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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-...

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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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