We made a simple program...
There's been a good deal of posts about Google's XLM file of copyright renewal records, mainly of books. See http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8412 and http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/24/copyright-renewal-re.html for two examples.
My research assistant, Matt Miller, a 3L student at Tulane Law School, put together this simple program to search the records. We are working on a more sophisticated tool for copyright duration that we should have completed in the Fall, but we thought we would share this now.
the new url is: http://renewalrecords.urbanpug.com/
Elizabeth Townsend Gard
Associate Professor
Tulane University Law School