You may wish to consider the service offered by the Copyright Office
(the excerpt is from Circular 22 at
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.html):
"Upon request, the Copyright Office staff will search its records at
the statutory rate of $75 for each hour or fraction of an hour
consumed. Based on the information you furnish, we will provide an
estimate of the total search fee. If you decide to have the Office
staff conduct the search, you should send the estimated amount with
your request. The Office will then proceed with the search and send
you a typewritten report or, if you prefer, an oral report by
telephone. If you request an oral report, please provide a telephone
number where you can be reached from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., eastern
time.
Search reports can be certified on request for an extra fee of $80 per
hour. Certified searches are most frequently requested to meet the
evidentiary requirements of litigation.
Your request and any other correspondence should be addressed to :
Library of Congress
Copyright Office
Reference and Bibliography Section, LM-451
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000
Tel: (202) 707-6850
Fax: (202) 252-3485
TTY: (202) 707-6737
What the Fee Does Not Cover
The search fee does not include the cost of additional certificates,
photocopies of deposits, or copies of other Office records. For
information concerning these services, request Circular 6, "Obtaining
Access to and Copies of Copyright Office Records and Deposits."
Information Needed
The more detailed information you can furnish with your request, the
less expensive the search will be. Please provide as much of the
following information as possible:
The title of the work, with any possible variants
The names of the authors, including possible pseudonyms
The name of the probable copyright owner, which may be the publisher or producer
The approximate year when the work was published or registered
The type of work involved (book, play, musical composition, sound
recording, photograph, etc.)
For a work originally published as a part of a periodical or
collection, the title of that publication and any other information,
such as the volume or issue number, to help identify it
The registration number or any other copyright data
Motion pictures are often based on other works such as books or
serialized contributions to periodicals or other composite works. If
you desire a search for an underlying work or for music from a motion
picture, you must specifically request such a search. You must also
identify the underlying works and music and furnish the specific
titles, authors, and approximate dates of these works."
If you have already done the homework and you know who owns all the
copyrights and this is just a clerical process of contacting the
owners and getting licenses in place, I think Elance is a great
idea--but heck, a local temp agency could do that for you as well. |
