Comments on: Comment time extended on Copyright Office mandatory deposit rules http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/comment-time-extended-on-copyright-office-mandatory-deposit-rules/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:00:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Steve Jordan http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/comment-time-extended-on-copyright-office-mandatory-deposit-rules/comment-page-1/#comment-1145496 Steve Jordan Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:09:24 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/?p=29177#comment-1145496 Based on what I've read of the notice, this new regulation is about making life easy for the Library of Congress, which is not presently equipped to handle digital documents (mainly databases, but they have decided to lump all digital documents into the same pile). It's certainly no aid to content owners, who can just as easily send a digital document to the LoC as publish it online: Since you still have to file for copyright, and as far as I can tell, to pay for it when you file, you might as well send the document (the one exception being online databases, which are not quite as easy to encapsulate for archiving use). Not that I want to bury LoC under a workload they can't handle, but I think they should make the effort to separate online databases from other electronic documents and provide individual guidelines for their archiving, and continue to require deposit of other digital documents with a filing. Then they can work out how to archive databases as their resources, and the technology, allow. Based on what I’ve read of the notice, this new regulation is about making life easy for the Library of Congress, which is not presently equipped to handle digital documents (mainly databases, but they have decided to lump all digital documents into the same pile). It’s certainly no aid to content owners, who can just as easily send a digital document to the LoC as publish it online: Since you still have to file for copyright, and as far as I can tell, to pay for it when you file, you might as well send the document (the one exception being online databases, which are not quite as easy to encapsulate for archiving use).

Not that I want to bury LoC under a workload they can’t handle, but I think they should make the effort to separate online databases from other electronic documents and provide individual guidelines for their archiving, and continue to require deposit of other digital documents with a filing. Then they can work out how to archive databases as their resources, and the technology, allow.

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