News release: “Handling about 550,000 copyright claims annually, the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress is making it much easier for the public to register and protect its collective creativity. On July 1, the Copyright Office will enter the next phase in the implementation of its multi-year business process re-engineering effort to modernize operations from a paper-based to a Web-based processing environment…In July the Copyright Office also plans to release the new Form CO, which effectively replaces six traditional paper application forms. Users will complete a Form CO online, print it out and send it to the Copyright Office with payment and a copy(ies) of the work being registered. Each Form CO is imprinted with 2-D barcodes that are scanned to automatically transfer the information contained in the form into an eCO service request record. The fee for registering a basic claim using Form CO is $45.”