Practical Applications of Copyright Formalities

The University of Michigan Copyright Rights Management System

Who am I?

Bobby GlushkoUniversity of Michigan Copyright

Office

http://www.lib.umich.edu/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

HathiTrustDigital collection

of book scansOver 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.

CRMS Process

Custom interface

Catalogers at 4 Libraries

Using the HathiTrust Scans

Why 1923-1963?

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 102-307, 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, 1977

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15.pdf

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, email, 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 booksHow 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. HolderPre 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 1923-1963

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.