The Copyright Office, together with the Interactive Multimedia Association, co-hosted "Electronic Commerce for Content," a conference on technology-based solutions to managing rights for digital information, on March 7 at the Crystal City Sheraton in Arlington, Va.
More than 100 representatives from clearinghouses, licensing agents, rights societies and collectives, online providers, developers, library groups, associations and government agencies attended and commented on the issues involved in developing an inter-industry framework for intellectual property management.
The goal of the conference was to bring together interested groups with broad participation from industry, content owners and users to help identify requirements for intellectual property management systems for digitized works. This is especially important since most secure systems are currently proprietary and incompatible with each other.
Participants in the conference explored the principal approaches to developing open and distributed management systems and services including surveying practices and plans for identifying, labeling and registering digital objects.
Associate Register for National Copyright Programs Mary Levering made a presentation on the status of the digital registration and deposit system known as CORDS (Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation and Deposit System) (see LC Information Bulletin, March 4). The conference helped provide a basic understanding of the technological and strategic environment in which all the participating groups will be operating in the future.
Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, said, "It is essential for owners of all types of copyrightable works to focus on the development of mutually compatible and centralized mechanisms for efficient and cost-effective licensing of their products. Unless this takes place, the basic goals of copyright protection, namely adequate protection for copyright owners balanced with the legitimate needs of users, will not be achieved in the emerging digital networks."
In addition to the Copyright Office, organizations making presentations at the conference included the Association of American Publishers, the Copyright Clearance Center, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, the Electronic Rights Management Group of IIA, IBM, the In- teractive Multimedia Association, the Information Infrastructure Standards Panel/ANSI, and the World Wide Web Consortium, among others.
Copyright Office Serves Public with Fax-on-Demand. Frequently requested Copyright Office circulars and announcements are now available by fax. Call (202) 707-2600.
The system hardware is located in the Publications Section of the Information and Reference Division. Assistant Division Chief Jim Cole provides overall supervision of fax- on- demand. Information Specialist Richard Anderson is the system administrator and Information Specialist Ed Rogers is the backup.
To receive a document from the new system, a caller keys in his or her fax number and the document number(s) of the requested items at the prompt. The item(s) will then be transmitted to the receiving fax machine. Any fax machine can be used. Document numbers may be obtained by requesting a menu by fax. Three items at a time may be ordered.
So far the most popular item has been ML-514, "Registration of Claims to Copyright, Group Registration of Photographs."
Note that copyright application forms are not available by fax.
Copyright Application Forms Now Available on the Internet. All Copyright Office application forms are now available on the Internet from the Copyright Office's home page at http://www.loc.gov/copyright. They may be downloaded and printed for use in registering a claim to copyright or for use in renewing a claim to copyright. In addition, the format for filing a Notice of Intent to Enforce (NIE) a copyright restored under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) is also available on the Internet.
Adobe Acrobat Reader must be installed to view and print the forms. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader may be downloaded from Adobe Systems Inc. through links from the same Internet site at which the forms are available.
