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Copyright Office Issues Report and Recommendations on Technological Upgrades
Practical Law Legal Update 3-601-2986 (Approx. 4 pages)
Copyright Office Issues Report and Recommendations on Technological Upgrades
by Practical Law Intellectual Property & Technology
| Published on 20 Feb 2015 • USA (National/Federal) |
The Technical Upgrades Special Project Team of the US Copyright Office has issued a report identifying various issues related to the Copyright Office's technology and services and setting out recommendations to inform the Copyright Office's strategic direction.
On February 18, 2015, the US Copyright Office issued the Report and Recommendations of the Technical Upgrades Special Project Team, assessing technological functionality and business strategies related to Copyright Office Services. The report is the culmination of efforts begun in 2011 under one of ten special projects identified by the Register of Copyrights and the Copyright Office's executive management team. In preparing the report, the project team interviewed, solicited written comments from and analyzed the responses of the copyright community, including trade and professional associations, rights management groups, lawyers, publishers, content creators and Copyright Office staff.
The report identifies four broad categories (modernization themes) of areas in greatest need of improvement:
- Challenges with the current user experience.
- Challenges with access to and the usability of copyright records.
- Inefficiencies with current copyright data.
- Poor performance of outdated IT architecture and infrastructure.
The report concludes that the Copyright Office needs modern system architecture and supporting IT infrastructure, including a dedicated enterprise solution designed to meet the Copyright Office's current and future IT needs. In particular, it identifies several technologies necessary for a modern Copyright Office:
- Application Programming Interfaces (API). The copyright community and the public identified data exchange as a critical service that the Copyright Office needs to offer. The Copyright Office must increase its IT system's capability to provide data exchange via APIs, which are the standard to support business-to-business data exchange.
- Cloud Computing. The Copyright Office would benefit from cloud computing's advantages in efficiency, agility, scalability and innovation.
- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA refers to a collection of services (software) that can communicate with each other. By using SOA, the Copyright Office could integrate multiple services to fulfill a specific business function, promoting better planning and cost savings.
- Integrated Solutions/Business-Driven Ecosystems. To serve its data-driven customers, the Copyright Office needs to develop a new ecosystems model. Solutions that provide internal and external system developers with the flexibility to provide solutions that are targeted and integrated is possible with SOA, flexible web-services and expanding cloud solutions.
- Mobile Computing. The Copyright Office should seek to deploy mobile capabilities to meet customer demand. Benefits of deploying mobile capabilities include:
- improved business productivity, by providing immediate, ubiquitous access to systems;
- reduced operation costs, by enhancing access to business systems to correct issues or logistics problems; and
- improved customer relationships, by providing additional opportunities to connect with systems to obtain information.
- Big Data. The development of Big Data technology would help the Copyright Office:
- determine customer needs and develop new business goals;
- increase efficiency in existing operations;
- refine existing services and products that better meet customers' needs; and
- improve the Copyright Office's decision-making regarding both short-term and long-term objectives.
- Data Analytics (DA). DA is essential for managing large amounts of data, and organizations deploy DA as a tool to increase profitability and efficiency. The Copyright Office will likely need to invest in and develop these analytics tools.
The report also offers specific, initial recommendations addressing key aspects of the four modernization themes:
- Enterprise Solution. Developing an architecture and infrastructure that directly and capably supports the many complex duties of the Copyright Office is fundamental to the goals discussed in the report. The Copyright Office should have a new and dedicated enterprise copyright system, which would be a large-scale application package that includes the capabilities for registration, recordation, public information and records, accounting and processing, and acquisition.
- Mobile Capabilities. A digitally-integrated Copyright Office would include common interactive and mobile technologies. These capabilities would enhance external users' ease of copyright application submission and allow use of Copyright Office services from smart phones and tablets. In addition, the Copyright Office should redesign and deploy a new, browser-agnostic web portal, including a fully redesigned main website that offers users the ability to perform all transactional activities and provides for improved searching capability.
- A Better Public Record. An ongoing and primary Copyright Office objective is to create and maintain a public database of robust, reliable and authoritative records. The Copyright Office should also identify and consider potential enhancements to the public record, such as whether to allow samples of deposit copies or whether claimants should be granted access to update their contact information. In addition, the Copyright Office should seamlessly integrate the redesigned public record with its other efforts to improve copyright data.
- Sophisticated Data Management. The Copyright Office needs to develop a long-term Data Strategy, a comprehensive Data Management Plan and a detailed Data Governance Plan. The Register of Copyrights should establish and staff a data group to be chaired by the Copyright Office Chief Information Officer.
- Security Practices. A focus on securely protecting the works the Copyright Office examines for registration, meeting the requirements of the law and the concerns of copyright owners, and exploring new registration procedures for digital works is essential to the next generation system, particularly because the Copyright Office will be exploring new registration procedures for digital works.
- A Commitment to Interim Work. While pursuing a long-term enterprise and data solution, the Copyright Office must continue with the interim modernization efforts begun over the past two years, including the processes for how digital works should be registered and the options for improving and automating document recordation.