USCO Electronic Registration Goes Live

ECO ImageWithout as much as a formal announcement, the United States Copyright Office (USCO) pushed their Electronic Copyright Office (ECO) system live on June 21.

The system, which has been in beta testing for nearly a year, enables copyright holders to register their works with the USCO online. This lowers the cost of registration to $35 and, theoretically, speeds up the registration process.

The move to push the system live was not accompanied by any announcement on the USCO site, but rather, by simply moving the ECO link to the middle of the page, replacing the previous information about registering via mail, and pointing the “registration” tab to the ECO system.

According to the site, paper forms are still available but can not be downloaded on the site. Instead, one has to request that the USCO mail them copies in order to receive them. Also, I still have electronic copies of many of the paper forms if anyone needs them and they can also be found elsewhere on the Web.

I reviewed the ECO system previously and updated it shortly after. However, it appears that the ECO system, from my brief look at it since, has not made any significant improvements from those reviews, leaving it a severely flawed system.

Still, it is worth noting that the system is available for everyone and that it is functional. If anyone has been holding off on registering their works with the USCO, waiting for the system to come online, your wait is now over.

However, I can only hope that far more radical changes will be forthcoming.

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