The Copyright Office received 526,138 claims to copyright in 2002; of these, it registered 521,041 claims. The office responded to more than 358,000 requests from the public for copyright information. The Library's collections and exchange programs received 896,504 copies of works from the Copyright Office, with a net worth of $31,302,048. This included 390,150 items received from publishers under the mandatory deposit provisions of the copyright law. The office also continued major initiatives to reengineer its core business processes and use information technology to increase the efficiency of operations and the timeliness of public services.
In February, a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) concluded its proceedings to determine rates and terms for the statutory license for eligible non-subscription webcasting services. The CARP report was reviewed by the Copyright Office and the Librarian. In a widely-publicized proceeding, the Librarian, on May 21, rejected in part a CARP recommendation setting a per performance rate for the transmission of sound recordings over the Internet. On June 20, the Librarian published his final order in which he announced his decision to accept the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights and halve the CARP-proposed rates applicable to Internet-only transmissions made by webcasters and commercial broadcasters, while accepting the CARP-proposed rates for Internet retransmissions of radio broadcasts made by these same services. These rates, as well as other parts of the Librarian's decision, are the subject of an appeal pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
On Dec. 4, President Bush signed into law the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002. The act allows SoundExchange, the receiving agent designated in the Librarian's June 20 order, to enter into agreements on behalf of all copyright owners and performers to set rates, terms and conditions for sound recordings for noncommercial webcasters and small webcasters. On Dec. 24, the Copyright Office published in the Federal Register an agreement negotiated between SoundExchange and Voice of Webcasters, which sets rates and terms for sound recordings under two statutory licenses by small commercial webcasters. Small commercial webcasters who meet the eligibility requirements may choose to operate under the statutory licenses in accordance with the rates and terms set forth in the published agreement rather than the rates and terms adopted earlier by the Librarian of Congress.
Noncommercial webcasters have yet to conclude their negotiations with SoundExchange, but they must do so before the authority to negotiate such licenses expires May 31, 2003. As with the small webcasters, noncommercial webcasters may opt to operate under such a negotiated license, once finalized, rather than under the rates and terms set forth in the Librarian's June 20 order. In the meantime, the act provides that noncommercial webcasters need not make any further royalty payments to SoundExchange until June 20, 2003.
