Copyright Information

The United States Copyright Office was founded in 1897 and is a detached subdivision of the Library of Congress, housed in Washington, DC. Dating back to the US Constitution, the Congress received the power to regulate the copyright and short thereafter first laws standardizing copyright issues were enacted on a federal level. For a small fee, any author or creator of a work can register his or her work with the copyright office, they accept submissions from all over the world, and have their work registered with the Library of the Congress. Together with the submission and the fee, two copies of the registered work have to be submitted for archiving. To internationally represent United States creative works, the Congress created within this office an International Copyright Institute in 1988. This institute is supposed to be the extended arm of the Copyright Office in the world, but the actual effect of their activity is ambiguous at best. The US Copyright Office, besides being a huge library hoarding masses of books and data carriers, has also other tasks to perform and several defined duties. Besides being the main information source and consulting point regarding the copyright law, the Copyright Office keeps interested individuals up to date with current and upcoming legislation pertaining to the copyright and related issues and furthermore provides information services to the public. A newsletter service, organized and published by the United States Copyright Office and maintained through their web site, called NewsNet, provides free of charge extensive information and alerts to subscribers regarding all upcoming hearings in connection with the copyright and related issues, as well as detailed information about new and proposed law regulations and similar related topics. Subscription is being handled by the Copyright Office directly on their website and is not limited to locality or nation, any interested individual may subscribe absolutely free. The Library of Congress has become the perhaps largest library in the world, amassing over 120 million items, from films to photographs, from books to sound recordings, many copyrighted works, if not all of them, are deposited within this great collection. The web site of the Copyright Office is filled with sheer unlimited information, mostly limited to the United States territory, regarding copyright law, copyright itself, regulations, publications in electronic form, notices, future plans, current regulations, information on how and where to record a document, how to submit material, reports, studies, fact sheets and much more. In this sea of information a very good organized site assists the user in the search for the relevant and pertinent data.