworkable system in which innumerable small establishments must obtain licenses for ordinary reception of already-licensed broadcasts.
- The Copyright Act seeks to provide authors adequate compensation while limiting overextension that would impose oppressive burdens through duplicative licensing for a single broadcast rendition.
- Prior precedent treating redistribution of radio broadcasts as an additional public performance was rejected as inconsistent with the Court’s more recent broadcast-signal cases and modern communications conditions.

## Conclusion

A small restaurant owner who uses a conventional radio and minimal amplification to play a properly licensed radio broadcast for customers does not thereby give a separate public performance of the copyrighted songs and is not liable for infringement on that theory.


Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151 (1975)