Reengineering the Copyright Office
The Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, must have her hands full these days. As the Office's fifteenth Register, and only the second woman to hold the position, she is overseeing a "reengineering" of many of the Copyright Office's electronic systems, including those that serve the public. The stated goal of the reengineering program, which started under previous Registers, is to increase the availability of services online and make Office records more promptly available via the Internet. Those objectives will be implemented by the program's two biggest changes:
- A new copyright records search system, available this month, which will reportedly allow users to electronically access more than 20 million digital records of registrations and recorded documents from 1978 to the present; and
- A new online copyright registration portal, available soon, which will provide an alternative to the current paper method of registering new works.
If any of the beta users of these computer systems would like to share their initial thoughts about the new systems, please send them to this author.
