55694 Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 180 / Wednesday, September 17, 2014 / Proposed Rules 

1For further information, see the comments 

obtained during the Copyright Office’s two-year 

Special Projects process, particularly the Special 

Project on Technical Upgrades to Registration and 

Recordation Functions. Comments pertaining to the 

Special Project on Technological Upgrades to 

Registration and Recordation Functions are 

available on the Copyright Office Web site at http:// 

www.copyright.gov/_upgrades/comments/. 

the Office may rely on this process 

somewhat more in this proceeding to 

the extent it believes it would be useful 

to provide a final opportunity for 

proponents, opponents or others to 

supply missing information for the 

record or otherwise resolve issues that 

the Office believes are material to 

particular exemptions. Such requests for 

responses to questions will take the 

form of a letter from the Copyright 

Office and will be addressed to 

individual parties involved in the 

proposal as to which more information 

is sought. While responding to such a 

request will be voluntary, any response 

will be need to be supplied by a 

specified deadline. After the receipt of 

all responses, the Office will post the 

questions and responses on the Office’s 

Web site as part of the public record. 

5. Recommendation and Final Rule 

Finally, in accordance with the 

statutory framework, the Register will 

review the record, consult with the 

Assistant Secretary, and prepare a 

recommendation with proposed 

regulations for the Librarian. See 

Conference Report at 64. Thereafter, the 

Librarian will make a final 

determination and publish the 

exemptions in the Federal Register for 

later codification in title 37 of the CFR 

17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(D). 

6. Schedule of Proceedings 

As noted above, petitions for 

proposed rulemaking are due on 

November 3, 2014. After the Office 

publishes the notice of proposed 

rulemaking, it intends to give 

proponents at least 45 days to prepare 

and file their evidentiary submissions. 

The opponents will then have at least 45 

days to respond, followed by a reply 

period of at least 30 days. The Office 

will provide at least 30 days’ notice 

before the public hearings begin. Parties 

who receive post-hearing questions will 

be given at least 14 days to respond. The 

precise dates for these future aspects of 

the proceeding will be provided in 

subsequent Federal Register notices. 

Dated: September 11, 2014. 

Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, 

General Counsel and Associate Register of 

Copyrights. 

[FR Doc. 2014–22082 Filed 9–16–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 1410–30–P 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

U.S. Copyright Office 

37 CFR Part 201 

[Docket No. 2014–08] 

Fees for Submitting Corrected 

Electronic Title Appendices 

AGENCY: U.S. Copyright Office, Library 

of Congress. 

ACTION: Notice of proposed rulemaking. 

SUMMARY: The U.S. Copyright Office 

published elsewhere in this issue of the 

Federal Register a final rule amending 

its regulations to allow remitters to 

submit title lists in electronic format 

when recording a document pertaining 

to 100 or more copyrighted works. As 

the rule explains, when a remitter 

submits an electronic title list along 

with a document for recordation, the 

Office will use the information in the 

electronic list to populate its online 

Public Catalog. In response to comments 

received during the electronic title list 

rulemaking, the Office also established 

a process to allow a remitter to correct 

inaccuracies in the Office’s online 

Public Catalog resulting from errors in 

an electronic list submitted by the 

remitter. In this separate notice of 

proposed rulemaking, the Office seeks 

to establish a new fee for this correction 

service at the rate of seven dollars per 

corrected title. 

DATES: Written comments are due on or 

before October 17, 2014. 

ADDRESSES: All comments shall be 

submitted electronically. A comment 

submission page is posted on the 

Copyright Office Web site at http://

copyright.gov/rulemaking/etitle-fees/. 

The Web site interface requires 

commenting parties to complete a form 

specifying their name and organization, 

as applicable, and to upload comments 

as an attachment via a browser button. 

To meet accessibility standards, 

commenting parties must upload 

comments in a single file not to exceed 

six megabytes (MB) in one of the 

following formats: A Portable Document 

File (PDF) format that contains 

searchable, accessible text (not an 

image); Microsoft Word; WordPerfect; 

Rich Text Format (RTF); or ASCII text 

file format (not a scanned document). 

The maximum file size is 6 megabytes. 

The form and face of the comments 

must include both the name of the 

submitter and organization. The Office 

will post the comments publicly on the 

Office’s Web site in the form that they 

are received, along with associated 

names and organizations. If electronic 

submission of comments is not feasible, 

please contact the Office at 202–707– 

8350 for special instructions. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Sarang V. Damle, Special Advisor to the 

General Counsel, by email at sdam@

loc.gov or by telephone at 202–707– 

8350, or Abi Oyewole, AttorneyAdvisor, by email at aoye@loc.gov or by 

telephone at 202–707–8350. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background 

Over the past several years, the 

Copyright Office has sought public 

input on technological upgrades to the 

recordation function. See 78 FR 17722 

(Mar. 22, 2013); 79 FR 2696 (Jan. 15, 

2014). In addition to seeking written 

comments, the Office has held focused 

discussions with copyright owners, 

users of copyright records, technical 

experts, public interest organizations, 

lawyers, and professional and industry 

associations regarding the same. See 79 

FR 6636 (Feb. 4, 2014). Participants in 

these processes have expressed a 

number of concerns about the current 

recordation system, including 

frustration with the submission process, 

the amount of time the Office requires 

to record remitted documents, and the 

searchability of the public record. These 

problems are related in part to the fact 

that recordation remains a paper-driven 

process (in contrast to most registration 

transactions, which occur 

electronically).1

To date, recordation specialists have 

had to review paper documents and 

manually transcribe selected 

information from the documents into an 

electronic format in order to permit 

indexing in the Office’s online Public 

Catalog. Among the information that 

must be transcribed are the titles of 

copyrighted works associated with a 

document submitted for recordation, 

which are typically presented in a list 

appended to the document, referred to 

informally as a ‘‘title appendix.’’ A title 

appendix associated with a document 

can include hundreds, or even 

thousands, of titles. The Office 

attributes the long processing times 

associated with document recordation 

in considerable part to the manual entry 

of these titles. In an effort to reduce 

processing time for recorded document 

submissions, on July 16, 2014, the 


asabaliauskas on DSK5VPTVN1PROD with PROPOSALS
Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 180 / Wednesday, September 17, 2014 / Proposed Rules 55695 

2Recording Industry Ass’n of Am., Inc., 

Comments Submitted in Response to U.S. Copyright 

Office’s July 16, 2014 Notice of Proposed 

Rulemaking (Aug. 15, 2014) (‘‘RIAA Comments’’), 

available at http://copyright.gov/rulemaking/

recordation-practices/docket2014-4/comments/

RIAA.pdf. 

3There are already fees in effect for the 

recordation of the document and processing of 

associated titles. See 37 CFR 201.3(c)(16). 

4Fees for core Office services such as registration 

of a claim, recording a transfer of copyright 

ownership or other document, issuance of a 

certificate of registration, and certain other services 

are to be submitted by the Register to Congress 

before they take effect. See 17 U.S.C. 708(a)–(b). 

Office proposed a new rule that would, 

among other things, allow remitters to 

submit electronic title appendices 

containing 100 or more titles in 

electronic format. See 79 FR 41470 (July 

16, 2014). 

The Recording Industry Association 

of America, Inc., (‘‘RIAA’’) commented 

on the proposed rule, stating, among 

other things, that the Office should 

‘‘provide for a mechanism or procedure 

by which a remitter can easily correct 

any errors to the electronic title list that 

the remitter has supplied.’’ 2 The Office 

agreed, and has adopted such a 

procedure as part of the final electronic 

title list rule, to be codified at 37 CFR 

201.4(c)(4)(v). See the final rule entitled 

‘‘Changes to Recordation Practices’’ 

published elsewhere in this issue of the 

Federal Register. Under the new 

§ 201.4(c)(4)(v), if a remitter discovers 

that an error in an electronic title list 

has led to the inaccurate cataloging of a 

recorded document, it may submit a 

corrected title list to the Copyright 

Office in accordance with the 

procedures set forth in the rule. 

However, to avoid delay in 

implementing the electronic title list 

option, the Office decided to issue that 

final rule without imposition of a fee for 

corrections until such time as a fee is set 

in accordance with this separate notice.3

II. Discussion 

Section 708(a) of title 17 authorizes 

the Register to fix fees for services other 

than those enumerated in paragraphs 

(1)–(9) of section 708(a) based on cost 

and without prior submission to 

Congress.4 See 17 U.S.C. 708(a). Fees for 

Office services that the Register has the 

discretion to establish based on cost and 

without Congressional review include 

fees for copying Office records, fees for 

mail and delivery services, and fees for 

special handling. See 79 FR 15910, 

15916–17 (Mar. 24, 2014). With the rule 

proposed herein, the Office seeks to 

adopt a new fee to recover costs 

associated with the correction of errors 

in the online Public Catalog following 

recordation of a document where the 

errors stem from a remitter’s inaccurate 

electronic title list. 

Based on a cost analysis, the Office 

believes that the initial fee for this 

service should be established at seven 

dollars per corrected title. The Office 

arrived at the seven dollar amount by 

considering the various personnel and 

systems costs associated with providing 

the new service. To process a corrected 

title list, senior recordation staff must 

first review the nature and extent of 

corrections, and the Office’s accounting 

staff must process the payment 

associated with the submission. Then, 

the corrections must be individually 

transcribed into the Office’s online 

Public Catalog; this is a labor-intensive 

process that involves searching for the 

original entry by volume and document 

number, finding the title or titles that 

require correction, and amending and/or 

adding new titles to the database. Once 

entered into the online Public Catalog, 

the resulting changes must be checked 

to ensure the correction process was 

successful. 

After evaluating the anticipated 

personnel and overhead expenses that 

will be incurred to accomplish the 

above tasks, the Office estimates the 

average cost to be seven dollars per 

corrected title. The Office therefore 

proposes to establish the new fee at that 

amount. 

List of Subjects in 37 CFR Part 201 

Copyright. 

Proposed Regulations 

For the reasons set forth in the 

preamble, the Copyright Office proposes 

amending 37 CFR part 201 as follows: 

PART 201—GENERAL PROVISIONS 

■ 1. The authority citation for part 201 

continues to read as follows: 

Authority: 17 U.S.C. 702. 

■ 2. In § 201.3, revise paragraph (c)(16) 

to read as follows: 

§ 201.3 Fees for registration, recordation, 

and related services, special services, and 

services performed by the Licensing 

Division. 

* * * * * 

Registration, recordation and related services Fees 

($) 

*******

(16) Recordation of document, including a notice of intention to enforce (single title) .......................................................................... 105 

Additional titles (per group of 1 to 10 titles) ............................................................................................................................................ 35 

Correction of online Public Catalog data due to erroneous electronic title submission (per title) .......................................................... 7 

* * * * * * * 

* * * * * 

■ 3. In § 201.4, as added elsewhere in 

this issue of the Federal Register, 

effective October 17, 2014, revise the 

last sentence of paragraph (c)(4)(v) to 

read as follows: 

§ 201.4 Recordation of transfers and 

certain other documents. 

* * * * * 

(c) * * * 

(4) * * * 

(v) * * * Upon receipt of a corrected 

electronic list in proper form and the 

appropriate fee, the Office will proceed 

to correct the data in the online Public 

Catalog, and will make a note in the 

record indicating that the corrections 

were made and the date they were 

made. 

* * * * * 

Dated: September 11, 2014. 

Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, 

General Counsel and Associate Register of 

Copyrights. 

[FR Doc. 2014–22232 Filed 9–16–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 1410–30–P 


asabaliauskas on DSK5VPTVN1PROD with PROPOSALS