Group Registration of Updates to a News Website

<RULE> LIBRARY OF CONGRESS <SUBAGY>Copyright Office</SUBAGY> <CFR>37 CFR Part 201 and 202</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 2023-8]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Group Registration of Updates to a News Website</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Copyright Office is creating a new group registration for frequently updated news websites. This option will enable online news publishers to register a group of updates to a news website as a collective work with a deposit composed of identifying material representing sufficient portions of the work, rather than the complete contents of the website. The final rule is nearly identical to the provisions set forth in the January 2024 notice of proposed rulemaking, with one modification in response to public comments and one to reflect a technical change in the process for submitting these claims. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective July 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Rhea Efthimiadis, Assistant to the General Counsel, by email at <E T="03">meft@copyright.gov</E> or by telephone at 202-707-8350. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Copyright Act authorizes the Register of Copyrights to specify by regulation the administrative classes of works for the purpose of registration and the deposit required for each class. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In addition, Congress gave the Register the discretion to allow registration of groups of related works with one application and one filing fee. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> This procedure is known as “group registration.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Pursuant to this authority, the Register has issued several regulations permitting group registrations for certain types of works, including newspapers, newsletters and serials, unpublished works, unpublished and published photographs, contributions to periodicals, secure test items, works on an album of music, short online literary works, and database updates. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  17 U.S.C. 408(c)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See generally</E> 37 CFR 202.3(b)(5), 202.4. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 202.3(b)(5), 202.4(c)-(k), (o). </FTNT> This rulemaking expands the available group registration options because of several factors specifically impacting news websites. Along with receiving requests from online publishers, the Office observed the increase in news content offered online and the dynamic nature of such material. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> It also reviewed stakeholder comments in prior proceedings that discussed the challenges associated with registering online news content, including those submitted in response to its 2022 <E T="03">Copyright Protections for Press Publishers</E> report. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Finally, the Office acknowledged the deposit challenges associated with websites, particularly news websites, in its 2011 publication titled <E T="03">Priorities and Special Projects of the United States Copyright Office (October 2011-October 2013)</E> . <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 311, 311-12 (Jan. 3, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Protection for Press Publishers (June 2022), <E T="03">https://copyright.gov/policy/publishersprotections/202206-Publishers-Protections-Study.pdf</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 311, 312. </FTNT> On January 3, 2024, the Office published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) to establish a new group registration option for frequently updated news websites. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The proposed rule would allow an applicant to register a news website as a collective work (including any individual component works it fully owns, such as literary works, photographs, and/or graphics)  <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> with a deposit composed of identifying material, rather than the complete contents of the website. The proposed rule would also allow registration of the news website and any updates published within one calendar month, if the deposit evidences a sufficiently creative selection, coordination, or arrangement within each collective work to constitute a copyrightable compilation. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Each collective work must have been created as a work made for hire, with the same person or entity named as both the author and copyright claimant. The proposed rule stated that applicants would be required to submit their claims through the online copyright registration system, using the application currently in use for a group of newspaper issues. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 311. The final rule defines a “news website” as “a website that is designed to be a primary source of written information on current events, either local, national, or international in scope, that contains a broad range of news on all subjects and activities and is not limited to any specific subject matter.” 37 CFR 202.4(m)(1)(i). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Because the Office will not examine each component work within the collective work, the copyright claimant bears the burden of proving that it owns the individual component works claimed in the submission. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  A “collective work” is a type of compilation. <E T="03">See</E> 17 U.S.C. 101. A “compilation” is “a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  As noted in the NPRM, “in appropriate circumstances, the Office may waive the online filing requirement, subject to the conditions the Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of the Office of Registration Policy and Practice may impose.” 89 FR 311, 316 n.55. </FTNT> The Office received twenty comments in response to the NPRM. supported the Office's proposal to create the new group registration option, though the majority requested various modifications. Two commenters, however, expressly conditioned their support on substantive changes to the rule, which would substantially change its scope. <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> In general, commenters were interested in expanding eligibility for this option to a greater number of works and changing the deposit requirement. Proposals included revising the definition of “news website,” removing the work made for hire and author/claimant requirements, increasing the time limitation for updates to the news website, clarifying the “home page” deposit requirement, and asking the Office to confirm the scope of remedies for copyright infringement of a collective work. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> Finally, one commenter encouraged the Office to “identify opportunities for improvement” and to remain “adaptive to technological changes.”  <SU>16</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  The Office also received a letter from several organizations reflecting their collective support for finalizing the rulemaking in a timely manner and in-line edits to the Office's proposed regulatory language. Letter from Ass'n of Am. Publishers et al. to Suzanne Wilson, Gen. Counsel and Assoc. Register of Copyrights (Apr. 4, 2024), <E T="03">https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/newswebsite/Association-of-American-Publishers-et-al%E2%80%93Letter-to-Copyright-Office.pdf</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Am. Ass'n of Independent Music, Ass'n of Am. Publishers, Inc, and Recording Industry Ass'n of Am., Inc. (“A2IM, AAP, & RIAA”) Comment at 2 (“Commenters express no position on the primary focus of the NPRM—whether the Office should create a new group registration option for frequently updated news websites—or on the details of how such an option should be implemented.”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>14</SU>   <E T="03">See generally</E> Nat'l Writers Union, Nat'l Press Photographers Ass'n, Nat'l Ass'n of Sci. Writers (“NWU, NPPA, & NASW”) Comment; Gordon Firemark 2 Comment. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>15</SU>  A handful of commenters also proposed that the Office should adopt the NPRM immediately, as an interim rule. <E T="03">See, e.g.,</E> Copyright All. Comment at 11; Nat'l Pub. Radio (“NPR”) Comment at 3-5; News Media All. (“NMA”) Comment at 2. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>16</SU>  Am. Bar Ass'n Section of Intell. Prop. L. (“ABA-IPL”) Comment at 4. </FTNT> Having reviewed and carefully considered each of the comments, the Office now issues a final rule that is nearly identical to the proposed rule, with one modification reflecting concerns raised by some commenters regarding the “home page” deposit requirement and one modification concerning the application form for this option. These modifications are discussed in more detail below. With respect to requests that we received to expand the scope of the rule, the Office will closely monitor how the new group option performs, including the number and complexity of the claims submitted, the amount of time needed to examine these claims, and the modest filing fee for this option. The Office remains open to revisiting these issues in the future based on this rule's performance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Final Rule</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Eligibility Requirements</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Works That May Be Included in the Group</HD> In the NPRM, the Office proposed to limit this group registration option to updates to a “news website,” defined as “a website that is designed to be a primary s ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 77k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━