The Register of Copyrights announced that a technical upgrade brought down the electronic copyright registration systems, eCO, on August 12^th. That meant anyone attempting to register their copyrights or submit fees and deposits was unable to do so. The disruption continued until August 29th. On September 1^st, Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights, announced that the effective date of registration for persons affected by the outage will be adjusted.

If you were attempting to register your copyrights during this period, you can file an eCO Disruption Declaration Form requesting that your effective date of registration be adjusted. (The effective date of registration can have implications in a copyright infringement lawsuit.) You’ll need to supply some evidence that you attempted to register your copyrights during that period. That evidence can be a statement (under penalty of perjury) describing what and when you attempted to register. The works you were trying to register must be received by the Copyright Office by September 29 (one month after the end of the outage).

The Copyright Office statement gives more details on the eCO disruption.