Practical Applications of Copyright Formalities The University of Michigan Copyright Rights Management System

Who am I? Bobby Glushko University of Michigan Copyright Office mpublishing

Associations

Overview What is the CRMS Project? What are the formalities issues inherent in our work? Where can/should we go from here?

Background What is the HathiTrust IMLS National Leadership Grants

HathiTrust Digital collection of book scans Over 10,000,000 scanned volumes Full access to public domain materials Issues here?

IMLS Federal funding body for library science National Leadership Grant

CRMS Overview The purpose of the project is to increase the reliability of copyright status determinations of books published in the United States from 1923 to 1963 in the HathiTrust Digital Library, and to help create a point of collaboration with other institutions.HathiTrust Digital Library

CRMS Process Custom interface Catalogers at 4 Libraries Using the HathiTrust Scans

Why ?

Renewal Requirement The 1909 Act (the governing law for those works) provided for two copyright terms: a 28-year initial term and a 28-year renewal term.

What about 1964 onward? Public Law , enacted on June 26, 1992, amended the copyright law to make renewal automatic and renewal registration optional for works originally copyrighted between January 1, 1964, and December 31,

So that’s easy…

Nope. Where do we find renewal information? Are ALL the books in our collection subject to formalities requirements?

Finding Renewals Let’s just ask the US Copyright Office

Copyright Office Interface Records for post 1978 works are available online

Not all that much use… Renewal is automatic for works still in their first term as of 1978 Registration of these works is optional

What about Pre-1978 Records? The copyright card catalog is located in the Copyright Public Records Reading Room (lm-404) on the fourth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building of the Library of Congress

Seriously? Yes

There is a service… You can request copies of records or deposits, or ask to inspect copies of records or deposits, by regular mail, , or fax, or you can call in your request.

Copyright Office Audits Expensive Slow Refused to certify results

Aside… Is this reasnoable?

A wild white knight appears!

This solves all our problems!

No Only Class A works Renewals were not subject to strict formatting requirements Foreign works

Class A Works Only Books Why is this a problem?

Just because it looks like a book… Serialized fiction

Bonus if you can guess the stories

Plays and other Dramatic Works Look like books How far into a work do you have to go to assess what it is? Scalability issues

International Works Non-US Publications Not always identifiable

Golan v. Holder Pre Uruguay Round Agreements Act, foreign works had to comply with US formalities Some of you may have had public domain copies of Lord of the Rings This all changed in 1994

Mass Digitization and Rights Analysis Over 10 Million records in HathiTrust Over 300,000 books published between What efforts are reasonable under the circumstances?

Moving Forward What would you do with 10,000,000 scanned books? Where would you see the CRMS project going?

Thank you! Questions are, or course, welcome.