Yesterday, Authors Alliance submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office in response to a notice of proposed rulemaking asking for feedback from the public on new rules to govern ex parte communications. “Ex parte communications” refer to communications outside the normal, permitted channels of communication—in this case, to communications between organizations or members of the public and Copyright Office staff outside of hearings or other formal proceedings. Ex parte communications with the Copyright Office are important, because they allow stakeholders and the office to work out open questions in rulemakings or other proceedings outside of the formal channels. Authors Alliance relied on our ability to make ex parte communications during the last Section1201 rulemaking cycle (where we obtained our text data mining exemption) in order to clarify certain issues. Now, the Office is proposing establishing formal rules for how these communications can be made, as well as establishing transparency around them. We support this proposal, and shared our thoughts in a comment. You can read our full comment here.