Happy Copyright Awareness Week!

What, you think I make this stuff up? From March 10 through 14, we celebrate the protection that is copyright and try to teach students (and others) to respect the intellectual property of others. Take an article to be registered this week.

Some Info On Group Copyright Registration

I've found it frustrating to get the information needed for back copyright registration of published pieces. Even when you group them together (see the Writer Resource I have on this blog), the forms call for the volume and issue number. I recently wrote the Copyright Office about this, and here is the response

You need to provide a month day and year date of publication and volume and issue numbers (even if it is an estimate and to the best of your knowledge) in order to register the work.

In other words, even if you don't know, find out what the volume info is for this year, count back, and make an estimate on the number of issues that year and which one your piece was in. This doesn't take all the drudgery out, but it should make life easier if you don't have clips that included the volume and issue numbers.

Electronic Copyright Registration - Early Impressions

As I mentioned some time back, I am in the beta test group for the new online copyright registration pilot program. Here are some early impressions:

• The user interface is clunky. There are different sections in a copyright registration and you need to proceed through them all to register - reasonably enough. You can also save at any point, which is good. However, when you've saved, you don't get returned to the last section you were working on when you open the application; you get dumped to the end and have to go back, section by section, to where you were.


• There are things you pick up from trying to register that would be nice to know at the start. For example, you can at times get dumped out of an application - not unusual, as this is beta software, so you can't expect it to be ready to go. But I found out by accident that where you were gets saved in a category of Working applications. That is separate from Open applications, which means you've done what you need to do and are waiting to hear back.


• You can deposit electronic versions of documents. I think this is one of the most exciting features. I recently registered my web site and blogs - went onto each page and saved it into PDF form, did the application, and then uploaded the files. I had a hard time from my home machine, as we're far enough in the boondocks that we can't get cable or phone broadband. So the upload kept timing out. However, when I took the files to a wireless hotspot, they were up in a couple of minutes and I had a completed application.


• Online payment is easy - credit card using a federal government secured system, or an account that you can establish with the Copyright Office. Plus, the fee is only $35 for online registration, instead of $45. That may change, as it might be an enticement to be a guinea pig. But, hey, I'm happy with saving $10 a shot.


• Unfortunately, group registrations are not yet available, as they're working the kinks out. So if you have a number of previously published articles, you'll have to go the paper route.


• When things are running normally, they expect you to know that the registration is done (although you won't have the certificate at that point) within one to two weeks.

All in all, the system has some bugs, but a great deal of promise, and I've found myself more easily registering materials, both the web site and blogs as well as a number of unpublished plays that I put into a collection.

An added bonus that I just though of is that the Working applications stick around until you're done with them. So, when group registration becomes available, you should be able to enter information for published clips bit at a time, upload a PDF of the web site, and then close out the registration at the end of a quarter, pay your fee, and have everything set. This should make ongoing protection of your intellectual property a whole lot easier.

Copyright Pre-Registration for Book Authors and the New Electronic Filing System Tests

I've often gone on at length - I'm sure people are bracing themselves now, but hang on, as there's no need - about the importance of registering copyright to protect yourself. But intellectual property piracy is a big problem - for example, the last book in the Harry Potter series ended up online before it hit the stores, and the publishers were doing everything they could to keep it under wraps.

So if you register a work as of a publication date, but it's pirated before the date, could that affect your rights under US copyright law? Apparently it can, so the Copyright Office, under the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, offers pre-registration for certain categories of works, including "literary works in book form":

Pursuant to the provisions of the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, the Register of Copyrights, after determining appropriate classes of works which have a history of infringement prior to commercial distribution, permits preregistration of unpublished works within such classes. Preregistration is not a substitute for registration; its purpose is to allow an infringement action to be brought before the authorized commercial distribution of a work and full registration thereof, and to make it possible, upon full registration, for the copyright owner to receive statutory damages and attorneys' fees in an infringement action.

A person who has preregistered a work is required, in order to preserve the legal benefits of preregistration, to register such work within one month after the copyright owner becomes aware of infringement and no later than three months after first publication. If full registration is not made within the prescribed time period, a court must dismiss an action for copyright infringement that occurred before or within the first two months after first publication. See U.S.C. 17 408(f), 411 and 412, as amended; also 37 C.F.R. 202.16, as added.

To be a bit emphatic for a moment, this doesn't replace copyright registration. But it does extend the full protection of the law, including statutory damages, backwards before publication. It's a reasonable step to take. For more information, go to this page on the US Copyright web site. You could also register copyright for the manuscript before publication and then register a second time the published book as a work based on the unpublished manuscript. But it's good to know about this option.

Also, for whoever is interested, I just received an email that I'm on the beta test list for the new electronic copyright registration system. I've just set up an account and am waiting for the Copyright Office to give me a call and say that I'm set to try registering some items.

It looks as though you'll be able to process all the paperwork online, pay via credit card, and track where things are, at least so far as I can tell from the little of the user interface I've seen. You'll be able to register a claim, file a preregistration (as mentioned above), check a submission status, track and track the status of various things. As I learn more, I'll file further reports.