i think we're about ready to get started
welcome to everyone to the copyright
public modernization committee and our
first
public meeting i'm david bretton and
i'll be your moderator
i mentioned this a moment ago but the
cio and the register will be providing
opening remarks i want to recall
to everyone that this session is being
recorded it will be posted on our
website
later and this will be the primary
record of our
activity today library of congress chief
information officer
bud barton will be speaking first and
he'll hand the mic
directly to the register of copyrights
and director of the u.s copyright office
my boss
shera perlmutter bud with that please
take it away
thank you david good afternoon it is my
pleasure to welcome all of you
to this first meeting of the copyright
public modernization committee
ensuring that the copyright office has a
state-of-the-art it system
is a top priority for the library and
i'm hopeful that this committee
will help ensure close engagement with
the many copyright community
stakeholders
who share an interest in our success
building complex it systems isn't new
from library we've been
developing complex systems for over two
decades
constantly striving to adapt the latest
technologies and best practices
we will be using that expertise as we
develop what's come to be known as the
enterprise copyright system
ultimately however we know that the test
of an it system
isn't how well it's coded or how pretty
it looks
it's how well the system meets the needs
of its users
that's why we've built this effort
around an extensive
user experience design program testing
and gathering feedback
on every step of the copyright process
to ensure we know what users need in a
copyright
system and what we develop meets those
needs
in an intuitive way to me this committee
is
also another part of our user design
effort
you were selected to join us because of
your expertise
your experience your ability to
represent
a diverse spectrum of copyright
stakeholders and it's my hope
that you will share your informed
perspectives on how the new enterprise
copyright system
will be used and what we should be
thinking about from an i.t
perspective as we continue to mature it
in the years ahead today's meeting will
focus on technology and how we can
harness
it most effectively for the copyright
office and for you
this venue is not appropriate to address
questions regarding copyright policy or
copyright law
now before i hand this over to register
promoter i'd like to add a personal name
as some of you already know i will be
retiring as the cio of the library in
september
but rest assured that i'm leaving this
effort in good hands
my deputy judith conklin has been named
the next cio
i have great confidence in judith and
every member of this team
with your support and input we will
deliver
a modern suite of applications worthy of
the stakeholders of the u.s copyright
system
i'll now pass over to shira for a few
words
thanks bud
let me add my welcome to everyone
joining this event
the new copyright public modernization
committee
the staff from the library of congress's
office of the chief information officer
my colleagues at the u.s copyright
office and of course
members of the public today gives us an
opportunity both to provide information
and to benefit from the insights of the
cpmc members
they have all been selected from a truly
impressive group of applicants
by the librarian of congress and we're
delighted
that they're willing to contribute their
time and expertise
public input has been and continues to
be a key part
of copyright modernization as our
various projects for the technology used
in our services have moved forward
we've heard from the public in a variety
of ways
one of the most valuable has been direct
feedback from those engaging
with our newly released pilots which has
been
instrumental in our ongoing design and
engineering decisions
this includes the copyright public
records system
launched at the end of 2020 and
currently available
on our website at copyright.gov in the
area of recordation
several waves of participants have
provided extensive input
on the new recreation pilot as to
registration
a group of early users has helped test a
clickable prototype of our standard
application
and as we continue work on improvements
in all of these areas
we've requested public comments through
notices of inquiry and rule makings
the copyright office also hosts
bi-monthly public webinars where we
share updates
on all of our modernization projects and
last july
we held a public forum with ocio
on this topic i encourage
everyone to visit the copyright office
website which has
a wealth of materials such as documents
and fact sheets and recordings of those
webinars
and please do continue providing
feedback through all available channels
to help us develop the most successful
products possible
finally i'd like to put these
initiatives into a broader context
all of this work on modernization
contributes to two of the copyright
offices
overarching strategic goals first
we intend to keep pace with changing
technology not just today
but into the future continuously
refining our services without waiting
for them to become out of date
second we want to open the copyright
system up further to all members of the
public
including currently underserved
communities
which includes making office services as
accessible and as user friendly as
possible
the way we design our technology can
play a major role in this effort as
you'll see for example from the
registration
clickable prototype which requires far
less expertise
to use than our current applications
in today's meetings we'll begin with
presentations from project leaders to
provide an
overview of our recent progress on our
current approach to modernization
after that members of the cpmc will each
provide brief opening remarks
followed by a moderated panel discussion
and we'll take
questions and answer and give answers uh
from the public at the end
i'm very much looking forward to hearing
the comments and all of the discussion
so thank you and i'll hand the virtual
mic
back to our moderator david brun
thank you shira and thank you mr barton
uh hopefully all of the logistics are
reasonably clear to everyone at this
point
a final logistical point that i would
like to make
is that as the moderator i reserve the
right to call an audible during this
three-hour long session
either for the purpose of giving
committee members and staff a breather
or for giving us additional time if
specific topics
seem to warrant it cpmc members
please feel free to drop any questions
or comments into the
into the chat our next two speakers are
natalie buddha smith
the head of user experience and design
at the library of congress
and sara garski who is our product
manager for the
enterprise copyright system or ecs in
the u.s copyright office
you'll hear a little bit from sarah
about how the business prioritizes our
needs
the the product manager is the person
from the business with day-to-day
responsibility for managing the feature
pipeline
and you'll hear more from natalie about
how ocio and the copyright office work
together to keep those decisions
centered on our users uh one additional
point i did want to make
is that it's absolutely fine
for members of the public participants
in the webinar to
to put answer questions uh into the q
a but we're not going to be taking
questions throughout the
the session um that will be fielding
those sort of in the
toward the end of the agenda um with
that sarah
will you take us away thank you david
good afternoon everyone today i am going
to share
a bit about our vision and goals for the
ecs the enterprise
copyright system and in a few minutes
i'll dive a little deeper
into our ecs development journey thus
far
next slide please
in the envisioned ecs all aspects of
copyright services and systems are
integrated
all users benefit from our responsive
flexible design
our centrally implicit implemented
capabilities that are shared
across all copyright services that are
supported by the ecs
are consistent optimized interface
optimized
business processes that are built into
the individual components of the ecs
as well we look to our ocio
partners to provide us with the improved
technology to provide you with these
modernized capabilities
next slide please
to reiterate our end goal is an
enterprise system
that covers all aspects of copyright
services
including the registration recordation
public record and licensing areas
providing for a user-friendly
centralized location to file
applications and transfers of ownerships
ownership
next slide please
to meet this ambitious goal requires the
implementation of several guiding
principles
a strong effective partnership
and constant collaboration between the
united states copyright office
and the office of the chief information
officer the ocio
a focus on delivering the quality that
exceeds
user expectations through a
concentration on a user-centered design
which ties together people technology
and business processes
and the implementation of an adherence
to industry best practices
for software engineering and systems
design as
implemented through the library's
project management life cycle and system
development systems development life
cycle processes
a focus on agility and the collection of
metrics
and they help us enable decision making
rigorous testing that is central to our
user design strategy and it which also
enables us to make quick adjustments
based on your feedback
in sum our user-centered design approach
our focus on agility feedback and
applying lessons learned
all support iterative development and
allows us
to deploy functionality over time
and build towards a fully functional ecs
and with that i will pass the mic
virtually to natalie buddha smith
thanks sarah next slide please
copyright modernization has continued to
mature in scale
and has fully embraced user-centered
agile cloud-first practices
these flexible scalable and resilient
approaches
allow all that work on copyright
monetization to be more efficient
and continuously improve the service
offerings
next slide please our multiple teams
use online tools to plan manage groom
and track
user stories issues sprints and releases
all common practices in modern agile
design and development
while we have been operating virtually
for a while now we have continued to
collaborate and work just as effectively
if not more
each scrum team manages their work
within a roadmap
communicating across teams and measuring
outcomes
at the heart of our collaboration is the
daily scrum where features are planned
and discussed by team members
that include business owners project
managers subject matter
experts user experience designers
developers
devops engineers accessibility
specialists
quality assurance testers and security
experts
in this daily scrum they discuss ideas
and any items that may be holding up
work
to solve problems solving problems and
planning work
in the daily scrum are managed in the
form of user stories
user stories are very brief descriptions
of work to be completed in a defined
period of time
or a sprint multiple user stories are in
a sprint and multiple sprints are in a
release
a product roadmap is used to plan and
communicate the features to be designed
and developed in the sprint race
timeline
building up plans and releases from user
stories and sprints allow multiple teams
to quickly distribute work
to the many individuals and their large
teams and quickly shift direction
to solve problems change and grow next
slide
since copyright modernization has
several teams working on several service
all at the same time we utilize the
scaled agile framework or safe
to manage communicate and coordinate the
large amount of work that is underway
this safe framework breaks down
copyright modernization into larger
efforts of work called
epics and then those are divided into
features
we have also conducted multiple program
increment planning events
which is a cadence-based event that
serves as a heartbeat
of the agile release train or art
aligning all the teams on the art to a
shared road map
mission and vision next slide please
the copyright system is a complete the
enterprise copyright system is a complex
ecosystem
with multiple online services that uses
a technical approach that is cloud
native
we are developing for the cloud at the
start version versus moving code into
cloud later
and we use shared microservices the use
of microservices allow us to scale and
be more efficient
microservices are specific business
capabilities
that can be deployed integrated tested
and maintained separately
but can also be used together as a
collection of services
once developed these services can be
used across all of the copyright
services
these shared services create consistency
allow for efficiency and make
maintenance
easier an example of a shared
microservice is our notification service
which means can be seen in registration
recordation and other services
that have similar notification needs a
notification could appear when there is
an update on an account
a claim a correspondence and more this
notification microservice can be
designed and developed as a single
shared microservice
and then used acro across the multiple
copyright services
so there is an efficiency in the design
development deployment and ongoing
maintenance of these common features
next slide please
increasing our ability to scale and be
more efficient is our design
system based on the us web design system
our multiple scrum teams share the same
design system for
all copyright monetization which allows
them to build features from shared
components that have been already
designed developed and tested with the
same specifications that meet our
accessibility standards
next slide please as i mentioned before
the enterprise copyright system is a
large ecosystem with multiple services
and many scrum teams even though there
are different features in these services
we are using a singular design system
and shared microservices to build
consistency
between the services where best supplied
we are aiming for this consistency
in the fields and buttons that you will
see in the applications
that will operate in the same ways and
with larger features such as login
and other account features this is
helpful in two ways it makes all of
these services easier to learn
and understand and it makes this large
enterprise copyright system
easier to maintain
this consistency also builds trust
familiarity and ease of use since users
both the general public
and the copyright staff will know what
to expect when they use a system
next slide please user center design
practices are at the heart of copyright
modernization
with user research and user experience
design our teams interact with actual
users
through all phases from initial concepts
to usability testing
and other evaluative methods such as
metrics we show users wireframes and
prototypes to get their responses and
ask questions about the services as a
whole
and specific features we also observe
them using parts of a service or an
entire application to understand if a
feature is working well
and working as expected our product
teams design services
for users first rather than letting the
system dictate
how the user must use the service we get
feedback from real users with user
research and then bring that knowledge
back to the scrum teams throughout the
entire life cycle of our work
this allows us to solve problems from a
user-centric point of view and the voice
of those that depend on the us copyright
service can be clearly seen in all the
services in copyright modernization
that's the end of my section and back to
sarah garski who will give a
a brief interview over sorry brief
overview of the services
thank you so much much natalie now
i'd like to share a bit about our
development journey thus far and i will
begin with registration development
and if we could have the next slide
great thank you
we initiated full registration
development activities in
april of last year registration
development is a multi-year endeavor
at this stage of development we are
focused on both the external
that is the content creator side
and the internal those are the examinat
examiner functions
a recent project milestone um
was the completion of version two of a
clickable prototype
this prototype is being used to support
moderated user testing
notice i said version two which means
that there was a version one
and version two incorporated feedback
from a round of moderated user testing
that was completed earlier this
calendar year on version one
this is one example of our iterative
approach
to ecs development in action
if i could have the next slide
i'll talk about recordation some of you
may be participants in the recreation
public pilot which was released in april
of last year
since april of 2020 we have recorded
more than
2600 documents we currently have over 90
individuals participating in the pilot
and we hold regular webinars to address
uh user questions
and provide feedback to the development
team on the pilot usage
if you are interested in participating
in the recreation pilot we'd love to
talk to you
and please reach out to recordation dash
pilot at copyright.gov
we continue to iterate on next slide
please
thank you we continue to iterate on the
pilot
to implement additional features and are
in the early stages of development
for notices of termination workflow
functionality
next slide please
next i'll talk about licensing
development licensing development was
initiated earlier this calendar year
the focus is on workflows needed by
staff to examine and verify statement of
account submissions
and we are currently working on features
needed to support
the manual uploading of
microsoft excel formatted statement of
account forms
creating wireframes gathering
requirements
and identifying current processes next
slide please
and finally the public record system
development began
in september to of 2019 and is
multi-year
in december of last year we released a
live
public pilot release 2 is anticipated to
be released
late this summer and it will include
additional features
including recent records and recent
searches functionality
the ability to download records and some
usability improvements
i believe this to be the most important
systems development endeavor at the most
important time for the copyright office
as we progress
down our development path my conviction
that this is true only becomes stronger
and my excitement and anticipation only
increases
with each incremental release and
significant development milestone
and with that i will turn this back to
david thank you
thank you so much natalie and sarah what
an exciting time to be at the copyright
office with these changes underway
um so with the context set by the cio
and the register and with those
additional details provided by our
product manager and the library's head
of user experience and design
um we're going to transition a little
bit and talk to our panelists for their
initial input
on this our inaugural meeting of the
copyright public
modernization committee i'd like to
remind
cpmc members we are right now running
sort of exactly on time and i have a
mute button and i'm not going to be
afraid to use it today
in order to keep inside of our three
hour time window for this event
we really we really need these initial
remarks to be limited to no more than
five minutes
and focused on the agency's i.t
monetization
i'm going to be taking notes of specific
events
raised during people's opening remarks
to spur our conversation
and the subsequent panel discussion and
panelists will be called on
alphabetically by last name uh i'll only
be stating your name and your
organizational affiliation
no extensive biography but it is my hope
that in this inaugural session as we're
all getting to know each other a little
bit more
that we'll hear a little bit more about
you as you give your opening remarks so
please feel free to include
your your own reasons for interest in
the committee
lastly if there are any technical
difficulties with the panelist cameras
or microphones or internet connection
we'll just move on to the subsequent
name and push that person
to the end of the list and and revisit
them
so with that i'd like to introduce todd
carpenter
of the national information standards
organization
todd feel free to turn on your mic and
your camera
all right hello everyone uh
my name is todd carpenter i am the
executive director of nyso
the national information standards
organization we
are a non-profit organization comprised
of approximately
300 institutions uh companies
associations libraries
uh that serve the entire information
media and library communities we were
founded in
1939 and our mission is to build
knowledge
foster discussions and advance
authoritative standards development
through collaboration amongst colo
scholarly scientific and professional
communities
we're an ansi accredited standards
developer uh
we develop standards for publishers
libraries and software providers uh some
of the things that we develop here
standards for information is not
something that rolls off the tongue for
most people
uh some of the things that we are
responsible for creating and managing
uh that you probably have run into in
your day-to-day lives
uh the bar codes on the back of books
isbn numbers
um for those of you who remember card
catalogs in libraries
those cards were a representation of
niso standards the marc
records we develop a variety of
identifier metadata circulation
standards
for library systems etc and we've spent
the last two day
two decades as an organization moving us
uh from a physical based world to a
digital based world
which involves a transition transition
of a lot of the standards for
creating content for distributing
content
and managing content
internationally we also work
internationally with
outside of the united states within iso
the international standards body in the
areas of information and documentation
as well as document file formats
within that community i also serve
as the committee manager for the
international subcommittee
on identification and description
so this is where all of the identifier
standards and some of the metadata
standards
related to cultural content exist so
isbn for book number uh for books issn
for serials uh isrc
the international standard recording
code for musical works
uh isan for audio visual works and doi
for uh digital object identifiers for
digital content
uh prior to joining uh nyso i spent
about 15 years working in the publishing
industry in a variety of marketing and
business related
uh aspects of
primarily online journal publishers
uh personally i am
a content creator i'm the author of
uh two books one forthcoming fingers
crossed
as every author like it's almost done
it's almost done
i have written many dozens of articles
focused on technology
and libraries i'm also an avid
photographer
i was an inaugural member of the
american library association policy
corps
and have served for 10 years
as a director of the board of the
foundation
for the baltimore county public library
i am looking forward to participating in
this group learning from all of you
particularly how we manage
one minute excellent i'm just about done
uh
particularly how the copyright office
manages copyright information and how
that information is accessible to users
both the public as well as corporate
users of this information
and how those systems interact uh
how data is exchanged with the copyright
office and
um extracted from the copyright office
and how
standards can help facilitate that so
with that uh
thank you david for keeping me on
schedule and look looking forward to
working with the rest of the committee
thanks thank you so much todd
and in case any of the other panelists
didn't see it
as the one minute mark passed i held up
a little sticky note on the screen and
even if you can't read it but it says on
it is one minute
um the next person i'd like to introduce
is wahaj chaudhry of
amazon.com well hajj if you could turn
on your microphone and camera i'll start
your timer
thank you david and uh thank you for the
opportunity to participate in this forum
my name is wahad chaudhry and i am a
technical product manager at amazon
working on enabling proactive
intellectual property management and
protection systems for rights owners and
i have the privilege of leading the
product and engineering teams at amazon
that prevent counterfeits and
infringement
from harming our customers brands and
selling partners
amazon provides tremendous selection i
think as we all know convenience and
value to
consumers as well as unprecedented
opportunities for millions of small and
medium-sized businesses
unfortunately this also presents an
attract attractive target for criminals
and bad actors to attempt to attack our
stores and services
this presents a serious risk to our
business if customers do not trust what
they purchase through amazon stores
we know they can and will shop elsewhere
as a result amazon invests tremendous
resources in preventing
ip abuse the primary challenges
challenges that i focus on
including scaling a broad spectrum of ip
detection and
enforcement technologies that utilize a
combination of machine learning
and data from ip registries across every
country that amazon sells it
ensuring that we can deliver a trusted
experience to customers and stakeholders
this includes working closely with right
centers to create a seamless process of
ingesting visual and textual ip data
verifying its authenticity and creating
a robust data infrastructure that will
allow us to make precise
decisions on billions of product
listings streaming and uploaded visual
content and auditory content
a major bottleneck in this space is the
management and protection of copyright
assets
namely understanding the nature of the
protected asset itself
the claimant's role within amazon
potential authentic application on
commercial goods
as well as a vast network of licensing
relationships tied to that asset
this initiative to modernize the
copyright outset office is an
opportunity to address hurdles faced by
all stakeholders
in the effort to provide customers with
access to legal goods and content
the enhancements to the registration
recordation and licensing processes will
enable a high fidelity data exchange
that will allow us to scale our
protections and ensure
the accurate usage of copyright assets
this
initiative also presents a strong value
prop for content creators to enhance
their ability to protect themselves i
hope to be able to contribute my
experience with the various use cases i
see daily with copyright data
to ensure that the outcome of the
modernization initiative can benefit
copyright holders for visual
textual and audio content everywhere we
know this will require continued
investments technological innovation and
above all collaboration
amazon will continue to invest in invent
and improve the tools needed to protect
our customers and partners
we welcome the opportunity to work with
the library the copyright office the
committee and all stakeholders to
achieve our shared goals
i'm looking forward to adding value
through this committee and providing a
technical point of view on the needs of
stakeholders like amazon
thank you wahaj thank you so much and i
would
pass it on to the next person susan
chertkopf from
the recording industry association of
america
susan please feel free to turn on your
microphone and camera
uh i'm i'm on can you see and hear me
we sure can thank you susan thank you
uh good afternoon uh registered promoter
uh mr barton office staff fellow
committee members
um my name is susan shirkoff and i'm the
senior vice president for legal and
regulatory affairs at the riaa
reporting industry association of
america i've been with
riaa for over 20 years which has really
allowed me to witness the
entire shift to from a physical based
industry to a digital based industry
in my role at riaa i'm the person that
drafts most of the comments we file with
the copyright office on various policy
issues
which have include included a range of
modernization related issues and
as a result i've been following the
modernization issues
very closely for for many years i also
interface regularly with the copyright
office
on behalf of my members when they have
issues or
or problems they need someone to help
troubleshoot something
with the registration process or
recordation issues and
so again i'm fairly deeply involved in
the issues of recordation
registration we are regular users
of the public search function and
i i also work on licensing issues as
well
um i i view my role here
principally to represent the views of
content owners and creators and users of
the copyright offices services and it's
external facing i.t
systems and um i hope to act as a
liaison between the committee
and and the user committee um or the
user community
as this process rolls on uh
it's an honor to be on this committee
and
it's a testament to the respect and
value that the library and the copyright
office have earned
that so many people from so many
different segments of the creative
and digital ecosystem have come together
to support this work
and it's really great to see the variety
of different viewpoints
that are represented on this committee
as
our ceo mitch glazer uh says
that the the value of unity cooperation
and working together
even with segments of the industry or
community where we see things
differently
is is essential um
for our part uh we see modernizing the
copyright office's
i.t capabilities um as as
essential um it's it's technical
um but it's it's highly important
copyright rights are embedded in our
constitution
congress has supported this including
recognizing the importance of supporting
music creators
and the need for resources to have a
well-functioning
efficient and accessible copyright
office
i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that
copyright industries contribute
1.5 trillion dollars in gdp
and create 5.7 million jobs
the music industry alone contributes 170
billion dollars to the economy
and 2.7 million jobs facilitating
registration recordation
and use of copyrighted works is a core
mission of the copyright office
and having the right i.t infrastructure
to serve this mission
is essential as the copyright office
itself has
so aptly said modernized technology
is a cornerstone of a modern of a modern
copyright system
the recent supreme court decision in
fourth estate versus wall street which
held
that a copyright infringement suit must
wait until
a copyright is successfully registered
by the copyright office
has put a premium on having an it system
that can support a speedy efficient and
accurate registration process
uh that is one of the key priorities for
riaa's member companies
the the challenge of having a speedy
efficient and accurate registration
process
grows more complex as the scale of music
continues to grow
by some reports there's nearly 60 000
songs that are uploaded to music
services each day
if all of those songs are uh are
registered
that that's a high volume just coming in
from the
music community and no doubt all the
other creative arts are experiencing
similar digital booms the copyright
office has made tremendous efforts in
this regard
but it has been candid about the
challenges it has
we welcome the expanded visibility into
the modernization process that this
committee will afford
that's been one of the issues that's
percolated around for a while
is the user community wanting
more more insight in into the process
um thank you i look forward to
participating into today's
in today's discussion and future
discussions of this important committee
thank you so much susan our next
member of the copper at public
modernization committee's inaugural
meeting
will be brewster kale of the internet
archive brewster
please feel free to start your camera
and your microphone
and brewster is joining us from an
undisclosed starbucks
uh and if there's any audio for or
connection difficulties we'll revisit
thank you very much can you hear me
so i'm brewster kale the digital
librarian and founder of the internet
archive
a non-profit library which serves
millions of patrons a day through the
internet
we provide access to uh materials for
instance
uh by trying to make all the references
in wikipedia turn blue so people that
want to go deeper
can go deeper as well as the wayback
machine
and i really appreciate uh being invited
to be on this committee
um the tech makes all sorts of things
easy that used to be
really hard let's take advantage of it
let's let's do something really
interesting with this committee
and uh with uh really bringing some new
and better services to the internet the
internet archive is interested in
concretely helping and
i believe has been helping for instance
let's distribute all the copyright
registration information
and the renewal records to everybody not
just in that awesome
uh user interface that we've been
hearing about but also
in bulk because there's lots of things
that we can do in data mining these
materials
to make them more uh useful and
integrated
into our our systems to make them
copyright uh
office aware uh we can also do something
else
we can start to collect materials in
digital form
not just the metadata so the library of
congress of course has
uh huge awesome collections of physical
materials and now
more and more digital collections so if
this was part of how the registration
system worked then it would really aid
in copyright lookups
you could use the sort of
non-consumptive approach to go and do
searches to be able to find out what's
where
for instance this could help with music
um
which there are lots lots of music and
they're all a lot of songs that kind of
name the same thing
um so being able to go and do these
sorts of searches in new and different
ways
as well as going and building the
collections of the library of congress
is very uh important the integration of
the copyright office with the library
congress has been
of course there for centuries and i
think we can leverage it
um more and better um the internet
archive has been involved in
several initiatives with library
congress and the copyright office
um and as well as independently to go
and make uh the red copyright
registration records
available we've digitized um the
books and we've gone and used those
to go and effectively search to find the
copyright status of thousands of
periodicals
so it is possible the user interface is
going to
be great but bulk access is is important
we've also experimented with ocring the
cards
so the copyright office did a test of
going and digitizing the cards but they
didn't make them
massively publicly available but a few
data sets came out
so we digitized those uh and ocr them
and made those uh
available so we would i look forward to
trying to be helpful in a concrete way
listening to what it is that might be
necessary um
but i think we need to go beyond the ui
which is very important to do
but bulk access to the data and look
forward to this
um this committee it's very important
and timely
thank you very much brewster thank you
so much
uh we've got roy kaufman
of the copyright clearance center who's
going to give the next remarks roy
please feel free to turn on your
microphone and your video
i have david so hopefully you can see me
we sure can thank you sir
hello i'm i'm roy kaufman i just want to
begin by
thanking the library of congress and the
copyright office
both for convening this group but more
importantly for engaging in what might
feel like the thankless task of
copyright office modernization
it's very important and we're really
glad you're doing it
for those who don't know me i'm a lawyer
by training
i spent about 17 years working in
science publishing before joining
copyright clearance center
like todd i'm also a book author and
author of other materials i belong to
the copyright alliance
i am the on the editorial board of a
library science journal called uksg
insights
and i act uh work for the united states
government in a very limited capacity as
a trade advisor
through an international trade advisory
committee 13 intellectual property
for those who want to know a little bit
more about copyright clearance center
we are best known as the u.s collective
management
organization for the licensing of text
so we license text in k-12 higher ed
and also to more than 35 000 businesses
globally
the suppliers of our text publishers
authors rights holders
we have more than 12 000 of them
participating across various programs
somewhat less known to people who are
less familiar with ccc
is that we are a software company now
everyone says they're a software company
but we actually develop and create
software both for our own use and for
that of our clients
publishers tend to use our software to
enable licensing and also to manage
the relationships they have with their
customers and authors around open access
publishing
on the user side we have a lot of
software that enables
or supports research particularly
for research intensive corporations
pharma r
d chemical r d food r d
i mention all of this because first of
all i don't
pretend to speak for anyone but myself
and maybe even ccc
i certainly don't speak for the
publishing community or for the
research community but we do have
insight into their needs which i'd like
to be able to bring into this process
ccc like the uh library uses
agile methodology for the development of
our own internal software and when we're
creating software on behalf of clients
so we're really glad that that's what's
being used we believe it's fit for
purpose it's a great way of doing it
with respect to what we would like to
see
we specifically think there should be
user stories and this is going to pick
up the themes
i've already heard from some of the
other speakers
around openness of the records and
specifically
connecting the records of the copyright
office
with other records that have been
developed community developed records
that exist elsewhere so for example
harking back to todd we have
lots of standards or standard
identifiers for different types of works
there are standard identifiers for
individuals so that
the same song or the same work of the
same name doesn't get confused with the
same
person and a system
an ecs that brings together
all of this community developed material
i think would be a great win for the
copyright office great win for copyright
and great win for authors and commerce
and users
so what could this be this could be
developing new workflows
i don't think the copyright office has
to build everything
it has to build an infrastructure where
others can build
and so you know if you imagine if you
have to register a work for an iswc or
an isbn
maybe through an api call you can
develop registration systems at the same
time will increase registrations
thank you david i see that as susan said
there's a whole lot of songs coming out
every day
probably not all of those are registered
for copyright but those songs will have
a workflow
usually connected with the cmo i'm sorry
acronym
uh one of the music collecting societies
and so we see that these things can be
done i don't think they require changes
in the law they don't require changes in
copyright policy
and they don't require changes in legal
presumption so the copyright office has
certain things it has to do in a certain
way
we acknowledge that but there's more
that can be done just to bring value to
the ecosystem
and i'll stop talking thank you
you so much roy our next copyright
public modernization committee member is
keith cooper schmidt
of the copyright alliance all right well
thank you very much
um good afternoon everybody uh
thrilled very happy to be on this
committee uh my name is keith cooper
schmidt i'm the ceo of the copyright
alliance
for those who are unfamiliar with the
copyright alliance the alliance is a
non-profit
nonpartisan public interest and
educational organization representing
the copyright interests of over
around 2 million individual creators and
over
13 000 organizations in the united
states
across a spectrum of copyright
disciplines
the copper alliance is dedicated to
advocating policies that promote
and preserve the value of copyright and
to protecting the rights
of creators and innovators so not
surprisingly the individual
creators and organizations that we
represent rely on copyright law
and more importantly for today's
meetings the copyright office's
services to protect their creativity
to protect their efforts to protect
their investments in the creation and
distribution of
new copyrighted works for the public to
enjoy i
want to begin by thanking the library
and the copyright office
uh for establishing this committee and
for inviting me to be a member
uh i think everyone on the committee
here certainly recognized that the
copyright office plays a tremendously
important role within the copyright
ecosystem
the ability of our nation's individual
creators and the businesses that
support their work to promptly register
and to promptly record copyright
interests with the office
and of the public to obtain copyright
information that enables them to license
copyrighted works
creates new industries and spurs the
economy which in turn
advances our global competitiveness so
with many ongoing and rapid changes in
the information entertainment and
technology sectors which we've seen over
the
last several years the copyright office
has never been more important than it is
today in insert
ensuring that copyright owners have
access to critical services that
support their endeavors so it should
come as no surprise that the copyright
alliance has long supported
modernization of the copyright office's
i.t systems
for services such as copyright
registration recordation
and public search functions improving
i.t systems should make registration
recreation easier
while also improving processing times
and reducing costs
we'll also provide benefits to users of
the publicly searchable database and the
general public in the form of
robust up-to-date and searchable
ownership and licensing information
we at the copyright alliance understand
what a massive undertaking this
modernization project is
we understand how many moving parts
there are and how many different
viewpoints and needs the copyright
office and the ocio
need to take into account to make these
systems work effectively
an iterative agile approach toward
development
that allows systems to be easily
adjusted throughout the project
like the safe framework now being
utilized by the ocio
seems like the correct approach so long
as it continues to take into account
the specific customer needs of the
copyright office
i look forward to discussing the safe
framework today in further detail
a matter of fact quite a few questions
about implementation of it
by the ocio myself now as the copyright
office modernization project moves
forward we hope the library of congress
the ocio and the u.s copyright office
and others who may be involved in the
copyright office modernization
initiative
keep in mind several principles to guide
its efforts
first the characteristics of copyright
owners who register and record their
works within the copyright office
vary immensely in the type and number of
works they create
register and record the frequency of the
registrations the manner in which they
register and the size of the copyright
owner and many many other variables
it is therefore essential that new new
systems designed by the ocio for the
copyright office
be accomplished in a way that is
flexible enough to address
the different uses and needs of all
types of copyright owners and
all different types of copyrighted works
second technology is not static
nor are our nation's copyright laws in
creating any new system
the ocio ne should assume that change is
right around the corner
i think in hope that we all recognize
and agree that the ecs's new
registration record
recognition system should not just make
a digital version of the paper process
it is critical that any new systems
created by the ocio for the copyright
office
be designed in a way that is flexible
that is scalable and that is adaptable
to accommodate the change in future
growth that is inevitable
and lastly given the global and dynamic
characteristics of the copyright
ecosystem
the modernization project should result
in a copyright office that is able to
offer the systems
tools and resources that all co all
users of the offices services demand
and that all and that all copyright
office records and systems be easy to
navigate
intuitive have a consistent interface
employ effective and commercially
reasonable
security measures and be fully
integrated into comprehensive systems
of copyright records once again in
closing i want to thank the cop
the library for establishing this
committee and holding these meetings
i am hopeful that i and the other
committee members as well as any others
in attendance
can learn more about the modernization
process through these meetings
including the process progress that has
been made to date
and any obstacles that have been
encountered and to provide any input
that we can into the process i look
forward
to participating in today in today's
meeting and in future meetings
and the very last thing i want to do is
wish bud the best in his retirement
and to congratulate judith on her recent
promotion
thanks everybody i look forward to
participating thank you so much keith
and thank you for those
kind sentiments um melissa levine of the
university of michigan library
is our next member to offer opening
remarks
hi thank you david my name is melissa
levine and i'm the director of the
copyright office at the university of
michigan library
i want to ask my gratitude for the
opportunity to serve on this committee
and i look forward to getting to know
all of you as we dive into our work
and i'm particularly pleased to be
joining you from my actual office
on a lovely sunny ann arbor day on our
campus
i've been at the university of michigan
library for a little over a decade
our mission is to support enhance and
collaborate in the instructional
research and service activities of
faculty
students and staff and contribute to the
common good by collecting
organizing preserving communicating
sharing
and creating the record of human
knowledge
i provide education information and
policy support to the library
and our campus community of students
scholars faculty
researchers and more because copyright
touches on almost
every aspect of our information
ecosystem
as part of the research directors group
in our library i spend much of my time
lately
on matters of open access open research
and open scholarship
i also provide policy and planning
support to the hattie trust digital
library and was recently named to
the international federation of
libraries or ifla
committee on copyright and related
matters i'm also working
to establish a program for copyright
education
to empower our students who are learning
to be artists musicians
writers and other creatives on our
campus
early in my career i worked in our
national collections i handled business
affairs for the smithsonian
and a number of public-private
partnerships and later worked at the
library of congress
on the american memory uh project which
was the first major
digital library initiative for the
library of congress this is in the mid
1990s
this gave me key opportunities to learn
about the library of congress
its collections digitization
technologies affecting
all media and the unique relationship
between the library of congress
and the us copyright office i've relied
on the records of the united states
copyright office
registrations renewals transfers
assignments
data and the catalog of copyright
entries made available through
organizations like internet archive and
hottie trust
for my work with educational
institutions libraries archives and
museums over the years
i've gained a particular applied
interest in the importance of public
access to
copyright office information
the emphasis on ux is vital for
meaningful access
to copyright records ensuring a workflow
that contemplates support for the
collection development by or through the
library of congress
confidence in the integrity of copyright
information is another area of concern
thinking about the collections and
metadata and creative ways will be of
tremendous benefit
to our country and globally again i want
to express my gratitude
to librarian hayden and to register
promoter
to the u.s copyright office staff for
the transparency of this project and its
intentional consideration of the public
interest
i thank you for the opportunity to work
with all of you on this project
i think you got a couple minutes back
david that was
that was impressive i didn't even have
to get out my sticky note
uh thank you melissa uh our next
member to provide opening remarks is
pamela pamela
malpass the association of american
literary agents copyright committee
co-chair
pamela please feel free to turn on your
camera and your microphone
thank you i hope i've done so we are
hearing you great okay great
uh thank you uh david um my name is
pamela malthus
as i've been introduced i'm with the um
association of american
literary agents um i
might be speaking a little less in terms
of times and some of the other speakers
have i'm going to focus a little bit
more on
my uh background and qualifications for
being here
than maybe expressing some opinions
although
to the extent that i speak on behalf of
authors and agents
we're a community that is very excited
about the prospect of
modern copyright registration systems
and improved
[Music]
systems for authors to interact with
with their copyrights
to both register them and manage them so
um i am as i said a literary agent i
represent
writers of fiction and non-fiction i've
spent uh
three decades as a publishing
professional working with authors
and publishers in formats ranging from
pre-publication
the earliest forms of digital publishing
in the days of cd-roms web-based
publishing
and in the traditional format of books
the past 20
years i've been a literary agent working
in print
digital audio full range of um
formats i'm a member of the association
of american literary agents
also also of the authors guild i'm
active in the book industry study group
i'm also a data and database enthusiast
copyright is not only the underpinning
of my work
securing the monetary value of my
clients work but an area of focus
as i am a founder and co-chair of the
association of american literary agents
copyright committee in my early career i
developed
digital publishing products that
required coordinating software
development and editorial processes
as a product manager for development of
an online publishing program
i was a conduit between software
developers staff writers
management in the development of
publishing systems
um the iterative process of building
beta testing debugging all of that is
very familiar
to me as a rights director at one of
america's oldest literary agents by
spearheaded projects involving
copyrights for lost works by
literary estates including scott
fitzgerald jd salinger
those involved complex management of
international copyright organizations so
i'm familiar with some of the
differences
in u.s copyright and foreign
understandings of copyright or they have
a different they have a different
taxonomy
that they use but we can get to that
later um
researching copyright registrations and
renewals for
works um is an essential part of
managing uh literary estates in
particular so i've done
my fair share of moving around in
copyright office data systems
i've also managed built implemented
um data and information systems the
transformation of data into information
is
genuinely fascinating to me um among the
most challenging products
projects i've confronted in my career
was
the task of migrating an entirely
paper-based office to a digital database
so that process
that painful process is familiar to me
um
i have hands-on experience in data
normalization query building
and the processes inherent to
information management systems um
and what in the publishing business we
call rights management which is
creating rights licensing rights
reverting rights
all the rest of that of course has its
foundation in copyright
and the systems that manage copyright
records representations registrations
everything else are
um obviously closely related to the work
of authors and agents and publishers
um copyright
and information systems are both um
areas of
personal avid interest um and
so i really look forward to working with
this cpmc
um yeah i hope my experience working on
sort of both sides
as and on behalf of copyright holders
but also
um in building both
practitioner-oriented and public-facing
uh systems will be helpful too i really
hope to contribute meaningfully
to the cpmc that's it for me
thank you so much pamela our next
presenter is
micah may of the digital public library
of america
micah please feel free to turn on your
camera and mike
i'm here thank you david uh so thank you
all
we're here great thank you great um yeah
i'm thrilled
and honored to be part of this group so
a little bit about me
i have a law degree from harvard law
i thought i was going to be an
environmental lawyer until i worked in
the industry and then changed my mind
and went to mckinsey and company as a as
a consultant
and from there became director of
strategy at the new york public library
uh and since then i've really enjoyed a
wonderful 12 years in library land
while at new york public library i was
the first to introduce agile
to the web and nypl labs team so i was
thrilled to hear
all the great agile principles and
practices that you're rolling out as
part of this i think that's
a really good fit and wonderful that
those are going to guide this work
i moved to dpla in 2017 where i am now
the director of ebook services so a
little bit about
dpla the digital public library of
america
our mission is to empower people to
learn grow
and contribute to a diverse and better
functioning society
by maximizing access to our shared
history culture and knowledge
and the key phrase there is really
maximizing access
and we do that both by providing access
directly to end users
but also very much by helping
institutions especially libraries
to make their content more discoverable
and accessible online
dpla was founded in 2013 it came out of
a convening
which some of you were part of at the
berkman center in 2010
and then there was a long process of
community grassroots engagement
that led to the actual launch of the
organization in 2013.
dpla serves as a bridge between
libraries and other cultural
institutions
and stakeholders of all kinds really
trying to connect people
all of our work and our approach is
really guided by three principles
so we focus on proactive collaboration
we really believe that institutions are
stronger when we work together
and so we seek out partners in
everything we do
and we have partnered with many of the
folks on this call to advanced projects
we believe equity and inclusion needs to
guide everything that we do
so we want to make sure that all of our
work contributes to a more equitable
society
and we believe in optimism about the
potential of technology
we really think that technology can move
us forward and as brewster said
you know make things better uh and we
believe in that transformational
potential and want to be part of it
so in terms of why we care about
copyright uh our
chief goal in this is to help libraries
maximize access to copyrighted works out
of copyright works
and kind of everything in between so we
believe that ultimately
creators and libraries are on the same
team you know team reading in in the
case of books
and that we want to maximize win wins as
much as we can between
copyright holders and creators and
cultural heritage institutions including
libraries
that help provide access uh for
americans
so in terms of our relevant work um we
work directly with publishers
to try to create the best possible
access
for libraries to copyrighted books we
have
approaching a million titles in the dpla
exchange
where we've been able to negotiate
better licensing terms on copyrighted
items
we also work on openly licensed
materials so we aggregate the open
bookshelf
which is over ten thousand openly
licensed
books and audiobooks reviewed by our
curation corps
of librarians from across the country
within the open bookshelf work
we have also done some publishing work
ourselves so we did for example
ebook version of the mueller report that
won a publishing award because it was
the only free
openly accessible you know high quality
epub of that
publication we really believe those
kinds of things should be available to
everyone in the country
and we've also helped libraries create
high quality open copies of ebooks
we also through the dp.la network help
cultural heritage institutions provide
access
to over 44 million items many of which
are openly licensed some are not we've
recently added a rights facet that helps
people determine the rights associated
with those works
and we consistently work with libraries
to help them innovate
and make sure that they can provide the
most digital access possible
and you know i very much agree we need
to make sure that the digital context
is expanding access not contracting it
so again at dpla our mission is to
maximize access to information for
americans
we want to ensure that in the digital
age we become more
not less accessible that we maximize the
win-wins that we think
are very available between rights
holders and libraries
and really make sure that this project
and the digital
context moves access forward and makes
access more available so we want to make
sure that copyrights facilitates those
win-wins
uh doesn't unduly restrict it thank you
all i'm very excited and honored to be
part of this group
thank you so much micah our next
panelist our next member of the
copyright public modernization committee
to speak is
jim neil of columbia university jim
feel free to turn on your microphone and
camera
uh good afternoon and good morning to my
colleagues on the west coast
and thanks to the library of congress
and the copyright office for this
critically important work
and for involving us uh in this project
my name is jim neal i'm university
librarian emeritus
at columbia university in new york and
i'm also a senior policy fellow
at the american library association what
do i bring
to the work of the committee i have
served as a library administrator and
director for five
u.s research universities over nearly 50
years
participating in the technological and
digital transformation
of these institutions over the last 30
years
my responsibilities have expanded to
include
university-wide computing at columbia
i also served as the vice president for
information services
leading teams of it professionals in the
areas of network services
administrative systems security
instructional technologies
research computing digital systems and
information policy
i've been very active in national and
international copyright matters
starting in the late 1980s focused on
copyright policy
and reform this has included testimony
before congressional committees
service as an advisor to the u.s
delegation
at the 1996 wipo uh diplomatic
conference on copyright
and service on the library of congress
108 study group
i have been very active in these
copyright matters
also through the support that my
institutions have provided to faculty
students and researchers in their use of
copyright office
processes and services and i
participated in several
large-scale modernization initiatives
the enterprise resource planning or erp
work at columbia
to implement software and systems to
manage all financial and business
processes
across the entire university the work at
oclc where i have served on the board
for the last 12 years
to modernize the global infrastructure
the systems and applications
in support of 10 000 libraries worldwide
and the program at the american library
association where i've served on the
executive board
as the treasurer and as the president to
review
and replace technologies and modernize
and integrate services
what are my particularly in my
particular interests in the
modernization program i have five points
i'll cite
what are the enterprise characteristics
of the project
software as service support for all
activities
flow of data across all applications
common interface
support for copyright creators copyright
managers
and copyright consumers second
is the work responsive to a question an
equation that i often
pose does quality equal content
plus functionality what are the sources
and the flow of data
which underpin the system is the data
minable comprehensive current
accurate relevant secure this is
a big data project third
what are the plans for user testing
training
accessibility assessment organizational
and cultural change both at lc and in
the community
all of these are so essential to the
success of enterprise systems
implementation fourth what are the
systems
and services are they agile are they
scalable
are they adaptable are they responsive
to emerging technologies
i know this is a issue that has been
raised and i think it's critically
important
and fifth how will the system interface
with diversity equity and inclusion
and how will it interface on a global
scale
i hope that my administrative technology
copyright and modernization project
experience
will be helpful to the work of the
committee i look very forward to working
with my colleagues
at lc the copyright office and on this
committee
thank you thank you so much jim
the next member to provide opening
remarks will be kathleen rodriguez
of warner media kathleen please feel
free to turn on your microphone and your
camera
good afternoon i'm so grateful to be
here and appreciate the opportunity to
be part of this committee
my name is kathleen rodriguez and i am a
senior paralegal at warner media
i've been with the company including its
predecessor time warner for a little
over 23 years
and in that time i've been involved in
the copyright registration and document
recordation process
which has evolved from the days when we
were required to submit paper
applications and ship boxes of deposit
material to the usco
to where we are today submitting online
applications and uploading deposit
material using the eco system
a little bit about our company warner
media is a global media and
entertainment company
that creates and delivers world-class
content
through some of the most iconic brands
in the world
including cartoon network cnn
dc comics hbo
tbs tnt warner brothers and more
and last year in 2020 we also launched
our our streaming service hbo max
so as a world leader in creating premium
content
warner movie warner media gives
protection of our ip the highest
priority
so we're looking forward to being part
of the usco's latest modernization
efforts
and in particular we look forward to
balancing efficiency of process
with the need to protect deposit
materials from piracy
so i am one of a team of five who
register and record all copyrights for
the collective warner media companies
making us a high volume user of the
uscos services
on average we file i would say
over 4 500 applications per year to
register and or record works with the
usco
so type of works we routinely register
include motion pictures such as
television series and major theatrical
films
screen plays style guides comic books
computer programs source code and video
games we also record copyright related
documents
in connection with these categories of
works and we use the
copyright public records catalog for
chain of title research
so at warner media we appreciate the
usco's modernization efforts thus far
and look forward to collaborating on
further advancements with the other
panelists on this committee
thank you guess i'm the shortest
thank you kathleen yeah you're going to
get a sticker later for that yeah that
you're going to put
yeah i i made up the most minutes um
jeff sedleck of the picture licensing
universal
system or plus coalition is the next
member to give opening rewards
thanks david as you mentioned my name is
jeff sedlick and i'm the president
and ceo of the plus coalition i'm also a
professional photographer
and a professor at the art center
college of design here in pasadena
california
i very much appreciate the opportunity
to participate as an advisor on
modernization of the copyright office um
first a bit of background on the plus
coalition we're a non-profit
neutral coalition of museums libraries
publishers researchers educational
institutions creators
designers advertising agencies design
firms
sister organizations and others spanning
120 countries
our mission is quite narrow it's to
simplify and facilitate the
communication and management
of rights information for visual
artworks and it's worthwhile to note
that the plus coalition was founded
at the suggestion of former register
mary beth peters
and has now been operating for 13 years
and our rights metadata standards are in
broad use in applications used for
creating distributing
using and preserving visual artworks for
example adobe has integrated the plus
standards in
all of its applications and google uh
most recently adopted plus metadata
field to identify rights holders
in google image search results
the plus coalition recommends i just
said google and my phone started talking
back and
talking back at me that was fine uh so
we
the plus coalition welcomes
participation by stakeholders in all
communities
and you can learn more about us at
plus.org
in addition to representing the plus
coalition i'm also participating on
behalf of the american photographic
artists
the professional photographers of
america the national press photographers
association
the graphic artist guild the north
american nature photographers
association the american society of
media photographers
and the american society for collective
rights licensing
as a member of this new committee i
appreciate the promise of a user-focused
system for registration recreation and
other interactions between the public
and the copyright office
i've personally participated in user
testing of various systems under
development and i'm very encouraged by
the expertise and passion of the team
and what i've seen today in my brief
introduction today i'm going to mention
two worthy
modernization goals first i'm
particularly interested in furthering
the development and availability of apis
to permit the public to use third-party
applications
to register their works search the
registration database and otherwise
interact with the copyright office
systems
in this way the office can leverage the
vast technology resources across the
marketplace
most importantly the use of apis will
permit claimants
to use applications within their
existing workflows to more efficiently
register
their works in the limited time that
they have available to do so
second i'm particularly interested in
increasing in increasing the efficiency
of the registration and examination
process
especially for visual arts which will
prevent provide significant benefit to
the public
perhaps most importantly to permit the
copyright office to
lower its internal costs of processing
registrations which will allow the
copyright office hopefully to decrease
the fees associated with registrations
and in particular for visual works and
specifically for photography and
illustration
to permit a significant increase in the
quantity of works that can be registered
on a single application
which is currently limited limited due
to some inefficiencies in the
examination process
that are in turn due to the application
that that the examiners are forced to
use
all that should go away in the near
future
this will allow claimants to submit both
published and unpublished works on a
single registration as long as they
identify them as published or
unpublished
and to put this in context many
professional photographers create over a
thousand photographs per week some
a thousand photographs a day but just
taking that thousand
new works per week as a measure
to register those new works under the
limitation of 750 works per registration
would require six to eight registrations
per month that's 72 to 96 registrations
per year
requiring that a photographer pay up to
fifty three hundred dollars a year in
registration fees
that that might not be very much for an
enterprise but a lot of photographers
make thirty or forty thousand dollars a
year
and if you're they're making forty
thousand dollars a year those
registration fees are 13
of their annual income it's formidable
and they're
stuck between a rock and a hard place
they can't afford to register
and they can't afford not to register
these are just two important goals for
modernization and i have many
more i again thank the library for
establishing this committee and holding
these meetings
and i look forward to supporting your
efforts
jeff thank you so much the final
panelist who's going to be providing
opening remarks this morning final
member of the copyright public
modernization committee
is scott weingart of the association
for computers and the humanities scott
feel free to turn on your camera and
your microphone
thanks david and uh hi everyone i'm here
representing
as david said the association for
computers and the humanities
which is the major u.s based digital
humanities professional society
in addition to the ach i'm on the
executive board of the international
alliance
of digital humanities organizations and
i direct the nevari family center for
digital scholarship at the university of
notre dame
by training i am an historian of science
as a data scientist and
worked for more than a decade on
large-scale analyses of
and infrastructures for cultural
heritage collections
in this capacity i previously directed
initiatives at indiana university
stanford carnegie mellon and the
national library of the netherlands
i'm also the author of a couple books
and a few dozen articles and topics
ranging from folklore to bioinformatics
and the editor of snowwood collections
and an occasional
software developer my interest in
the copyright public modernization
committee is to represent my scholarly
peers from the association for computers
and humanities
in addition to our authoring and
publication interests
our community makes regular use of
copyright records for research
we use both individual records in aid of
finding further resources and use
records and mass
as part of large-scale analyses our
organization has actively been involved
in the digitization
fair use and legal ramifications of
large-scale text corpora
interfacing with copyright records is an
essential part of that process
both one at a time and via
algorithmically accessible apis
in addition to our research interests
our organization also represents
librarians archivists and publishers who
all interact with the copyright office
in their various roles
we further have a vested interest in the
accessibility
of copyright i.t infrastructure ensuring
it remains inclusive and
usable by a broad diverse and
international public
with that i think i'll end a bit early
and
uh thank you david and everyone so much
for the opportunity to be part of this
committee
i am very much looking forward to
working with all of you over the next
few years
uh scott thank you so much and thank you
to the rest of the panelists
so in a minute we're gonna come back and
uh i'm gonna sort of talk through some
of the main themes that i heard during
this and then we're gonna open up for a
panel discussion but
because we're running a couple of
minutes ahead of time we have time for
a quick bio break so we're going to
pause the session
for five minutes and i'm going to set
the same timer that i've been using to
time the time the members of the
committee for their remarks
and we'll be coming back at 2 30 on the
dot
thank you all so much for tuning in and
we'll see you shortly
all right it's 2 30. welcome back
everyone
i'd like to start by thanking everyone
for those opening remarks
it's really an extraordinary group that
we've assembled here today
i heard i heard so many great topics
mentioned
by panelists i heard
much experience with software
implementation
i heard uh i heard the phrase we're all
software companies now
i suppose that's not true of the
copyright office where we're a software
agency not a software company
um i heard a lot of excitement
about the stage that we are in the
enterprise copyright system now
um i heard the question uh
about uh what can
the role of community developed
standards
standard identifiers be in the copyright
ecosystem
i heard the desire to incorporate
copyright registration recordation
licensing
into workflows i heard the need for apis
and bulk data i heard about access to
pilots and prototypes
and then we received a question actually
from from a member of the public which
i'm going to address now
uh since uh we're not actually into the
question question and answer period yet
but how does one's
organization or or as a person become a
member
of the copyright public modernization
committee
earlier this year the librarian of
congress announced
the forming of this committee and
solicited
applications for people to join the
copyright public modernization committee
and then i went through a review period
and the librarian appointed the 13
people who are
who are with us today and we'll be
meeting
twice a year over the remaining
remaining years of the copyright
modernization process
i'd like now to invite the panelists
to turn on your cameras um and be ready
to turn on your microphones
as we move into our panel discussion
period and i want people to know that as
we
as we have more of these events and as
we know each other uh
better i would anticipate that we'll
spend less time with
introducing ourselves to one another and
more time on some of the longer and more
substantive discussions
but i wanted to start out with a
um a question that was actually raised
by
um by the panel by several of the
panelists during the time
we heard from from lots of folks that
user center design and that software
implementations are part of their
day-to-day work
and i wanted to hear if there are
lessons
that would that people would like to
share that panelists would like to share
with
the library of congress and the
copyright office from software
implementations
that have bet have gone and gone on in
each of your organizations
and i would also encourage you that if
you have specific questions for the
copyright office or for the agency
that then that would be a time to to uh
to begin to raise those questions as
well
i'm not guaranteeing that we'll have the
opportunity to answer every question on
this session we do
we do have limited time um but i would
also remind
the the panelists i also remind members
of the public
that the crew that we've assembled here
today
are experts in the software
implementation side of things these are
people who are prioritizing
from the business side and who are doing
implementation from the i.t
side and with the the set of people that
we've assembled here today are not
people who are prepared to speak on
on policy and on um
the legal matters of the of the
copyright office and
i i would also encourage everyone to
remember as the register of copyrights
um stated in her opening remarks that
there are
we're very very open to those
conversations and there are formal
mechanisms
for going through the process of the
policy making process um
but that we'd like to commit the time
today to focusing
on on it implementations so with that
would any of the panelists like to start
at and and for this
we're going to do this a little bit
different than we did the the opening
remarks and
i would like everyone to think about
keeping your your responses in the
30 to 60 second range and also feel free
to
unmute yourself and jump in but if you
feel like you're not getting in feel
free to message me
or use the raise hand function that the
the
panelists have been provided with and
finally
if there are questions that we are going
to direct back to the agency i'll field
those questions
and do my best to determine which person
on the agency side would be would be
most suitable for answering them
so is there anyone who'd like to start
by sharing lessons from their own
software implementations for us
if there are specific lessons learned
that the copyright office should be
thinking about
see i thought everybody was going to
unmute all at once
can i just jump in i raised my hand but
then i guess you want us to jump in
right so
uh if it's okay i'll base my experiences
on prior experiences because
uh i'm on the policy side and we're not
going to talk about policy here today
um at the copper lines with my prior
experiences
uh you know um uh as an engineer
and uh working on various projects i
would say you know just shared
experiences
having a common lexicon is significantly
important
lots especially in really really large
groups you want people using the same
terminology so everyone knows what
everyone's talking about
um i know that that was something that
the uh that the oig i think in the in
last
actually not last year i guess now two
years ago um uh report had identified as
an
issue for the for the ocio and the
current office but i think that's that
for me is
one of the shared lessons i think
communication is obviously a significant
factor in a large group process progress
like this
having people share information almost
on a daily basis
you know what we heard uh earlier today
about the you know the scrums
you know the daily scrums and things
like that are are essential to making
sure that if somebody's going in the
wrong direction you can say well wait a
minute
or if somebody found out a new demand or
requirement or or problem that that can
be worked into the program without a
huge step back certainly it might be a
somewhat of a step back but without a
huge step back so
since you asked us to limit it to 30
seconds i'll just stop there
hey thank you keith brewster would you
go next
yes um openness is your friend
um and i think it's going to be a really
a difficult lesson for the copyright
office to hear
because um if you open up
lots of people want to help and they
feel like criticism
but think of it as commentary like what
upenn did to go and digitize a lot of
the
copyright records and then gutenberg
corrected
with internet archive help and hosting
and stanford
and there's lots of others and it may
seem like competition or
whatever but just think of it as all
people trying to help go
forward and so i think it's going to be
really tough as a government group
to feel that um
love in a place where it may be always
interpreted as criticism
and so um i would just put stuff out
there
invite a lot of people to do summer
projects with your data
and you've got the blessing of openness
right i mean there's nothing about this
stuff that's copyrighted
thank god um so go forth and have fun
uh with with it and iterate like nuts
we're definitely filling the love today
brewster thank you
jeff sedleck um
so in agile development which i
fully support there there is a
temptation to pick off the lowest
hanging fruit and develop that first
and what can happen then um and i have
personal experience with that
is you you might develop
i'll use a specific example right now
they've been working on
the standard application for many months
and
that and the standard application um
does not have the same complexity as the
group registration forms
and the group registration forms when
when the team hits that might require a
redesign of the standard application or
to make them consistent so that the
public doesn't see completely different
things
when they're looking at those two
different areas and so i guess my
my suggestion is that you're not pick
off the lowest hanging fruit when
developing you have to con
even your even if you're moving quickly
you need to consider where you're going
to be
and and that group registration is a
beast and and
in my in my user testing i noted that to
the team and i think they did take notes
thank you jeff jim neal
yes in my experiencing working with user
center design
i think it's very important that the
designers and the users
be seen as equal in the process
uh people come to this work with
different
experience and skill levels and i've
seen projects flounder
because the designers will talk down
to the users or users think they know
everything
so it's uh it's very important that that
equality be established
it also means a commitment to education
uh to educate
all the players and parties involved in
it to have a common understanding i
think vocabulary was a good
good uh uh uh selection of of how that
might work as well
but i think that's very important
thank you jim scott
thank you so i would uh uh encourage you
all to take some inspiration from your
uh here is over in the library of
congress labs who
a few years ago i believe or maybe just
recently
put together a page of library of
congress for robots
uh in understanding that users are not
just people
but now in this uh through bold future
that we live in
um are often uh large algorithmic
systems
uh and so making sure that that when
you're designing
uh you are designing with uh not just
individuals in mind but these large
sorts of these large systems in mind as
uh co-equal users thank you scott you
you couldn't know this obviously but i'm
about
15 feet from lc labs as i'm coming to
you live over the
internet um they're through through the
wall right in this direction
um kathleen melissa pamela roy
uh susan hodge any any uh
additional thoughts about the topic of
ig implementation and lessons learned
from your organizations
um so oh sorry susan
you want to go first you can go i'll go
next
that's the problem with zoom it's
anyway and i apologize if the noise i'm
in new york city if the noise is too
loud behind me let me know it sounds
loud to me
there was a phrase i think you used
david early on when you were describing
this committee
and that this committee's going to exist
for the if i
misquoted you you said you know the
modernization period or the two years
that you're
doing this modernization effort
modernization doesn't end and i just
want to be
really clear that you know whatever
you've done
in two years if you wanted to be modern
it won't be in two years and a quarter
unless you're constantly modernizing so
just keep that in mind you you don't
come out and say
we're done and then move on or else you
end up with
systems that are almost instantly
antiquated particularly how quickly
things are moving today
so true roy and thank you hopefully uh
hopefully folks heard that remarks from
the register at the beginning of this
talking about her two
uh her two sort of thematic
guideposts for this one of which is
continuous
modernization susan would you go next uh
yes i just wanted to uh
sort of lean into something that that
keith had said which was emphasizing
how many different kinds of users there
are and how many different
kinds of works there are and to ask a
question
as to uh how you generate
your your sort of pilot uh users
or your other uh
the the users from whom you're getting
input obviously if you're looking for
volunteers
you can't conscript people but it seems
really important that you're getting a
broad cross-section
and and it sort of goes to what jeff is
saying too not just people that are
registering individual works one at a
time people that are registering groups
of work
um in all different formats all
different media all different
types of work um so i i
and so i guess it's really a question
which is how do you make sure
you have a cross section in your sort of
test test
room thank you susan uh and i i just
wanted to
reiterate that one of the things that
i've been hearing a lot
throughout the session is wide diversity
of users
and the desire to increase
the diversity of the user pool um so i'd
like to
with that i think if uh we've got a
couple of people on the line
who i think can be quite um
informative and helpful about this
specifically so
obviously the people who are members of
this committee
are aware of the formal process the the
notice of proposed rulemaking the
notice of inquiry those kinds of
processes um but
uh before we get to pamela and and micah
for some comments on this
i wonder if natalie buddha smith our
director of user experience and design
would want to give
just a quick synopsis of how we find
users to test the products that we're
doing and how we've done it throughout
this process
right um and i also want to address um
you know diversity inclusion is is very
important to us so we try to be
um as diverse and inclusion inclusive
across
the software development life cycle and
we
do this in multiple ways so we're not
only testing one way
with a you know a group of people
we're doing uh formative testing so some
of you may have been
included or heard about us testing with
actual users
in the prototyping wireframing more of
the conceptual
um phases of a project and then we also
do
evaluative testing where we're showing
um actual the code in development
or in pilot um something that's
more towards the end of the software
development life cycle so we're making
sure that we're doing
user research and we're including users
and getting feedback at all phases of
the life cycle we're not waiting to the
end
because we really want input all along
the way
in an iterative and as upfront as
possible because that's when we can make
the most change with the least amount of
technical debt
um and we're also doing qualitative
testing
as well as quantitative testing and some
of you
have backgrounds in this so you know the
difference but with
qualitative testing we do spend an hour
or so
with an individual and get in-depth
feedback on a feature or
a prototype that is really
sets the context and gives us the
understanding of how it's being used and
what are their thought processes
and then we do quantitative testing
which
allows us to reach a larger amount
of people to give us feedback that tends
to be more structured
qualitative testing is is is less
structured
more free-flowing quantitative is um
more structured but we can actually
include more uh people more audiences
when we do quantitative
um again i could talk for this uh on
this subject for hours so sorry i'm
probably
david i'm waiting for that posted to go
up um
we do include um users um
we do have established lists like you've
heard sarah garcia
earlier invite people to you know send
in your names if
you want to be involved so we have
established lists um that we pull
from that we're constantly adding people
to
and when we do do testing depending on
qualitative quantitative
which service we're testing we put
together a
profile based on personas in order to
find the right types of people to
test that specific feature or
prototype so that we are being diverse
inclusive
and and getting a range of users a range
of
personas that we've established um a
while back
thank you i hope that it's true um
again i can talk for hours on this so i
hope i hit the
so on the topic of of uh natalie talking
for hours i hope
people are aware that we have a number
of webinars
that we've done along the way as we've
gotten into cover at it modernization
um and i'd like to uh
as we as we kind of move through the
next set of questions i'm cognizant of
like keeping the
conversation going but also of getting
uh a wide array of perspectives as well
so i'm gonna
um err on the side of of calling on uh
members of the committee who have not
yet spoken um and pamela i'd like you to
go next
um and then micah and then todd and then
brewster again
sure thank you um yeah i was just going
to respond to a couple of the
previous remarks one was on the idea
that um
modernization is a moving target um
and it is a constant you know we're
always reaching for it we never quite
get there because it's always ahead of
us but um but i think one of the
components of that is not just the um
um not that not just the system itself
but the information that the system is
trying to
record so so in other words like right
now we might look at
classifications of um of creative work
as a
work of visual art or work of
performance
as forms of creativity
change in response to technologies what
how we classify creative content
also changes and i feel like that is
that
i'm sure your designers have thought
through this but i think that's a real
challenge for how for the definitions
the stakeholders who are involved in
those perhaps collaborative works or
works that might be
called one thing and then two years
later be called something else
are real challenges and i think that you
know from the point of view of having
um uh developed systems for
managing rights information you know the
point before
digital audio streaming existed we
didn't think to build towards
how you manage the the records of that
and then suddenly existed
and we needed to to figure that out so
so yeah you know building in a modular
structure so that it
so that it's not just responsible
responsive to changes in
copyright statutes but changes in
in users perceptions what what exactly
they're registering
youth patterns right yeah so
the other thing that is related to that
i think that is important
in um developing systems that people are
going to use
is that the um the way people use
the information uh drives the
the um what they value out of it and
vice versa so
so um so although the data may be a
static thing that all that information
is sitting there
behind the system a creator's perception
of why that system exists is one thing
and a copyright user has a different
perception of why they need to search
those databases
um and i think it's really important to
try to get both of those sides of the
conversation involved
right both of those perspectives yeah i
like that micah
thanks um i just posted a written
version of what i'm going to say
in the chat not to be duplicative but i
guess
one thing that jumps out at me in any
system design is
kind of this idea of a vocal minority
and a less
vocal majority and i think in this
context
you know most of the folks on this call
and most of what we're talking about
you know contemplate users as basically
creators and rights holders
and just recognizing that there are you
know basically the entire country are
going to be impacted by
this downstream as users of copyrighted
works
and so that's a little tricky i think
you know they're not
users per se uh and i don't know if
capturing them in personas would work
very well or not it would be an
interesting tweak on agile
um but i guess i just want to you know
make a vote for and remind us
to think about how subtle decisions we
make
or you make in designing this system
will have really big impacts potentially
for lots of folks who are not very
represented here
because they're not actually going to be
registrants of copyright they're going
to be
users of the copyrighted works
downstream so i would just make a plug
for you know pushing ourselves
to think about how these decisions and
these systems will impact those folks
down the line and know that
you know we're going to have lots of
people signing up with that own
copyrights
and the people that don't own a
copyright but want to use a copyrighted
work
are going to be a little harder they're
not following this they're probably not
aware this is happening
but ultimately this system should serve
them as well so anything we can do to
bring those stakeholder groups interests
into the process i think would be really
valuable
thanks micah todd yeah i
that was a great point micah the people
who are
likely to be using these systems are not
even more and more people are becoming
creators um
with their phones with their you know as
technology expands
they don't really understand copyright
and how the copyright office works or
how copyright systems works
um that acknowledging that is going to
be important
um the other thing
the reason i raised my hand is kind of
harkening back to what natalie
mentioned which is technical debt um
oftentimes organizations are really
wrapped up into well we have this old
system
and we need to uh you know accommodate
it
moving forward rather than breaking
and moving forward with a new system and
i hope
through this process the the office
isn't
bound and really feeling bound
by what had been done a lot of
government agencies
have a lot of technical debt and
through this process i hope we're
jettisoning some of that
and building systems in a way that
recognizes
um as roy mentioned we're gonna be keep
we're gonna be moving through this
process
permanently um so recognizing that even
the things we're building today
three five years from now might might be
considered technical debt in the future
that's thank you for that i would like
to just
just kind of building on a couple of
those points about users of the system
that the copyright public record system
which is one of the systems that we have
sort of the
the most access to right now is a is a
system
where the vast majority of the users are
not people who are they're they're not
there registering a copyright
necessarily and
um also i before i
cut natalie buddha smith off um
i i think the one of the points that
many of the users of these systems are
are
non-ip law experts
of uh particularly inside of libraries
and that those are some of the users
that we've
um that we've had doing user testing on
our side
i'd like to turn um to brewster then
melissa
then wahaj then keith um and i'll i will
remember that
uh and um
and then we've got a couple more
questions coming up in the chat as well
thank you
thank you for uh having me but come back
once once again
i there's been a lot of talk about the
ui which i think is great
thank you yes please um but i think your
data is going to be
really the thing that is going to drive
this project um bottom up
and make it difficult your data is messy
all big data is messy um the existing
registrations
are kind of a mess um and the future
ones
i think you could do a lot better job in
trying to make it so
it works a lot better for instance uh in
the metadata please
um invite people to use uh identifiers
isbns issns those sorts of things
um consistent spellings and publisher
names i mean they're all over the place
if you look at your existing records
it's
really uh uh challenging and when you
start to get into uh registering born
digital works when if you can bring
those in that will help
but also how can you leverage digitized
works
to help augment your records so that
people can know what you're referring to
in the in these records i think that's
all quite possible
but right now what exists is very
difficult to use in odd any automated
way
so i guess the message is please invest
in the data
and lots of people can help you i think
there's going to be attention
um of what's official like what's
real uh versus what's augmented or added
on by somebody else
how do you go and make those branches so
that other people's information
which it may not be the copyright office
um uh
from the original record but it's going
to be really helpful to people
downstream
i think it's surfacing provenance um of
where did the
information come from so you can envelop
other types of information into your
data sets
to make it much more useful much more
searchable
just to go and help correct things so
please don't be scared of the official
if you have some mechanism of going and
noting that these
are additional aspects to the records
that were supplied
by other people kind of as wikipedia has
done or maybe a bit more official than
that
so augmenting your records think about
your data
thanks bruce turner melissa
this is responding to a number of the
different comments first the lc lab is a
wonderful model
and i want to echo brewster's comment
that the
that openness is your friend it is a
barring anything that may be private
information or sensitive in some way
most of this data is not and
would benefit from the kind of
fluid use um an application that some
several people have talked about
also this issue of provenance of
information
we can use the data in so many different
ways um
is it and people can have a better sense
of confidence in relying on
decision-making they may need to do if
they know what the provenance of a given
set of information is
um i also just wanted to
flag the we're focusing
on copyright office
registration data mostly right now but i
do want to think
just have in the back of our minds the
deposit process and where that exists or
gets lost
um in in in this conversation whether
it's because of
technical limitations or administrative
issues um
you know how do we think about like the
quote-unquote best edition
and what is that in an electronic format
and what does the library of congress
use and are there creative ways of
distributing
those responsibilities through things
like through large repositories that are
reliable and exist elsewhere perhaps
um you
had mentioned david you had asked about
things from our experience that might be
helpful
one thing uh that's very organic that
has made a big difference in my work has
actually been including
programmers in the conversations
about the substance because
we do tend to think and approach things
differently whether we're lawyers
whether
whatever whatever whatever your
specialization is
i have found that um in some projects we
didn't include programmers in those
conversations we just said hey make this
work this way
and they did and it worked but not that
well
and as soon as they joined us for for
lunch
they go oh you know now i understand
what you're trying to do
and uh i've wanted
one in particular to do some
professional conversations with me about
like how to work with your programmer
and of course
true to stereotype this person is too um
doesn't doesn't want to be in front of
people so
i think that's a conversation to have um
i
pamela's comments also uh were
really interesting to me about like how
do we categorize these works
because it's not unusual to think you're
looking at a book but it's registers a
poem and you miss it all together
because you're going back and forth in
the re in the records
and i really do wonder talking about
this idea of technical debt
whether whether those categories
need to be there at all anymore or if
they
are helpful in some way that it's a
field
but not necessarily definitive of the
rest of the access to the record
and on the subject of like users versus
copyright holders
most people are both and i work with
students all the time who
you know the initial conversation about
copywriter are i want to use everything
and i want to use it for free
and then it's a moment later how do i
protect my stuff
so i am trying like in our informal
um conversation they need to know both
of those things
because if they're making a video for a
class that incorporates sound or music
or images
it may be appropriate for class it may
not be appropriate for vimeo
and helping them tease those things out
and understanding that it's not a us
them
universe by a long shot maybe it never
was but it really isn't now
is quite um significant for me
thank you melissa would you go next and
then
keith sure so i love all the
commentaries so far on having these
flexible data models and supporting data
provenance and even just you know
managing technical debt with that a big
thing
in my space when you're specifically
talking about software implementation is
that
i constantly deal with roadmap
injections right there's constantly new
features things are changing
ip's evolving and so are bad actors and
what infringement looks like how it's
applied
so you know we have to be quick about
making sure our technologies are able to
handle the biggest problem
and oftentimes what that problem is and
how important that is
different for different stakeholders
within amazon like our customers
brands with sellers and buyers all the
various personas
and ultimately i have to sort of manage
we have all these tactical items coming
in right fires we're trying to put out
but at the same time
i want to develop a product for the long
term right
and and we have a number of mechanisms
internally that we've used that have
been
very successful for us to constantly
balance
long-term development and evaluation of
what where technology is and how we
should modernize move forward
what we call these three year plans
which you put together every year
against the tactical items that are
injected constantly into the roadmap
and oftentimes these tactical items are
responding to things like policy changes
to things in
technological updates uh culture
changing and what consumers want what
clients customers
like need and what we've typically done
is
we have a very transparent set of of
goals that are important for our
business and important for our customers
as well as like a set of of like these
roi metrics for every feature the return
on investment
where we have 100 things in our roadmap
we know exactly why they are where they
are in that roadmap and we've socialized
this
across the business and whenever a new
injection comes in and something has to
fall off
there we have to make sure expectations
are clear with our customers people know
what they're expecting to come
and if you know things get pushed back
or delayed we have to be very
clear about why that occurred and why
this is sort of better for
the the long-term state of things and
oftentimes
you know based on the size of the
severity of that escalation or that
injection
we will make that move to to quickly
accommodate this while we're
updating our roadmaps but it's always at
the top of our mind to make sure every
stakeholder knows exactly when something
is pushed back
why it's pushed back and it's reasonable
and they can accommodate it
and we'll work to see if we can find
interim solutions if it was something
that was key for their business
uh uh you know a specific feature uh
being put out
thank you um keith and then uh
immediately after keith i'm gonna
take one question from the from from the
public so go ahead keith
um if you're talking you're on youtube
you've been a lot sad
and a lot said since i somebody had to
do that right um
i've said since i first talked and
spoken so let me start with what i first
said which is lexicon right
we heard micah joy you know say say you
know talk about users
and we hear other people you know at
least when i talk about users and this
is something we ought to all come to an
agreement like what word we're going to
use here
i'm talking about users of copyright
office systems
and information whomever that may be
right
and i'm not placing despite the fact
that i you know i represent
creators and copyright owners one group
over another
right now obviously you know
you got to get good information in to
get good information out and so we're
going to have to make sure we get that
good information in
which is which is more the folks that i
represent but
um maybe we call them customers and said
maybe user i think that's something we
ought to all
be agree on see we can come to agreement
on so we don't kind of run into any
conflict because i think
at the end of the day what i'm hearing
from a lot of folks
is uh you know it's kind of similar
goals and purposes
and uh and and support kind of with
you know with what's going on um uh
second thing that came up that i wanted
to respond to and this is about six
years so give me i'll try to do them as
quickly as i can
was the public records um search system
cprs right
there is a uh a pilot going on right now
you can just go to the website and do a
search and they have
uh the old system i think it's called
voyager and then and the new system
uh i went to go give feedback and if not
for the help of a colleague of mine i
could not for the darndest figure out
how to give feedback i mean
i think it's got to be more clear that
this is a a pilot and that you're
looking for feedback from people because
feedback is hidden next to contact
information at the very bottom
of the screen and things like that so i
i don't know this is kind of to me a
little bit different that this
meeting than i thought it was going to
be i thought you were going to maybe
look um
for not only our input but maybe
questions and about things and so
um we'll see how that goes um the third
comment i'm a brewster
said that data is going to drive this
project
yeah that's true but there's a whole
bunch of other things that are going to
drive this project too
right and i think if we start putting
our individual um
uh uh what you know goals over the goals
of what the copyright office's goals
should be
you know we will be misdirecting the
copyright office in the library i i
don't think
you know data is the driver i think it
is a driver
okay but you know there's a lot of
drivers here of
of this modernization project and and so
i think if we start kind of saying oh
what's number one drivers
i think we've really run into some
problems um melissa said a couple things
about the providence of
of information i want to uh i want to
call people's attention i will talk
about in detail here
something called the content
authenticity initiative
uh which was announced a couple years
ago by adobe the time new york times and
twitter and
it has a whole bunch of other members
since and if we're talking about
you know the veracity and integrity of
information
um that's something that we ought to be
you know this group ought to be looking
into and you know it's an open standard
and everything
so that's something that potentially to
potentially consider
melissa also mentioned best edition and
the definition of best edition
um look i'm up for that talking about
that but this is not about policy so i
think that's for another
another forum uh and so yeah happy to
happy certainly to talk about that
and then she also talks about well users
are also creators these days and
copyright owners and
and and i'm not going to disagree with
that but i will
kind of disagree on one point which is
there is a difference right the creators
that
we represent yes they're of course users
at times also but they
are doing this for a living right
they're they're trying to make careers
they're trying to earn money off of this
and that's a little bit different
than the person who's just kind of you
know using the information and so i i
think we have to be careful
uh about that distinction um and so then
the last thing i'll just say is like i
said
i'm a little confused about kind of the
purpose of the
committee i'm hoping that we get an
opportunity to ask some questions
ourselves because i've got a bunch
about the you know about the safe
framework and how it's working and
what caused the the the ocio to switch
to a scaled agile framework and
and things like that but so far it
doesn't seem like the opportunity has
arisen to ask those type of questions
so i'll stop there uh thanks keith and i
think
i think you just did so i think that's a
good a good place to start and i don't
have a um i do want there there have
been a few
um uh comments to the moderator
as well as one public question as well
as
uh keith's question right now
uh which can be summed up
what is the purpose of the copyright
public modernization committee
and i think this is an area where it's
easy
to get sidetracked with because i think
uh people come to the copyright public
modernization committee
with their own agenda and their own
reason for being here
um but i i would like to recenter for a
moment
on what was the purpose of the library
of congress
to to initiate this and i'm just going
to read
um from the summary of and this is
this made possibly the most uh federal
bureaucracy
thing that i've ever did i'm reading
from the federal register
notice of convening it modernization
public state
stakeholder committee which is that the
library of congress is convening
a public committee to enhance
communication
and provide a public forum for the
technology related
aspects of the u.s copyright office's
modernization initiative
at this point at this time the library
is announcing that it will accept
applications from qualified members of
the public to serve on the committee the
scope of contributions made by the
committee
are limited to the specific topic set
forth on this notice membership will be
on a volunteer basis with the
expectation of in-person or virtual
participation at two open forums a year
at the members opening own expense so i
i just want to draw our attention back
to that not because
it is a not not because it's a
satisfying answer but because it's the
real answer
it really is the assigning any purpose
sort of beyond
the the purpose of convening and taking
in
questions and asking questions i will
say
that for the agency it certainly is an
opportunity to
to draw on the expertise of this group
and if the the group is has a strong
feeling that the best way to draw on the
expertise really is
to field questions and to sort of answer
them in this context but that's the
sort of friendliest and most helpful
thing i think that's a thing we can talk
about for
for for future committees but it really
is
um you know it is our hope in this
inaugural committee to sort of
get to know the the participants to get
to show some of the work we've been
doing
to get to hear the advice of experts
from the field
and also to to get to answer questions
so pamela malpa says uh
is going to give a quick remark next and
then i'm going to turn
a question back to the staff of the
agency
thanks for giving me a chance um and i
will keep it brief i thought it was
um uh maybe worth remarking that this
this idea of the distinction between
um the the users versus the creators
which again we can get into taxonomy
and and discussions about what those
labels mean
but um within the context
of technology development and creating a
an i.t system that works i think
i sort of see it as that there are the
the individual data records
of a registration of a recreation of
whatever piece of data is being stored
and then there's the
um what you can do with that data which
is the information that comes out of
that and i think that there are
distinctions in the way that
um creators um who may register
copyrights but who may also
consult the databases to see what other
stuff has been registered
um they think of this as their safeguard
this is their these are their um
assets to acknowledge what keith was
saying but this is this is this stuff is
really has has a real importance to them
in monetary value
um some people who
are researching that data have a
different perspective and i think
i think i think it's worth considering
that
um where the level of privacy
or safeguard lies that there's there's
the individual unit of information
that is being reported um that has a
discrete value to
to to the registrant or claimant or
property
owner um
but opening all of that up opening it up
maybe more broadly than we used to
we're accustomed to having it open is a
little like
i mean i think i think for many
copyright holders they they view this as
their um the library of their assets the
record of what
what they have that has value okay other
people also see it that way because they
want to see what what has been
registered and what may not have
um
but i think it's a little like us asking
um asking somebody to
show their bank account i want to see
all of your assets
well nobody's really interested in
having it having
everyone look at what their assets are
um
and i and and yet yeah it feels like
that's that's that's a
that's a a data issue for the individual
record versus the output
that is possible to create you know uh
or draw out
sets of data that say these are
copyrighted works or these are
things that through some separate
algorithm you can determine are close to
their pde status um i think those are
important and as data becomes more
accessible
those those issues become more prominent
so when we move away from paper that
that stuff becomes more possible and
it becomes more important for us to
address it as the system is being built
enough for me thank you pamela so so
with that it seems like there's a strong
appetite for some questions for first
half of the agency
um i i guess i'd like to invite
i i have some more of the
um prepared questions that i that i sent
out
um but i'm curious if there are um
sort of what questions do our panelists
have that seem like
whether they're answers that we have
susan go ahead
was that a raisin was that a hand raised
or was that yeah yes
yes um i i just wanted to touch on some
um sort of system issues that my
members brought to my attention that we
haven't touched on yet but
they're kind of in the weeds and i i'm
not really sure where they fit in here
um one is having to do with the payment
processing system
so of course you can't register without
paying fees
and my understanding is there's issues
um
exiting out of the registration portal
into
pay.gov glitches things hang up
you sort of lose your cart
issues like that it takes a long time
and also
um you're not able to get the same kind
of itemized receipt of all your
different transactions if you're
registering multiple works
as you are when you're using a deposit
account so that's
one whole issue that we haven't touched
on at all
security i think people have talked
about that but
you know again in in a digital world
our my members you know digital
recordings
are their absolute lifeblood if there
was a way for people to siphon those
out of the deposit system here um
that that would be um you know just um
the worst possible thing that could
happen and so um
i i know you guys have talked about
security and that admit you're you're
complying with nist standards i guess we
would ask
that you that you comply with um
industry standard um security measures
so for example we would want to see
um sound recordings protected as well at
the library of congress or the copyright
office as they are at spotify and
i'm sure the motion picture people would
want their stuff
protected as well as netflix does and so
um you know that industry standard
security measures
um a couple of other quick things there
i've also been told that when you're
trying
this is related to the payment issue for
when you're
trying to register a volume of works
which is what happens
when you're you know um your copy a
large copyright owner that registers
lots of different works
again there's a lot of system glitches
um you can't stay in it you get kicked
out
um things like that and susan just just
to clarify you're talking about
the legacy system now
whatever whatever whatever system my
members are currently registering yeah
they're creating the current eco
yes right which raises a whole another
question you talked earlier about
version two of the registration system
is that
going to be an improvement of eco or is
that going to
completely replace eco
that's a that's a great question i'd
like to pause there if it's okay with
you just because you've raised so many
topics i mean i think if i think if the
panelists agree
that the best use of our time is just to
sort of go through
a list of issues i will say
that there are um that we do have a lot
of sort of avenues for feedback of that
but i think specifically talking about
the the registration system that we're
talking about that is a full replacement
of eco
um so the the bugs and the problems that
you talked about
those are literally our are our major
reasons for undertaking
the the modernization effort right there
there are
some um long-standing
problem and um i hope it's not
showing my hand too much to to share
that
for every uh uh
glitch that's encountered by somebody
who's registering a copyright there are
probably ten
for the person on the inside of the
agency has to use the
same system to go through the process
and it and so those
those those frustrations are certainly
shared and and that's in the forefront
of our mind
as we as we develop the new systems um i
did want to
use this opportunity since we do have a
number of staff from the from the agency
on the line
to see if we could uh just have a brief
word about system security and i think
we've got a couple of people on the line
um judith conklin are you our are
our cio in waiting are you on the line
there's judaism
can you talk a little bit about i.t
security i know this is an area where
you've done a lot of work over a long
long career
thank you um yes i know we
always talk about the nist standards
um and that we follow nist
but there are a lot of other things that
we have put in place
um for instance we use cis benchmarks
and
we we can provide that information but
also um uh
the um ciso
is on the phone if he is sean lang
or is on the panel if he wants to add
anything
to um
[Music]
what what we use
i'm looking for him on the yeah hi
everyone um
thank you to elaborate on what judah
said and what was
uh asked earlier uh yes we do agree
following industry standards um
is something we do strive for we use
nist as
a basis for our security
uh program so that is used for the
policies procedures things like that
as for the actual technology portion
um we are a
supporting member of cis
the center for information security and
basically they generate
hardening standards for technologies we
also work with uh
each of the technologies we leverage
their event their best practices
and to assure that we are doing exactly
the best possible protections
for our internal data as well as the
data that's
entrusted to us to protect
also i'd like to add that we are
currently working on
if anyone here has heard of zero trust
and implementing zero trust
in our environment and
we absolutely would include copyright
information copyright data in our
zero trust uh
platform or um initiative
thank you judith and thank you sean uh
keith has his hand up and has promised
me a whole list of questions
so
so so i guess if i could if i could just
interject one more thing before i
before i just hand off to you we we have
a fairly small number of questions and
coming in from the
the public q a and i think that um
treating
i would like to just sort of treat uh
the members of the group as
as as delegates so if you if you have
questions to bring up that you feel like
the public would want to ask of
either the agency or one of the
panelists that's great as well so
so go ahead and keep sorry for that i i
think while i do have a lot of questions
i think they can all probably be
answered one they're all related to one
thing and probably can be answered
altogether but uh so first just on
security since we were talking about
that
um uh you know there was some talk about
miss standards and whatever
and i know just in reading up on some of
the reports and the testimony and things
like that that the dmca designated
agent directory was not in fact uh
compliant with the nist standard
and that the oci was working to make
that happen
uh it didn't incorporate multi-factor
authentication or
password-length requirements as as
required by nist
um and the oci goal was to fix that by
the end of fiscal year 2020.
um so the question there is did that
happen
but um but putting that aside also like
look if there's
a vulnerability with regard to
e-deposits like waiting six months or
eight months
is not a solution uh whatever the end
result is i mean that's that's very very
worrisome so
so that was one of my questions with
regard to security with regard to the
save framework uh you know as you read
through all the materials and watch all
the webinars and everything that have
been you know over the several years
it is a little bit of sort of jumping
around in terms of
like okay so as near as i can tell there
was no definitive date but it appears
that
the uh the the safe framework was
implemented in either october november
of 2020
but there's noah mentioned well why
why move to the safe framework what was
being used before
it was some other agile framework or was
it
god forbid you know some waterfall
methodology which would be concerning of
course
so you know why move to the same
framework then was that a response to
the oig report
i think it was september of 2019 that
talked about
the need for an integrated master
schedule or was there some other reason
so so i kind of group all those
questions together about
about safe and then lastly registration
we talked about
the fact that there's this user testing
of the prototype
has begun i really couldn't find much at
all on that i mean it
says it's going on but i have no idea
how many people are testing this
prototype who they are are there is it a
mix of big corporations and individual
creators and is it a mix of different
types of works and
is it a mix of group registration and
individual registration so
uh those are my three questions
hopefully it's not too overwhelming
great thanks keith so there i i heard a
question there
about the move to scaled agile i heard a
question there about the registration
prototype and and
and how we're deciding who's testing it
and can you just repeat the third
question one more time
uh so the third question is the
registration question or
other security because the surety
question has been designated agent in
the factory
right was that completed not miss
compliant at the time and
i never saw anything else that said yes
now we're nist compliant so
security so judith why don't you go
ahead with the first one
we have not implemented mfa yet
on dmca we're working with copyright
to do so and um
i believe that we did
require or change the password length
and we can get confirmation of that uh
go ahead sean
uh yeah um but to um
also address we did um
close all of the findings from the gao
report
in regards to information security to
include the compliance with nist
and we have rolled out mfa internally
for
all uh users
um so i i did want to talk
thank you for that judith and sean and
to talk a little bit
you asked that question keith um like
sort of what were we doing before and
uh the move to scaled agile so um
this is an uh a specific thing that
uh i i think there's a there's a long
answer
but the slightly shorter answer is that
that uh we've got a few people on
on the call who who can um
kind of weigh in on the the the agency's
evolution
i think um jim carmanis is jim carmanis
from ocio on the call to talk about the
sort of he's not okay
right bill kellum uh should be on the
call
perfect bill would you like to to talk a
little bit about the agencies
or mike nybeck by the way
bill has just turned on his camera okay
uh right so we've been um using agile
primarily agile scrum but also some
projects using canban
for a number of years going back at
least a decade so
um the reason that we have been adopting
scaled agile framework is largely to
coordinate the number of
different streams of of interrelated
work that are required to deliver the
copyright modernization
um it increases increases the
collaboration between the different
stakeholder groups and copyright you
know
and in ocio and allows us to plan and
prioritize
in a way that meets copyright's business
objectives our
contracting lead times our need to
coordinate this kind of different
streams of technical resources so just
as the program got bigger and bigger it
became
valuable to implement a much more formal
uh planning and prioritization process
which so far has been has been quite
successful
we have a lot of experience doing large
projects with agile
congress.gov loc.gov projects like that
have been done by the same team
using those techniques and using the
kind of continuous integration
continuous delivery techniques that
we're also using for
copyright thank you thank you thank
mean thanks for all that it's very very
helpful and i don't want anyone getting
impression that i'm not
you know supportive i think moving
things like that i
don't want to come out come across as
combative or anything so i just i just
was
in reading through the materials it was
just a big question on my mind so thank
you very much
and just to confirm we are we we have
um invoked the character requirement
for the mca according to our policy
thank you uh bill and thank you judith
um jeff sedlick could could you
sort of go next hopefully you've got a
whole list for us as well
i just have one thing i want to bring up
actually so um
you know there was we've been talking
about privacy and
um you know well actually two things so
for for
the claimants especially for the
independent creators
the use and accessibility of their um
personal identifiable
information is very important and
that a certain level of privacy needs to
be available to them
in the new system you know
at their option to protect them i mean
there's a trade-off between
access to public information but they
shouldn't have to give up
all of their privacy in order to be able
to register their works that's one thing
and secondly i suppose this mixes in
policy but
my my question is not going to be on
policy i just need to know if
on the roadmap for this new system if
the office intends to make deposit
copies
available to the public because that
would be a very significant concern
accessibility through this new system to
deposit copies for
creators who have not yet published
their work or who have participated in
confidential projects and
want to register their works before the
public has access
very important to them that their works
not be accessible in this system
i'll i'll touch on the privacy first
david
thank you juden obviously the copyright
office will take the second
um the i was going to mention pia
personally identifiable information
or pii sorry and the
um zero trust will first of all
it is part of our security
package and our implementation
pii is and we protect pii
specifically there
is and that is with the nist now too
they added it several years ago
but also zero trust will help us
do that in a very secure way it's a it's
another layer
of protecting that data that zero trust
initiative thank you judah
um so jeff raised us a specific question
about a specific feature as well
and and i think uh i i would like to
um for those who are sort of in the call
who who are not aware that this is
um that this would be a question uh
of policy that would be handled by
handled by the usual
um policy engine of the agency so there
would be no
way for um for example to
uh to use the scaled agile framework
to decide how a policy question gets
answered that has to be answered prior
to it going into a product backlog
and that they're the um you know
the scaled agile framework is what we
use to prioritize what we're doing next
and as with all it projects when we get
closer to a release our confidence gets
higher so it's easy
to to mention the
for example like the copyright public
record system has a release next month
and it's very easy for us us to talk
about it with high confidence because
what we've all been like looking at it
on internal systems
um and that as we go further out it's a
little bit more difficult to
um to know about like specific dates or
specific features
i will say that on the specific topic
of um of the copyright registration
system that they're very focused on the
registration process currently and that
that's the
um that that's the i don't know if
there's
any if any of the
product owner for registration wants to
weigh in at all on
the specific features that are being
prioritized currently
tj if you want to do that you can unmute
and turn your camera on
i'm going to take sure i mean are we
talking about in
the uh the current uh program increments
um yeah under the skilled agile uh
framework we work in three month
increments and so sure i'd be happy to
talk about what we're doing right now
so uh
so don't bury the lead let me start with
the most important thing
we have begun work on the external
system so uh leading up until now
we were working with one team uh working
mostly on the internal side of the
system so these are our
staff examination functions um you know
all these workflows that support kind of
the internal functions and the reason we
did that was so that we could
spend a little bit more time on user
research phase on the user testing
making sure that we have some good uh
high confidence in what we're going to
start building on the external side of
the system so starting last month
we actually onboarded a second team and
we're doing that in tandem with this
internal team
where we're working on the external side
of the system so specifically
in starting that process unfortunately
there's a lot of
um not very
interesting things that i can share with
the group in terms of like you know
there's a lot of infrastructure stuff
we've got to stand up
um and and all that kind of stuff i can
say uh last week we had a very
crucial moment of hello world moment
where in the first
three weeks of this external team
starting
we have seen the uh the overall landing
page
and where um you know these different
questions these the uh the application
form is gonna flow and all that kind of
stuff so
again it's to say that um not much that
we could show basically in images here
but a lot of work to stand this up in
the last few weeks with that second team
so let's turn to the internal side
um on the internal side uh we're
focusing on building out uh the
foundation
for our correspondent system so this is
something we're referring to as the
message center
um this is very exciting for us because
we're moving from a model
uh where we were sending substantive
emails to applicants
um which created all kinds of problems
in terms of
not necessarily being able to connect
the the substitute emails and replies
and then uh some of them would go to
spam filters and junk folders and so
um some of these uh these different
types of uh emails would not necessarily
make it back to us in a timely process
and it cut down on the efficiency on us
actually being able to
work through the work so now we're
moving to more of
a doctor's office type
model where i get a notification from my
doctor's office via text via a robocall
via a non-substantive email
and then i'm told okay you have a
message waiting for in the message
center
um and then you log into the message
center and we uh correspond on the
system in here
so that has to say that during this pi
we're standing
up the internal side of that which will
then
uh dovetail over to the external side
once we in future increments once we
start working on that
we're continuing the user research uh on
the external components of the system
so there's a component of that in each
pi where we're actually looking ahead to
all these different things
i heard a lot of talk about are we
considering considering the standard
application are we considering the group
applications the answer is absolutely
yes
we're looking at all of those things
during that user research phase which
isn't that
excuse me isn't necessarily part of a a
technical operation where we're handing
that over to developers
um but that's where we're working
together as a group to try to figure out
some of these things to get ahead
and figure out the answers to some of
those questions before it becomes time
to start to develop those things
um the other things that we're working
on for the internal side um
are again these are things that may not
seem
uh you know that important but we do
have to have an audit history so
everything that happens to a case once
it comes in once an application has been
received by the office
and it goes through the different steps
we need to have an audit trail of all
that so we're working on that in this pi
and then we're also working on some user
permission
type facets of the system so user
permissions setting up roles for these
different types of users
um and this is looking to automate some
of the many manual processes that we
have right now
in assigning work to individual
examiners or assigning it
to a particular division setting up this
user access and these preferences in a
way
that we'll be able to automate getting
the right cases to the right people
all this speaks to the efficiency right
on our side where we're going to be able
to hopefully
speed up or make the the not necessarily
speed up but
make the uh the process more efficient
um
once it's received in the office and
once we do our thing on the examination
side
thank you tj and we we have actually
received a question from
a member of the public that kind of that
sort of relates
but is over on the copyright public
record system
about what will be included in
release two um sean gallagher do you
wanna talk a little bit
about what's gonna be in that upcoming
release david before we move on i did
have a question on the table i didn't
quite hear an
answer maybe you you gave me the answer
so my question but setting aside policy
is that is public accessibility
to deposit copies on the technical
roadmap for your team
setting aside policy just so that we can
understand as a committee whether or not
we need to be providing
suggestions or input on those particular
features
sorry can you just repeat the question
one more time
is what feature on the roadmap my ques
my
my earlier question was is public
accessibility to deposit
copies for copyright registrations on
the roadmap
for your team or not setting aside
policy as to access
because if it is on the roadmap a lot of
people on this committee are going to
want to provide
feedback and suggestions on those types
of features
right so that again is a question that
would have to go through
a long rule making process prior to
being even sort of inserted into the
roadmap
does that make sense right there the
that's not sort of on the
um on the menu at this stage for that
that's that's all i was asking that that
answers my question thanks okay
and i i want to say that that's not a
policy commitment
of of one direction or another from from
the office i
i'm not um i'm not one of the attorneys
in the office
i am an i.t background but just to say
that that is not currently in a backlog
okay i'm not supposed to say backlog
anymore actually we're trying to call
that
we're trying to call that a product
pipeline from now on because the word
backlog
is a bad word in the in the
context of uh of uh
well basically every federal federal
bureaucracy i think
um but jeff did that answer your
question absolutely yes thank you
okay so scott i'm going to get to you in
just a second but i want to hand over to
sean gallagher for
for a moment to just talk about the
upcoming release
hey thanks david uh appreciate it um
yeah so
we're having our second release for the
copyright public record system
we did our first release back in
december of last year
and since we did get some feedback uh
for our feedback channels we're trying
to clean up some of the detailed record
view
as we come across some of the more
interestingly uh recorded bits of data
in the office and how those present in
our new search index
um so we'll be hopefully doing a little
bit of search ability improvements
uh some ui cleanup so restructuring some
of the detailed record views to make
them a little bit more understandable
as well as adding out a new feature to
be able to
keep track of your recent records and
recent searches uh within a session
within the
within the browser itself so if you run
a search and you want to rerun that
again
a little bit later and you still haven't
been logged out due to any inactivity
you'll be able to rerun a recent search
or easily go back
and look at some of the recent records
that you may have viewed in the public
record system
thanks and then go ahead scott thank you
so i hope you'll allow me to ask a naive
policy question because i think it has
pretty significant implications
for implementation um going back to the
threat about privacy and security
my question is how
clear are the policies around
what information is by default public
what information is by default private
and where the decisions get made for
any ambiguities in what is uh
semi-public or semi-private
um because there are clearly these uh
very different user groups right there's
a
an interested public there's a set of
researchers
on the one side who are seeking access
to
uh large amounts of information and on
the other side there is
a very legitimate uh group of content
creators who are
seeking privacy and security and how are
those
uh negotiated once it comes to the point
of technical implementation
thanks scott and i would say this is um
the area of uh personally identifiable
information
and and privacy and security is
a big one in in federal bureaucracies
it covers policy in a wide array
of um but i if it's if that's all right
i'll start by handing it over to
to judith conklin who has hopefully uh
gone on camera and unmuted herself
and and who can start us off talking
about um
about the the uh the privacy aspects of
it that
that intersect with it policy so at the
library of congress
for every information system that we
have
we identify a business owner we call it
an information system business owner
and they make all those decisions um
on um access to the data what data can
be seen
the categorization of the data and so i
will punt back to
copyright office and and the business
the business
part of it right
so so that's a good um that's a good
dodge there judah that's good i will
say we will secure it um in any manner
that the business requires us to secure
it i will state that
so scott the the the two
big um beginning parts of that process
uh that we sort of go through during the
accreditation process for any it system
are the
the privacy threshold assessment and the
privacy
impact assessment um did i get those
acronyms right judah
p p ia and pta is that the
um and uh
those are sort of subject to the the
agency-wide
privacy office and we we don't have
those folks on the
on the line today but that kind of is a
is is one set
of uh of policies and then obviously
the the rulemaking process is another
set
of policy that governs the the
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um security and and
uh on that side and then additionally
beyond all of that there's the the
actual i.t
security rules about um the
implementation of that so
so there's a it's a big complicated area
um i don't know you've got your hand up
again if there's a clarifying or
area that we could go yes so the purpose
of the question
um in this case for the implementation
side of thing
things is how frictionless or friction
full
access data is uh that is
um uh uh either considered to be from
policy public or private
um and so the question here specifically
is what goes into the decision making
process
for the amount of friction that goes
into access for data
and then on top of that
my sort of suggestion would be to make
that
as clear as possible uh to those users
both
on the side of content creators who have
a vested interest in maintaining
their privacy and also on the side of
the engaged public and researchers who
are trying to figure out what they
actually
can or ought to have access to
thanks for that comment and it's really
uh um
i i think the the clarity of the
friction is really great
a great comment and a great thing for us
to sort of take back i think that's a
big area that it would be hard to get
into in great depth in the in the time
we have remaining
so if it's okay i'll i'll take your
comment in
and move on to the next question
um susan i think you were the next
person with your with your hand up
oh thank you so i wanted to ask a
question about funding
i'm aware that a few years back and i've
sort of lost track of which year it was
that congress appropriated i believe it
was 12 million dollars a year for five
years for this project
and i just wanted to check in what year
are we
into that and are you all anticipating
that those
five 12 million dollar allotments are
going to cover
i mean we've talked about that this is a
sort of forever project
but are going to cover sort of the
the bulk of the current upgrade
um or will there need to be more funding
and is that
something that like copyright owners
will need to be advocating for or
anything like that
thanks thanks susan so for for the
questions about cost and hopefully
i think many of the people on the call
have some
familiarity with this this part of the
process but
uh we requested five years of
development funding
uh as well as some subsequent base
funding for for the ongoing
modernization for this the around 60
around 60 million dollars over a
five-year period
um there are additional funds dedicated
to the dedic
to the digitization of the historic
record which are
which are separate funds um and the
office and agency
um have also committed a portion of of
base funding to the effort so
so for example um you know you see the
the cio and the deputy cio on this
that's a sort of part of agency overhead
which is also part of it
um but i i think the the
most sensible um public
definition of of done that we can
sort of pin to that that gives an easy
answer to this is
the the sort of turning off of the
legacy systems are we going to be ready
to replace these legacy systems
in in in 2024 and that is still our goal
um and you feel like
you have enough money to to get to that
goal right now with what you've been
appropriating
well i i would say that that's uh
that's that's a question i think is
largely uh
the the question of to turn off the
legacy systems or the
um i would say i would defer that
question
uh i'm not the person probably to answer
it and i don't think we have the person
on on the call
um but it is currently there there's no
known impediments to the plan currently
to turn off legacy systems in 2024.
that's where
we feel like we're on target to do that
um
uh todd i believe was the next person
answering a question asking a question
sure thanks david
uh call me a a
a geek for procedures um
in the last couple minutes that we have
it seems like we've spent three hours
and we've dug into a tremendous amount
uh and i think he's dropped something in
the chat as well
it seems like a meeting every six months
is
going to be insufficient for us to dig
into
these details at a level that i think is
going to be valuable for the office
um i for one would be willing to meet
more often than that
uh and i expect others in the group
would as well
uh do you have any sense of
where we'll go from here i mean it seems
like
uh only twice a year is not enough and
are there ways in which were assignments
between now and next meeting
things that we can do to help well i
just want to say
thank you for the energy and expertise
of this group and thank you for the
willingness to even come on this sort of
the um a marathon you know when we first
started talking about this process we
weren't
imagining uh that we would that we would
be
still in the middle of a pandemic so
it's a um
it's not uh it's not sort of as we
exactly as we imagined it in that way
but this has been
um i will say um
enormously valuable already just in
terms of the the
um visibility in the questions and the
visibility
answers and the visibility expertise
and i appreciate again the the
phenomenal energy i'm seeing many of the
comments from the
the committee members in the chat that
that there would be um
more willingness for for for more input
and i appreciate hearing that
um i'm certainly not in a position
position to say sort of
sort of off the cuff to that that i can
change the agency's plan
um with without further consultation but
it's it's a great thing to know
um pamela and i think
we'll have maybe time for one one more
question after
uh pamela's question okay
i might revert from my original question
was going to be a continuation on that
this sort of privacy issue which sounds
like maybe it's a little more
complicated
from an architecture point of view and
again trying to keep this within the
technology
conversation it does seem as though
right now or in the current system the
sort of three different silos of
information the registrations the
recordations the sort of public
um public records
um are used by three different sets of
people and if the outcome of the
modernization
puts all those together in one place
then i think it naturally becomes an
issue
of whatever privacy controls were
necessary for one silo
will have to be rethought when all this
data is accessible through one
portal you know whether that data is
stored separately
is probably part of the the answer to
that that that's so that's
the classic more of an observation than
a question
my practical question is from where we
go now are there
sort of minutes that will be provided
after this conversation or what should
we as committee members
be prepared to do next so um
we're actually going to do one better
than minutes for the meeting and the
actual full recording of the meeting is
available so anybody who wants to refer
back to the
the meeting doesn't have to um
doesn't have to rely on an individual's
memory of what
or depiction of what happened so the the
recording um and
depending on the usefulness of the the
live transcript that we've gotten that
may
may be included as well um i will say
the only follow-up that we have
currently scheduled
from from the committee you know we came
into this not
um with not without full certainty of
sort of what would happen and what the
level of engagement would be and how and
how this would go
and the only follow-up that we have
planned already
is the next meeting in six months um
which would be which would be in january
of
of 2022
i'm hearing an appetite from the
committee members for
uh for for more um
we're nearing the end of our time and i
appreciate again the enormous effort
that people have gone to to stay with
this for
for three hours and i'm i'm cognizant as
well that we're still nearly 150
uh participants watching the the sort of
watching this
group and a fishbowl um i do
i do have um a couple of sort of
final uh like in the
big dream i've got a big pile of sticky
notes of the
enormously helpful things that people in
this group have been saying
um but i just in order to um
sort of complete the time today i would
just like to
say that the the commitment by the 13
members of the copyright public
modernization committee
the staff of the copyright office the
staff of the office of the chief
information officer
to meet here today and to um
share the information that we have
together and to share
the time that we have together today has
really just been extraordinary to me
and i want to thank you for coming we're
going to conclude
here in just the next couple of minutes
um
and uh i wanted to also offer
that there is a that the office actually
has
another event another public event
um that's coming up on this coming
monday
so it's it's not a we we hope that this
is not a
um you know this is it when we when we
think about the different ways that the
copyright office hears
stakeholders and users and and and
content creators so the very next one
that i'd like to talk about for just a
brief minute is on monday july 26th
at noon eastern standard time
and that that will be a webinar that
actually deals specifically
with the um with the registration
uh the registration system that we've
been talking about
and i think these kinds of events um
the webinars specifically are something
that we do frequently and
that um are another opportunity to sort
of get
um sort of display the work that we're
doing and and show what we're doing so i
i would hope to see in terms of
assignments i would hope to see as many
people as possible sort of
coming uh and joining the office for the
um for the copyright office webinar
which again
is monday july 26th at noon
um and i'm i'm happy to send that out to
the copyright
public modernization uh committee as a
as a reminder via email as well
um with that we have about 30 seconds
remaining of our
of our three-hour tour today and i just
wanted to thank
everyone in the group for for joining
and bid you all farewell
you