Copyright Office enacts preregistration rules
The Copyright Office issued interim regulations on October 19th governing preregistration of works being prepared for commercial distribution. Preregistration will be available as of November 15. See full text of the interim regulation.
Preregistration is a new procedure established by the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 to enable copyright owners to sue for infringement while a work is still being prepared for commercial release. The new law required the Register of Copyrights to determine which types of works have had a history of infringement prior to authorized commercial distribution and thus should be entitled to preregistration. See prior post for background.
The Register of Copyrights has determined that preregistration will be available for the following classes of works:
1. motion pictures,
2. sound recordings,
3. musical compositions,
4. literary works being prepared for publication in book form,
5. computer programs (including videogames), and
6. advertising or marketing photographs.
This expands the eligible classes from just motion pictures and music, as originally contemplated by the Copyright Office.
To be eligible for preregistration, a work must be in one of these classes and applicant must certify that the work is being prepared for commercial distribution and that he or she has a reasonable expectation that the work will be commercially distributed to the public.
The Copyright Office abandoned its prior position that in order to be eligible for preregistration a work must already be subject to a distribution contract with an established distributor.
The Copyright Office is not limiting coverage to works being prepared for distribution in physical formats. Any work that meets the preregistration criteria can be covered even if the work is intended for online distribution.
The Copyright Office rejected requests that the preregistrations be treated as confidential information, noting that it is subject to the Freedom of Information Act: "The Register cannot accept the proposition that the public should be denied access to the preregistration records."
Finally, the agency addressed the issue of browser incompatibility with its online preregistration system: "While the Office is attempting to address browser compatibility issues, initially some applicants may experience difficulties if they are using browsers other than Internet Explorer. For applicants who are unable to use the online preregistration system, information will be available on the Copyright Office website on how to preregister their works."
The Internet Explorer issue created a bit of a firestorm in the open source community. Whereas the question of what types of works should receive preregistration received only 10 initial comments, the browser compatibility issue elicited over 200 comments in large part based on the Free Software Foundation's publicizing of the issue. See prior posts here and here.
