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Comment by sarbaz | Hacker News Reader

https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/index.html

> All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law

You own copyright over works whether you register them or not. To the best of my understanding that means that you are always required to deposit works when you publish them, whether or not you register your copyright. But IANAL, so I could be way off.

EDIT: Here's a real citation[0]

> What is the difference between mandatory deposit and copyright registration?

> ... Optional registration fulfills mandatory deposit requirements.

So you definitely are required to deposit a copy with LoC whenever you publish/distribute in the US

[0] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/mandatory_deposit.html

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It's one of those thing that's technically required, but that there's no enforcement allowed before a demand is made, and in practice is not enforced.

17 USC 407:

> (a)Except as provided by subsection (c), and subject to the provisions of subsection (e), the owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of publication in a work published in the United States shall deposit, within three months after the date of such publication— (1)two complete copies of the best edition; or (2)if the work is a sound recording, two complete phonorecords of the best edition, together with any printed or other visually perceptible material published with such phonorecords. Neither the deposit requirements of this subsection nor the acquisition provisions of subsection (e) are conditions of copyright protection.

Interesting. I've never heard of that.

So I stand corrected. (Sort of.) Apparently it's a very old provision. [1] It doesn't really make much sense in today's world. Read literally, almost anything you create--including online--must be sent to the LoC.

So, yes, it is a law on the books and maybe mainstream publishers comply with it. But But pretty much no one else does AFAIK.

[1] http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/need-know-copyright-...

Not necessarily, because it can be debated whether posting something on the internet really counts as publishing, and whether most internet content is original enough to be eligible for protection. A good example of people who are probably violating this law would be webcomic artists.

But I do think the world would be a better place if we added new legislation to require platforms to submit archives of their public content. Perhaps LoC should also be funded to scrape the web to capture smaller sites.

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