Copyright Office Proposes Rule Change Exempting Works Only Available Online from Mandatory Deposit

The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online. The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory deposit until a demand for deposit of copies of such works is issued by the Copyright Office. From the notice of proposed rulemaking, 74 Fed. Reg. 34286 (July 15, 2009):

This notice proposes that the current section 202.19(c)(5) exemption be amended so that all electronic works published in the United States and available only online enjoy a qualified exemption from mandatory deposit, which would mean that any work in this class is exempt until the Copyright Office issues a demand for its deposit. This revised exemption would apply to all published electronic works available only online. It would apply to serials, monographs, sound recordings, automated databases, and all other categories of electronic works. Furthermore, because the revised exemption would apply exclusively to published online-only works, there will be no need to retain the current list of machine-readable works in physical formats to which the exemption does not apply. It is important to emphasize, however, that the revised exemption would not apply to those works published in both physical and online formats. These works, because they are not published ``only''online, were never exempted from mandatory deposit.

[JH]