To balance the grant of exclusive rights to authors with the state’s interest in promoting the progress of science, America’s initial copyright statutes included a set of state-imposed, formalities that authors and other copyright holders were required to comply with in order to obtain and maintain copyright protection. The formalities served several functions, including public notification of the copyright claim. Requiring registration generated publicly available information on “claimed” works that users could consult in order to obtain metadata. When the United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989, mandatory formalities were essentially made optional. This Article reviews the constraints imposed by the Berne Convention and suggests that instead of focusing on ways to impose work registration, the system would accomplish its goals and fulfill its mission better by emphasizing recordation of transfers.