Overview
On January 3, 2024, the U.S. Copyright Office published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) offering a new copyright group registration option for frequently updated news websites. The proposed rule would allow a news publisher to register a copyright for a news website as a collective work (compilation) with a deposit composed of identifying material, rather than the complete contents of the website.
The proposed rule is expected to facilitate the registration process for general news publishers who frequently update news content published on the internet. It may be a significant step in protecting journalists and content creators from the unlawful copying and infringement of their works. AI companies, for example, appear to rely heavily on scraping news websites to train their foundation models. The proposed rule would provide easier copyright registration and the benefits from registration for news websites and may be a notable step in assisting the protection of content creators from generative AI companies.
Eligibility
- The proposed rule is limited to general “news websites,” defined as “a website that is mainly 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.”
- The proposed rule applies only to collective works. Each collective work must “contain a sufficiently creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of the individual component works, such as articles, photographs, illustrations, or other content.”
- Under the proposed rule, an applicant can include updates published on the same website within the same calendar month. Applicants would be required to identify the earliest and latest date that updates were published on the website during the calendar month.
- Each collective work in the group must have been created as a work Made for Hire, with the same person or entity named as the author and copyright claimant.
- Applicants are required to provide a title, which must include the site’s URL, that identifies the news website.
Application Requirements
The Copyright Office plans to create a new application form for this group registration option in its next-generation registration system. In the interim, however, it would use one of the current group registration application forms to process these claims in the registration system. Applicants would be required to submit their claims through the electronic registration system and to use the application designated for a group of newspaper issues.
Deposit Requirement
The Copyright Office proposes to modify the requirement that applicants provide complete deposits of each news website. Instead, under the proposed rule, applicants would only be required to identify some of the updates that were made to the website. Specifically, applicants would need to submit separate PDF files that each contain a complete copy of the home page for the site. Each PDF must show how the home page appeared at a specific point during each day of the calendar month when new updates were published on the site.
In each case, the deposit must demonstrate that the home page contains a sufficient degree of selection, coordination, and/or arrangement to be registered as a collective work.
All claims registered under this option would be limited to the collective work authorship based on the selection, coordination, and/or arrangement of the individual component works, and all parts of the collective work would constitute one work for purposes of 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(1) – thus, limiting the work to the $150,000 statutory damage limit per infringer.
Filing Fee
The filing fee for group registration would be $95, the same fee that currently applies to a claim in a group of newspapers.
Comments
Comments on the proposed rule are due to the U.S. Copyright Office by February 20, 2024. Among the comments to be filed, we expect that certain commentators will ask the office to expand eligibility for the new registration beyond general news sites to specific news sites, as well as to expand the registration to cover all works and not just works Made for Hire. We also expect that some commentators will recommend that the entire proposal be dropped, claiming that the current registration system is sufficient and, with this proposal, too many works, and therefore too much of the internet, will be covered for copyright protection.
