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Online copyright registration is on track for 2007 launch

We sometimes hear photographers suggesting that the Copyright Office should be encouraged to move towards electronic registration. In fact, no encouragement is necessary — a project is already underway. Here is the situation.

The Copyright Office is now about five years into a process of total reengineering. This involves completely revamping literally every aspect of the Office and its operations, including its physical plant, staff and systems. At the end of that process, almost everything that is done in the Office will be done differently.

Timeline. Around the end of 2005, about half of the Office’s staff will be moving off-site to a location that has not yet been finally determined but that is tentatively expected to be in Crystal City. They will stay in this temporary location for a year to 18 months while the Office’s old physical plant is renovated, rearranged, and prepared for its new procedures and systems.

Part of this reengineering project will be a conversion to online registration. The Register hopes that the switch to online registration will be completed by the beginning of 2007.

After the switch, paper registrations will still be accepted. But the fees for hard-copy registration will be significantly higher than for online registrations.

Pilot project. A number of years ago, the Office tried a limited pilot project called CORDS, but that was terminated largely because of the changes encompassed in the reengineering project. Today, as part of the reengineering project, there is another, very limited pilot project for online registration that is already running. It started in mid-February. The announcement of that pilot project can be found here.

ASMP’s Executive Director and Legal Counsel attend periodic meetings and presentations with and by the Register and other representatives of the Copyright Office, which is how we receive this sort of information. However, much of the information is available on the Copyright Office’s web site. For example, an outline of the reengineering project is included in the Office’s Strategic Plan for 2002 - 2006.

Summary. The Copyright Office is aware of the need for, and is currently hard at work on, the creation and implementation of on-line registration systems. There is nothing that is needed, or could help, to make the development of those systems happen any faster than they currently are.