The most important Obama nominee no one’s talking about; Washington Post, 3/25/16

Robert Gebelhoff, Washington Post; The most important Obama nominee no one’s talking about:

"Meanwhile, the Copyright Office — which plays a major role in the digital economy by administering copyright law and protecting intellectual property — has been designing a plan to leave the nest and become an independent agency.

Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante has openly advocated for the move, citing “operational tensions.” She argues that the library performs a legislative role as the research branch of Congress (through the Congressional Research Service), which she sees as at odds with the executive mission of the Copyright Office. Others have suggested that the Copyright Office be relocated to the Commerce Department as a sister agency to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. For some commentators, such proposals translate to the Copyright Office focusing more on the interests of the “Big Content” industry — including publishers, the recording industry and movie producers — than delivering copyright law itself."

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020; U.S. Copyright Office, December 2015

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020:

[Excerpt]"This Strategic Plan organizes and prioritizes objectives for the next five years. It draws on four years of internal evaluations and public input — that is, two initial years of fact-findings, public inquiries, and special projects, and two additional years of public roundtables, reports, and Congressional hearings. These initiatives, announced in October 2011, coincided with government-mandated budget cuts as well as staff reductions and backlogs. We seized these challenges, however, as an opportunity to examine inefficiencies, dismantle dated practices, and propose new paradigms. Much of this exciting work and our accomplishments to date are described in the back of this Plan. We also introduce here a revised mission statement that better captures our statutory mandate.

Here is my vision for a modern Copyright Office:

Customers should be able to transact with the Office easily, quickly, and from anywhere at any time, using mobile technologies and any number of consumer-friendly platforms and devices to secure rights or access data. They should have at their fingertips an integrated life-cycle of copyright information — not only the date on which a work was created, published or fell into the public domain, but also all of the authors, owners, licensees, derivative uses, rights, and permission information that are both relevant to the marketplace and invaluable to meaningful research. The Office should have businessto-business capabilities that both leverage and support private sector activities, while ensuring and facilitating transparency and fairness.

Although technology improvements are an essential part of the future, true modernization involves much more than making incremental upgrades to hardware or software. It requires re-envisioning almost all of the Copyright Office’s services, including how customers register claims, submit deposits, record documents, share data, and access expert resources, and it requires meeting the diverse needs of individual authors, entrepreneurs, the user community, and the general public.

Maria A. Pallante

United States Register of Copyrights,

Director, U.S. Copyright Office

COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS; NextGov.com, 12/2/15

Hallie Golden, NextGov.com; COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS:

"To keep pace with the demands of the digital age, the U.S. Copyright Office needs fewer file clerks and more techies, Maria Pallante, the office's director, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

“It used to be catalogers, now it needs to be technology and data [experts],” Pallante described the agency’s hiring needs. “I don’t know how we can administer the law without it.”

Every year, the Copyright Office's staff examines and register hundreds of thousands of copyright claims submitted by book authors, music artists, software manufacturers and other creators of intellectual property.

The office needs to restructure its workforce, Pallante told members of the Committee on House Administration during a hearing on the office’s tech plans. The office would like to eventually “morph” about a third of its staff -- 150 employees -- into tech and data experts, she said.

“These experts should not merely be assigned or on-call from another part of the agency, but rather be integrated into the copyright office mission where they can work side by side with legal and business experts,” she said."

Library of Congress, Copyright Office butt heads over IT vision; FedScoop.com, 12/2/15

Whitney Blair Wyckoff, FedScoop.com; Library of Congress, Copyright Office butt heads over IT vision:

"During the hearing, U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante reiterated a call for more autonomy over her agency’s technology. She referenced a report her agency released Tuesday that laid out a five-year plan that heavily focused on technology improvements.

“What we’re asking for is the autonomy to make sure that IT is intertwined with our business and legal expertise,” Pallante said. (Some House lawmakers have been shopping a draft bill to make the office an independent agency, but the legislation has yet to be introduced.)

Pallante also underscored the need to update the office’s 10-year-old copyright registration system, called eCO — which she said was “probably outdated by the time it was implemented.” The system, she said, simply replaced rather than improved upon paper copyright registration forms. It doesn't have a digital interface that is interoperable with the private sector technology and isn't flexible enough to be updated as copyright law evolves, she said...

“Your predecessor did many wonderful things in his long career,” Lofgren said to acting Librarian Mao. “Being a techie was not one of his fine points. So you have your work cut out for you.”"