eCO Outage Information

The U.S. Copyright Office apologizes to the users of our electronic registration system for the recent system outage that lasted for nine days, from August 28, 2015 to September 5, 2015. The outage occurred when the Library of Congress shut down a data center that hosts a number of the U.S. Copyright Office’s technology systems, including the Office's electronic registration system, to accommodate a two-day annual power outage scheduled by the Architect of the Capitol, which owns and maintains Library buildings. Unfortunately, the Library was unable to bring copyright systems and other agency functions online until September 6, 2015. The outage was not the result of a data breach or other security event and, at this time, we do not believe that any Copyright Office records or deposits were compromised.

During the outage, the Office’s electronic systems were very limited and resulted in, among other things, the inability to file applications for registration electronically, the inability to file preregistration applications, difficulty in sending and receiving emails, delay in uploading electronic deposits for registration, and confirmation emails being sent to some users for applications they did not file. If you believe the outage interfered with your ability to file an application, deposit, correspondence relating to an application, or otherwise affected your ability to interact with the Office, we want to hear from you. Please send an email to [email protected] describing the situation in as much detail as possible, including the date and time you attempted to access the system, any error message or correspondence received from the Office, and any service request numbers for the affected application. Alternatively, you can call the Office’s Public Information Office at (202) 707-3000 or (877) 476-0778 to speak to a public information specialist about the problem.

Though the Office’s systems are now online, we are mindful of the challenges the outage posed and thus have taken the following steps:

• Automatically extended the twenty-day deadline for replies to Office correspondence for all applications with correspondence due on dates falling between August 28, 2015 and September 5, 2015 so that they are now due by October 25, 2015. Please note that this extension does not apply to responses that were due before August 28, 2015 or responses due on or after September 6, 2015.

• For anyone who filed a paper application due to the electronic system being down, we will be taking steps to attempt to reduce the examination times generally for all applications submitted by paper, including those submitted during the outage. We will do the best we can with the limited resources we currently have available.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this outage caused and will endeavor to make sure that this can never happen again.