Copyright Act of 1976

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The Copyright Act of 1976 (The United States Copyright Act of 1976) is the United States copyright law that was passed in 1976. It represented a major landmark in copyright legislation. Other copyright laws were passed in 1990 and 1998.

The Act was significant in many ways. Among other important changes, it extended the length of protection for individual authors to the author's entire life plus fifty years and did the same for works for hire with seventy-five years.

The "fair use" doctrine was codified for the first time in the 1976 Act, and copyright protection was extended to all unpublished works as well.