Brian Vargas [09.30.07 05:04 PM]

You say, "this product isn't theirs to sell." Perhaps it's not theirs - and by implication belongs to the tax-paying public - but nevertheless Congress has directed them to sell it. Period. End of story.

If you don't like it, take it up with your Representatives and Senators.

*Fine print: Though I happen to be a contractor for the Library of Congress (in an area quite unrelated to copyright), these opinions are my own, and in no way connected to the Library of Congress.*

  Tony Stubblebine [09.30.07 08:37 PM]

Great that it's now available in bulk, but your post doesn't say where it came from. You call out the LoC for their poor response so I assume they didn't provide it to you. Did you steal it? Did you pay for it? Seems like there's interesting back story here.

  Matt Raymond [10.02.07 06:37 AM]

The term "blogospheric brouhaha" was mine as an individual blogger and it was in no way an attempt to downplay this issue. It was an alliterative way to point out that there has been a lot of debate about this in the blogosphere.

And I think it is fair to point out that that term was not how the Library of Congress "solely" responded as an institution. Although you linked to it above, in case people do not follow your link, the entire response is below:

Regarding Pricing on Bulk Access to Copyright Cataloging Information

Recent questions and concerns have arisen regarding the cost of providing the Copyright Cataloging database subscription service to the public.

The U.S. Copyright Office neither sets the price nor receives any direct revenue from the sale of the Copyright Cataloging database. Rather, access to these records is a service offered through the Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) of the Library of Congress, which is mandated by Congress to provide this and other services to the public at a charge of production and distribution cost plus 10%. In fact, the mission of CDS is to share the Library’s vast bibliographic resources with American libraries, the American people and the international information community on a cost-recovery basis.

These databases and their weekly updates require considerable personnel and other resources to maintain and deliver. Each year, CDS evaluates its implementation and maintenance costs and determines pricing of its many products based on these costs. At the close of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, CDS will make recommendations to Library management for cost adjustment on all its products and services, based upon its Congressional mandate.

Fortunately, recent cost savings realized within CDS are anticipated to result in a drop in the price of many services available from CDS, including the Copyright Cataloging database subscription service. Any new pricing structure will appear first at on the CDS Web site www.loc.gov/cds/ in late October or early November 2007, then in the 2008 CDS Catalog of Products in January 2008.

Finally, the Copyright database is accessible to all free of charge on a record-by-record basis through the U.S. Copyright Office Web site at www.copyright.gov/records/.

  Karen Coyle [10.02.07 08:20 AM]

Peter, I looked at some of the records and I'm not exactly sure how we can make use of them. The data is very minimal. The ones for books that I found have only the title, no author, no nothing else. And sometimes even the title is wrong:

=LDR  00450npc  22001452i 4500

=001  5536409

=005  20070612040307.3

=008  070612n20030411xx\||||||||||||||||||||\\

=017  \\$eV3497D681$f2003-04-11$rV3497 D681-682 P1-36$2usco

=027  \\$aV3497D681

=035  \\$a(DLC-CO)V  00349768100050

=040  \\$aDLC-CO$cDLC-CO

=245  04$aThe buck pases Flynn;$hbook.

=787  0\$t2025 & 131 other titles. (Part 001 of 002)$wV  00349768100000

=917  \\$aV  00349768100050

(That should be "passes".) So, is there more information somewhere? I can't believe that anyone would pay good money for this!

  Karen Coyle [10.02.07 11:17 AM]

Peter, you have to have enough data to match it to the MARC records -- that's what I was specifically looking for. This is far, far from enough. I looked at the records on the copyright database that these link to -- that has a date and the names of the copyright holders, although just their names. This one pulls up a long list of companies, starting with:

Artisan Entertainment, Artisan Entertainment Inc., Artisan Entertainment, Inc., Artisan Television Inc., Artisan Television, Inc., Heatwave Productions Inc., Heatwave Productions, Inc., ...

It also gives you:

Date of Recordation: 	 2003-04-11
Entire Copyright Document: 	V3497 D681-682 P1-36
Date of Execution: 	3Dec02

"Date of recordation?" ;-) Now THAT's federal speak if I ever heard it. But the main thing as that we can see that there is a full document someplace, albeit probably not in machine-readable form.

If we ever do get MARC records connected to these, we need to upgrade the copyright database with decent bibliographic data.

  Karen Coyle [10.02.07 11:23 AM]

Peter, don't have enough data to match to the MARC records -- that's what I was specifically looking for. This is far, far from enough. I did find some records that have a bit more -- publisher and date of publication. That's still iffy if there is more than one edition, but it might be a start.
If we ever do get MARC records connected to these, we need to upgrade the copyright database with decent bibliographic data.

I looked at the record on the copyright database that this links to (and that presumably is retrievable by the record number) -- that has a date and the names of the copyright holders, although just their names. This one pulls up a long list of companies, starting with:

Artisan Entertainment, Artisan Entertainment Inc., Artisan Entertainment, Inc., Artisan Television Inc., Artisan Television, Inc., Heatwave Productions Inc., Heatwave Productions, Inc., ...

It also gives you:

Date of Recordation: 	 2003-04-11
Entire Copyright Document: 	V3497 D681-682 P1-36
Date of Execution: 	3Dec02

"Date of recordation?" ;-) Now THAT's federal speak if I ever heard it. But the main thing is that we can see that there is a full document someplace, albeit probably not in machine-readable form.

  Ed Summers [06.24.08 10:27 PM]

Wow, and it looks like the daily updates are available via RSS and Atom! http://rss.resource.org/ nice work public.resource.org!