Thanks for bringing this up, Harry; I've been looking at these rules recently, and they're fascinating. (Must remember to tell Discordian friends to flood the copyright office with unregistered flyers, pamphlets and zines.)
Quote:
Published Electronic Works Available Only Online
Effective February 24, 2010, the Copyright Office adopted an
interim regulation governing mandatory deposit of electronic
works published in the United States and available
only online. The regulation establishes that online-only
works are exempt from mandatory deposit until the Copyright
Office issues a demand for deposit of copies or phonorecords
of such works.
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Hmm. It doesn't say ebooks are exempt--only that things
only published online are exempt. Another spot in the document says things that are published only electronically are exempt; I'd need to see the actual ruling/Library-of-Congress law to know which is correct. Not everything published electronically is only published online; I've known electronic publications that were transferred to flash drives. (Not many, and the more-than-five-copies rule excludes most of them.)
It occurs to me that most club newsletters, fanzines, conference program books, and company memos would fall afoul of this rule. (Do they really want an archive of two copies of every greeting card printed in the US? Seems like it's really a waste of taxes to ask for such things if they're just going to be thrown out.)
They're closed now; I'm going to try calling the copyright office in the morning to find out if that rule really means what it seems to--and if not, where we can find the *actual* rule.