On July 15th, the Copyright Office published a Federal Register Notice proposing to amend Copyright Office regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works that are published in the United States and available only online.

Under the present regulations the Copyright Office practice has been to exempt from the deposit requirement all electronic works that are published only online.  These regulations are applicable to Section 407 of the Copyright Act, which provides that the owner of a copyright in a work published in the United States is required to deposit two complete copies of the best edition of the work with the Copyright Office for the use or disposition of the Library of Congress.  A deposit under Section 407 must be made within three months after such publication.  Failure to deposit the copies does not affect copyright in the work, but it may subject the copyright owner to fines and other monetary liability if a demand for deposit of the work is made by the Register of Copyrights and the owner fails to comply with the demand.  As a result, in practice, these works are not normally submitted to the Copyright Office unless and until a demand is made by the Office.

Section 407 should not be confused with Section 408.  Section 407 applies to all copyrighted works that are not registered with the Copyright Office.  Section 408 applies to only those works that are registered with the Copyright Office and requires any work that is registered to be deposited.  More...