Noting that the United States is a member of the Berne Convention and subscribes to its provisions, PETERS described the permissions process. She also defined compulsory licenses. A compulsory license, of which the United States has had a few, builds into the law the right to use a work subject to certain terms and conditions. In the international arena, however, the ability to use compulsory licenses is extremely limited. Thus, clearinghouses and other collectives comprise one option that has succeeded in providing for use of a work. Often overlooked when one begins to use copyrighted material and put products together is how expensive the permissions process and managing it is. According to PETERS, the price of copyright in a digital medium, whatever solution is worked out, will include managing and assembling the database. She strongly recommended that publishers and librarians or people with various backgrounds cooperate to work out administratively feasible systems, in order to produce better results. In the lengthy question-and-answer period that followed PETERS's presentation, the following points emerged: * The Copyright Office maintains that anything mechanical and totally exhaustive probably is not protected. In the event that what an individual did in developing potentially copyrightable material is not understood, the Copyright Office will ask about the creative choices the applicant chose to make or not to make. As a practical matter, if one believes she or he has made enough of those choices, that person has a right to assert a copyright and someone else must assert that the work is not copyrightable. The more mechanical, the more automatic, a thing is, the less likely it is to be copyrightable. * Nearly all photographs are deemed to be copyrightable, but no one worries about them much, because everyone is free to take the same image. Thus, a photographic copyright represents what is called a "thin" copyright. The photograph itself must be duplicated, in order for copyright to be violated.