ALA president calls for digital transformation of Copyright Office

American Library Association (ALA) president Courtney Young responded to the introduction of the Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act (CODE Act) by Reps Judy Chu (D-CA) and Tom Marino (R-PA):

“For more than 20 years, content creators, rights holders, legislators and public users alike have acknowledged that the US Copyright Office needs to modernize its technological capabilities for the 21st century. Unfortunately, the recently introduced Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act does little to address significant technology challenges impacting the US Copyright Office. The bill’s proposal to make the Copyright Office an independent agency does not address the longstanding problems facing the agency, specifically that the Copyright Office’s information technology systems are woefully inadequate in serving both rights holders and the public in the digital environment.

"Much of the Copyright Office's shortcomings were detailed in a Government Accountability Office report published in March 2015. Instead of independent authority, the Copyright Office needs resources -- both in the form of funding and technical expertise -- to bring it out of the typewriter age. We urge the US Congress to support the investment necessary to transition the Copyright Office from a paper-based system to a digital system that uses the most effective digital technology, systems and software–to enable commerce, promote access to content, and to inspire the creators and artists of the future who wish to make use of the previous works. A successful overhaul of the Copyright Office’s information technology infrastructure cannot be achieved by securing the Copyright Office’s independence from the Library of Congress. We have a much more important problem to solve that cannot be fixed by changing the address of the Copyright Office.”