Copyright via RSS

About a month ago, Carl Malamud and I worked together to obtain the Copyright Office's database of registrations and make it available for public download and updating. The Copyright Office (CO) data have been distributed in bulk through the Library of Congress' Catalogue Distribution Service at a significant cost, yet this is a public resource, which we felt should be available for free.

At the time, Carl and I sought to confirm that the data was available without restriction, and there was no copyright imposed on the records. We obtained sufficient confirmation through our investigations and voice communications with the CO for us to proceed. We are pleased today to release a letter from the Copyright Office [pdf] confirming the status of the data.

The Copyright Office creates records of all registrations of claims to copyright. Those records contain the title of the work, the name of the author(s), the nature of the authorship being registered, the nature of the work, the name of the copyright claimant, and a description of the scope of the claim. There is no copyright protection in these records -- they are in the public domain. All registration records created since January 1, 1978 are available online through our website at http://www.copyright.gov. Additionally, the database of the online records is likewise in the public domain.

As you know, our online records are available free of charge to everyone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Additionally, there are no limitations on downloading (or harvesting) our records, whether done in bulk or individually. No permission is needed. ...

Public Resource has today released updates from the Copyright Office registration database as an RSS feed; two different sets of feeds provide updates for both bulk-record packages and per-record updates. Please read the FAQ on the page before use.

We thank the Copyright Office for working with us to help make these data available, and we look forward to collaborating with the Library of Congress and the CO to develop services that enrich the data and make them more widely available.

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