[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 56 (Friday, March 22, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 17722-17724]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-06633]
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
U.S. Copyright Office
[Docket No. 2013-2]
Technological Upgrades to Registration and Recordation Functions
AGENCY: U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress.
ACTION: Notice of Inquiry.
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SUMMARY: The United States Copyright Office (hereinafter Copyright
Office or Office) is in the process of identifying and evaluating
potential improvements and technical enhancements to the information
technology platforms that support its registration and recordation
functions, including its online registration system. These efforts are
part of the Office's ongoing special projects, commenced October 25,
2011 (available at the Office's Web site at www.copyright.gov/docs/priorities.pdf). The information garnered through this process has and
will continue to inform the development of the Copyright Office's long-
term strategic plan, scheduled to commence in October 2013.
At this time, the Office seeks comments regarding existing
capabilities and future possibilities. Broadly, the Office seeks
comments on (1) how stakeholders use the current online offerings of
the Copyright Office, especially with respect to registration and
recorded documents, and how the current offerings meet, fail to meet,
or exceed user expectations; and (2) how stakeholders would like to
interact with the Copyright Office electronically in the future, or,
put differently, what online services, or aspects of existing online
services stakeholders would like to see. The Office appreciates the
comments and suggestions of those who use the national registration and
recordation systems to protect their intellectual property, as well as
those who regularly use Copyright Office resources to identify
copyright owners, investigate the copyright status of works and the
public domain, and perform other research, including statistical
analysis on aggregated data sets.
DATES: Comments on the Notice of Inquiry and Requests for Comments are
due on or before May 21, 2013.
Submission: All comments shall be submitted electronically. A
comment page containing a comment form is posted on the Copyright
Office Web site at http://www.copyright.gov/docs/technical_upgrades.
The Web site interface requires submitters to complete a form
specifying name and organization, as applicable, and to upload comments
as an attachment via a browse button. To meet accessibility standards,
all comments must be uploaded in a single file in either the Portable
Document File (PDF) format that contains searchable, accessible text
(not an image); Microsoft Word; WordPerfect; Rich Text Format (RTF); or
ASCII text file format (not a scanned document). The maximum file size
is 6 megabytes (MB). The name of the submitter and organization should
appear on both the form and the face of the comments. All comments will
be posted publicly on the Copyright Office web site exactly as they are
received, along with names and organizations. If electronic submission
of comments is not feasible, please contact the Copyright Office at
202-707-8350 for special instructions.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Douglas Ament, Director of Information
Technology, Copyright, by email at [email protected];
Christopher S. Reed, Senior Advisor for Policy & Special Projects,
Office of the Register of Copyrights, by email at [email protected]; or
call the U.S. Copyright Office by phone at 202-707-8350.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
In 2000, the Copyright Office initiated a comprehensive business
process reengineering initiative intended to update the Office's
technology platform and improve operational efficiency. With the
assistance of outside consultants and business analysts, the Office
identified opportunities for efficiency enhancements and process
improvements. The most significant recommendation was to convert the
existing paper-based copyright registration system to an electronic
system, which included the development of related new business
processes and the automated production of public copyright records.
Funding available for the reengineering effort was limited and
decisions made by the Copyright Office and the greater Library were
necessarily constrained. Ultimately the Office implemented a commercial
off-the-shelf software package. The Office piloted the internal
business process functions of the software with a subset of
constituents in February 2005, followed by full implementation of the
Copyright Office's electronic processing system in August 2007. The
public-facing electronic registration system--the system that enables
copyright registration applicants to submit materials online--was
launched in July 2008. The Office implemented a significant upgrade to
its software and hardware platforms in August 2010, and implemented
periodic upgrades and enhancements to accommodate the needs of the
system's stakeholders--namely those that submit materials for
registration, those that search the Copyright Office database for
copyright ownership information, and the Copyright Office's staff that
process and examine copyright claims.
Today, more than eighty percent of the Office's applications for
copyright registration come through the electronic system,
demonstrating the copyright community's widespread interest in
electronic registration functions. Although the current system, and the
periodic upgrades and enhancements, have allowed the Office to maintain
a functional electronic platform for many types of works, there is room
for substantial improvement. Notably, the Office's recordation services
were included in the initial reengineering plan, but were later dropped
for budgetary reasons. Recordation processes are, thus, still paper-
based and are a top concern of the Copyright Office. Thus, the Office's
current systems represent the ``first generation'' of the Office's
electronic processing capabilities.
II. Discussion
In recent months, project leaders from the Copyright Office have
engaged copyright owners, users of copyright records, technical
experts, public interest organizations, and lawyers,
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including through professional associations and small businesses to
participate in a series of focused discussions on issues relating to
the Office's platforms for registration, document recordation, and
public access to copyright ownership information. Through these
discussions, as well as through its own expert analysis, the Office has
identified a number of areas in which the current electronic system
could be improved. For example, numerous interested parties have
observed that the current user interface for electronic registration is
a challenge to navigate. Users have told the Office that it would be
helpful to be able to customize the user interface and workflow in
order to streamline the registration process to accommodate their own
internal workflows. Moreover, users would like to exercise some degree
of control over the nature and scope of information they view in a
personalized registration system dashboard. The Copyright Office is
aware of similar requests from its own staff, many of whom desire
customizable workflows to enhance productivity and process efficiency,
which would result in improved turnaround times for remitters.
At a global level, the Office is aware that as mobile technology
becomes ubiquitous, an increasing number of stakeholders desire to use
mobile devices to interact with the Office. To that end, the Office is
evaluating the potential to deploy a mobile optimized web interface,
``apps'' that support popular mobile platforms, and the development of
an application program interface (API) that can be utilized within
third party applications.
The Office has also heard that many of its users would benefit from
improved tracking capabilities. Remitters have indicated that the
existing electronic registration process is cumbersome and are
oftentimes uncertain of their progress within the application process;
to improve that aspect of the system, they have suggested that the
Office implement a visual representation of the registration workflow
and the user's status within it (e.g., a status bar).
Beyond improvements to the registration functions, the Office is
aware of opportunities for improvement to its public record search
capabilities. Stakeholders have indicated that the Office's search
function should be more robust, allowing for more search criteria,
refining the display of the search results, adding filters, and
generally making the search functionality more user-friendly.
Representatives from interested parties also suggested the Copyright
Office make it easier to provide updates to the public record to ensure
the data maintained is accurate and up to date (e.g., address changes).
The Office is thus investigating methods of secure and effective data
sharing between interested parties and the Copyright Office in order to
determine if such functionality can be implemented in a manner that
ensures integrity of the Office's records.
The Office is also aware of the need for long-term, scalable data
storage and archiving capability to accommodate the growing volume of
digital works that the Office receives. The Office has received
recommendations to centralize the various information clusters
internally within the Copyright Office to a central data repository and
establish a central data warehouse. Implementing such a warehouse
presents a series of challenges that the Office seeks to learn more
about, including determining scalable infrastructure solutions to
accommodate vast amounts of data, analyzing data standards needed to
establish a central data model, and evaluating potential data archival
strategies.
One recommendation that the Office frequently hears, and one that
underlies many of the areas of improvement noted above, is the need for
bulk data transfer between the Office and interested outside parties.
Such transfer mechanisms would allow more widespread distribution of
the Office's records, as well as permit remitters to submit large
quantities of electronic material and associated application data to
the Office. Such ``system-to-system'' or ``business-to-business''
capabilities are a central area of inquiry for the Office. Interested
parties have suggested that the Office expose data portals enabled to
facilitate data exchange over standards-based protocols such as ebMS,
SOAP, and AS4.
In support of potential bulk data transfer capabilities, the Office
is investigating specific data exchange standards, including those that
already exist as well as the potential for developing a new standard
based upon the needs of the Office's constituents. Interested parties
have told the Office that it should continue to take an active role and
adopt existing standards that support data exchange between the Office
and its stakeholders. This includes defining or adopting metadata
standards that support particular industries (e.g., IPTC for
photography; ISRC for sound recordings; ONIX for books). Further,
standards such as CISAC's Common Works Registration (CWR) and DDEX
digital supply chain standards should be considered to help develop the
Office's ability to provide better business-to-business data transfers.
Interested parties have suggested that the Copyright Office publish a
recognized list of data standards so that users are able to establish
systems that support more efficient interactions with the Copyright
Office.
III. Subjects of Inquiry
The Copyright Office is currently evaluating what the ``next
generation'' of its electronic services should look like. Through a
comprehensive evaluation of its current technical processing
capabilities, and extensive interaction with stakeholders, the Office
hopes to develop a complete picture of how the Office currently
supports the needs of the copyright community, and where its systems
and services could be improved. The Office hopes to achieve a greater
understanding of current technical challenges facing the copyright
community as well as gain a comprehensive understanding of how the
community hopes to conduct business with the Copyright Office in the
future. This evaluation process, which is tied to special projects
detailed in Priorities and Special Projects of the U.S. Copyright
Office released by the Register of Copyrights in October 2011, is
intended to inform the development of the Office's next five-year
strategic plan that will commence in October 2013 and guide, among
other things, the technological evolution of the Copyright Office. That
plan will, in turn, inform the Library of Congress's overarching
strategic plan.
Because the Office's evaluation of its technology platform is
intended to be a wide-ranging review of existing capabilities and
future possibilities, the Office seeks comments that present conceptual
frameworks with concrete examples of future potential applications or
services. Broadly, the Office seeks comments on (1) how stakeholders
use the current online offerings of the Copyright Office, especially
with respect to registration and recorded documents, and how the
current offerings meet, fail to meet, or exceed user expectations; and
(2) how stakeholders would like to interact with the Copyright Office
electronically in the future, or, put differently, what online
services, or aspects of existing online services stakeholders would
like to see.
Although the Office welcomes comments on the wide range of topics
germane to this inquiry, it is particularly interested in comments that
address: (1) The nature and capabilities of the Copyright Office's
public portals (e.g.,
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for electronic registration services), including interface-based
portals as well as business-to-business portals, or access to Copyright
Office services or data through application program interfaces; (2) the
nature and scope of information captured during the course of the
registration and recordation processes, including that which could be
captured through user input, or through metadata harvesting; (3)
metadata standards in particular industries that the Copyright Office
might adopt or incorporate into its systems (e.g., IPTC for
photography; ISRC for sound recordings; ONIX for books); (4) data
storage and security standards for electronic copyright deposits,
including the development of policies and best practices for data
retention and migration; (5) new ways of searching and accessing
registration and recordation data and/or registration deposit metadata
(e.g., image or music search technology); and (6) the integration of
third-party databases of copyright ownership and licensing information
(such as those maintained by collective management organizations) and
related technologies with data maintained by the Copyright Office.
Dated: March 18, 2013.
Maria A. Pallante,
Register of Copyrights, U.S. Copyright Office.
[FR Doc. 2013-06633 Filed 3-21-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 1410-30-P