In the 1967 case Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of Fortnightly Corporation, a community antenna television (CATV) system operator that retransmitted broadcast signals to its subscribers without paying copyright fees to the original broadcasters. The court held that CATV operators were not performing copyrighted works and therefore did not infrive on exclusive rights of copyright holders under Section 1(c) of Copyright Act which gives them exclusive right to perform their work publicly for profit. Instead, they merely enhanced viewers' ability to receive broadcast signals; thus acting as an extension or improvement upon "rabbit ears" antennas used by individual homeowners rather than content distributors themselves. This ruling was later superseded by Congress's amendments made in 1976 Copyright Act which clarified cable systems' liability for carrying copyrighted programming.

In the dissenting opinion for Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., Justice Harlan argued that the majority's interpretation of "perform" in Section 1(c) of the Copyright Act was too narrow and failed to consider Congress' intent when drafting this legislation. He believed that by retransmitting copyrighted television programs without consent or compensation, community antenna television (CATV) systems like Fortnightly were indeed performing these works publicly and thus infringing on copyright holders' exclusive rights under Section 1(c). Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's view that CATV systems merely enhanced viewers' reception rather than broadcasted programs themselves; instead, he saw them as active participants in public performances due to their role in selecting and amplifying signals before transmitting them to subscribers. Therefore, he concluded that they should be held liable for copyright infringement unless Congress explicitly exempted them from such liability.