Editing Work for hire (section)

==== 1960s–70s copyright law revision ====

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|caption=[[Film]]s and [[collective work]]s such as periodicals were among the kinds of works proposed to be eligible under the specially-commissioned prong of the revised work-for-hire definition, owing to the large numbers of people involved in their creation.
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The work-for-hire doctrine was revamped during the copyright law revision efforts of the 1960s, which culminated in the [[Copyright Act of 1976]]. After extensive negotiations supervised by Congress and the Copyright Office, representatives of authors, composers, book and music publishers, and motion picture studios settled on the two-pronged approach now enshrined in the 1976 Act, which encompasses both works made by employees and certain types of specially ordered and commissioned works:

* contributions to [[Collective work (US)|collective works]], such as [[periodical]]s, [[anthology|anthologies]], and [[encyclopedia]]s;<ref name="collective-work">{{USC|17|101}}: "A 'collective work' is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole."</ref>
* parts of [[motion pictures]] and other [[audiovisual]] works;
* [[translation]]s;
* supplementary works, such as [[foreword]]s, [[afterword]]s, and [[illustration]]s for books;
* [[Copyright in compilation|compilations]];
* "instructional texts", including any "literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities";
* [[Exam|tests]] and associated answer material; and
* [[atlas]]es.<ref name="specially-ordered">{{USC|17|101}}: "(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use... an 'instructional text' is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities."</ref>

The question of whether each type of work should be eligible to be commissioned as a work made for hire hinged on the benefits and drawbacks of making them subject to the author's right to [[#Termination of copyright transfers|terminate a transfer of copyright]]. Introduced in the 1976 Act as a spiritual successor to the automatic reversion of [[Copyright renewal in the United States|renewal copyright]], the termination right allows authors to reclaim copyrights to their works if they originally owned the copyrights. This provision does not apply to works originally created under work-for-hire arrangements.

During these negotiations, each of the nine categories was proposed by a particular copyright-based industry. Works in these categories tended to be done by freelance authors at the instance, direction, and risk of a publisher or producer, and it was argued that it would be unfair to allow such authors to terminate assignments of rights. Additionally, motion pictures and collective works were customarily created by large groups of people, and companies argued that allowing rights in these works to revert to individual contributors would risk fragmenting ownership and jeopardizing the companies' long-term ability to commercialize the works.<ref name="peters-2000-sr"/>