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9 December 2016Copyright

Congress proposes reforms to modernise US Copyright Office

A Congress committee has revealed a set of proposed reforms aimed at modernising the US Copyright Office to “meet the challenges of the 21st century”.

In a statement released yesterday, December 8, House judiciary committee chairman Bob Goodlatte and ranking member John Conyers outlined the first policy proposal to come out of the committee’s review of US copyright law.

“This first proposal identifies important reforms to help ensure the copyright office keeps pace in the digital age,” it said.

The committee will periodically release policy proposals on select, individual issue areas within the larger copyright system that are “in need of reform where there is a potential for consensus”.

However, the proposals are not meant to be the final word on reform in these individual issue areas, but rather a starting point for discussion, with the goal of “producing legislative text within each issue area”.

Among the reforms are granting the copyright office autonomy with respect to the Library of Congress, and requiring the office to maintain an up-to-date digital, searchable database of all copyrighted works and associated copyright ownership information.

“Nothing should be read into the fact that we are only releasing a policy proposal on one topic today,” they said.

“This is just the beginning of this stage of the copyright review, and we intend to release policy proposals on music licensing issues and other individual issue areas in time.”

Goodlatte first announced the intention to undertake a comprehensive review of US copyright law in April 2013.

Written comments from interested stakeholders are requested by January 31, 2017.

These comments will be shared with members of the House judiciary committee as they come in and the committee intends to make comments publicly available after the comment period closes.

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