Our forms are antiquated and difficult to use. Our definition of
"publication" is important but hard to understand and
apply. Our process for enforcing rights is tedious, costly, and
time consuming.
Those are key takeaways from a report by the Copyright
Office to Congress about visual works copyrights.
And that's not all of the bad news. In addition to deficiencies
in its own processes, the Copyright Office reported the hardly
surprising conclusion that people on the Internet often misuse
copyrighted works and mislead users about copyright.
The only pretty part of this picture is the Copyright Office
vowed to make some changes itself, and it promised to once again
prod Congress to streamline copyright enforcement.
