A Copyright Registration Thing

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 15195

The last thing I want to do is stir up all of Nancy Stouffer's little 
fantasy world of issues, but since Countingdown's Harry Potter page 
posted a link to the copyright registration form that was submitted 
for SS, I finally took a look at it, and have a few comments & a 
request.
The request first - can somebody in Washington obtain a copy of BOTH 
pages of hte copyright registration form, so we can see for ourselves 
if JKR signed the second page?

Here's why:
On Stouffer's REAL MUGGLES website, she has uploaded a scan of a 
*portion* of the copyright application for Sorcerer's Stone, which 
includes an entry that the citizenship of the claimant is in the U.S.
It also doesn't include a "author's birth year", but that's 
irrelevant to my comment.

If you go to http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/formtx.pdf you can 
see the copyright application form that one has to fill out to 
register a copyright in the U.S. Generally, these are filled out by 
the publishing company, in this case, likely either Levine (the 
imprint) or Scholastic (the publisher).

On the second page of the application, at number 8, you can see that 
an  application can be validly, legitimately and legally signed by a 
number of individuals, including the author herself, the copyright 
claimant or an *authorized agent*. The Agent is generally either the 
lawyer or the publishing house, if the author has given power of 
attorney to either, authorizing them to sign things on her behalf. 

Therefore, without seeing the second page of this application, it is 
IMPOSSIBLE to determine whether JKR herself ever SAW this document 
before it was filed. 

There's another provision on the application which says that the 
information is correct to the best of the signer's knowledge, and if 
the signer thinks something, but that thought is incorrect, as a 
matter of law, the copyright claimant cannot be penalized for it. 

Only the signator can be penalized - and it doesn't even invalidate 
the copyright registration - there's merely a 2500$ fine. 

It makes me wonder - if JKR signed it, why didn't Stouffer upload 
that part of the application to her site?

As an intellectual property attorney, it seems to me that if JKR 
didn't sign the document herself, it was a slipshod job by whoever 
did - to not get the right information (they obviously didn't get the 
birth year info, according to what was uploaded on the Stouffer 
site) - but it is proof of NOTHING.