Will Temple’s departure spur efforts to move the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress?
Catching up with PW's Andrew Albanese
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Just months after her permanent appointment in March as U.S. Register of Copyrights, Karyn Temple announced on Monday that she will decamp to the Motion Picture Association to become that organization’s global general counsel, reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer.
Temple has been at the Copyright Office since 2011; she served as Acting Register of Copyrights for more than two years before her permanent appointment earlier this year.
The Motion Picture Association, Inc. (formerly the MPAA) is “the global voice and advocate of the motion picture, home video, and television industries” with a presence in every major market around the world.
“The big question may be whether Temple’s departure will spur another attempt to remove the Register of Copyrights position out of the purview of the Library of Congress,” Albanese notes.
Recently, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has made moves to strengthen her position with Congress. The U.S. Copyright Office is currently a department within the Library’s organization.
“All reports are that Hayden and her staff have shown lawmakers impressive progress in addressing some of the ‘significant weaknesses’ in the library’s IT management, which had been pointed out in a scathing 2015 audit,” Albanese tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.
“At a Congressional oversight hearing last month, Hayden told lawmakers that, ‘the library is a different organization from what it was just a short time ago. In a statement, she widely praised Temple for her work at the office under the direction of the library,” he says.
Every Friday, CCC’s “Beyond the Book” speaks with the editors and reporters of “Publishers Weekly” for an early look at the news that publishers, editors, authors, agents and librarians will be talking about when they return to work on Monday.
