Copyright Office modernization efforts deserve broad support

[Commentary] Remarkably, in the year before a presidential election, the long-simmering issue of Copyright Office modernization seems to have reached its boiling point. The Government Accountability Office recently released two reports on the “serious [IT] management challenges” facing the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office. The Register of Copyrights also addressed similar issues in a recent report on technology issues. All those reports make a simple point: the outdated and ineffective IT procurement processes at the Library of Congress have forced the US Copyright Office to try to run a 21st century copyright system with 19th and 20th century technologies. That anachronism disserves the legitimate interests of everyone affected by copyrights -- creators, creative industries, content distributors, and users of expressive works.

The Copyright Office needs independent IT funding and procurement authority, and internal IT personnel, in order to use the latest technologies to make copyright registration, recordation, and search far more effective, efficient and accessible than they are today. Using the best technology available to reduce transaction costs should be a central goal of any IP system. The US has both the data and the domestic IT expertise needed to lead the world towards more efficient copyright systems. Congress and the President should make a bipartisan effort to take full advantage of this potential.

[Tom Sydnor is the previous Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress & Freedom Foundation]