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