INTRODUCTION – 1132

I. THE EXISTING TERRAIN – 1138
A. History and Doctrine – 1138
1. The pre-history of termination of transfer in the United States. – 1138
2. Termination of transfers under current U.S. law. – 1139
B. Conventional Rationales, Critiques, and Judicial Skepticism – 1141
1. Two related rationales – 1141
2. Practical concerns – 1142
3. Principled objections – 1145
4. Judicial resistance to inalienable termination rights – 1147

II. PRESERVING THE AUTONOMY OF THE AUTHOR’S FUTURE SELF – 1148
A. The Task – 1148
B. Liberal Property and Authors’ Autonomy – 1151
1. From autonomy to property – 1151
2. Liberal property, in brief – 1152
3. Autonomy-based copyright – 1153
C. Defending Copyright Alienability – 1154
D. Authorial Rights to Restart – 1156
1. The autonomy claims of the future self – 1156
2. Autonomy-based limits on alienability – 1157
3. Autonomy-based reversionary rights – 1158

III. REFORMULATING REVERSION FOR THE FUTURE SELF – 1158
A. Agreeable Starting Point – 1158
C. Liberalizing Timing; Adding Compensation – 1162

CONCLUDING REMARKS – 1164

This Article presents a novel reconstruction of the reversionary rights that copyright law grants to authors through mechanisms including the termination of transfer provisions of the U.S. Copyright Act. These rights, which allow authors to reclaim copyrights they have licensed or sold under specified circumstances, have a long pedigree but a mixed reputation. They are typically justified as serving authors’ pecuniary interests: the idea is that an author whose work becomes a surprise hit should get a “second bite at the apple” in the form of a chance to renegotiate to receive more compensation than the author received for the initial transfer. But even if these provisions worked as they were intended (which they often do not), it is not clear that they would serve most authors’ pecuniary interests. They might primarily benefit superstar artists who are least in need of a bargaining power boost.

Even if reversion and termination rights serve little pecuniary purpose for most authors, they may nonetheless serve a purpose in terms of authorial autonomy. Specifically, this Article demonstrates how respect for the autonomy of an author’s future self provides a stronger normative foundation for reversionary rights than the pecuniary justifications that have typically been offered (and critiqued). However, the particular way in which reversion is currently operationalized under U.S. law’s termination of transfer provisions is not well-calibrated to this stronger normative rationale. We thus reconstruct reversion, explaining how it could be reformed to better serve the autonomy interests of authors’ current and future selves.