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In response to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Authors Alliance has submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office in support of the mandatory deposit of electronic-only books.

The U.S. Copyright Act requires the mandatory deposit of all works published in the United States within three months of publication for inclusion in the Library of Congress (subject to the Copyright Office’s ability to exclude certain classes of works from this requirement). In 2010, the Copyright Office issued an interim rule to exempt works published only in electronic form from the mandatory deposit requirement. The Copyright Office now proposes to revise its regulations to make the interim rule final, and to make electronic-only books published in the United States subject to mandatory deposit only in response to an affirmative demand from the Copyright Office.

Authors Alliance believes that making mandatory deposit of electronic-only books dependent on an affirmative demand by the Copyright Office is only the first step to fulfilling the promise of a Library of Congress that preserves and provides access to a rich, diverse, and enduring source of knowledge and creativity. While recognizing the technological challenges of mandatory deposit of electronic-only books, our comment nonetheless encourages the Copyright Office to consider mandatory deposits of all electronic-only books in the future for the benefit of authors and readers.

As our comment states: “Mandatory deposit requirements serve the long-term interests of authors by ensuring that their creative and intellectual legacies are preserved. These requirements also facilitate access to authors’ works, improving chances that these works will be discovered and reach the audiences for which they were intended.”

The full text of the comment may be read below, or click here to download the document: