The Copyright Office's final privacy rule does not apply one deletion policy to every registration detail. Published February 2, 2017, it distinguishes information requested for registration from extraneous information supplied by mistake. Its stated effective date is March 6, still future in this February 13 account. The distinction determines both the procedure and what remains in the public record. [2017-02238]

Requested information includes personal contact details. If the Office grants an online change, it adds a modification note and issues a new certificate, but preserves the original registration for public inspection and copying offline. A claimant's address cannot be removed without a verifiable substitute. By contrast, erroneously included banking details or Social Security numbers qualify for free removal from both online and offline public records, without a notation. [2017-02238]

The September 15, 2016 proposal supplies a useful comparison on names. Its proposed provisions barred removing author or claimant names or replacing them with pseudonyms; its submission list lacked a legal-name-change document requirement. The final procedure expressly requires a court order granting a legal name change when requesting replacement of an author's or claimant's name. That is a documented procedural change, not a general route to anonymity. [2017-02238][2016-22011]

The proposal also explained the Office's legal reasoning: maintaining original records for public inspection did not require publishing every detail on the internet. That distinction helps explain why an online change need not erase the underlying record. Proposal and final rule belong to the same proceeding. Together they establish the design of the process, not how much protection applicants would ultimately receive. [2016-22011][2017-02238]

Source documents

  1. Removal of Personally Identifiable Information From Registration Recordshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-02-02/html/2017-02238.htm
  2. Removal of Personally Identifiable Information From Registration Recordshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-09-15/html/2016-22011.htm