Grrrrrr US Copyright office Luddites

[archipirata]

Going through my checklist as I near completion of my Venice book and copyright submission will still need to be done. I have already registered all of the images but the book will be a separate submission of its own. So I check the Copyright Office website to see if there is anything additional I need to know and find the following in regards to electronic "non-physical" publication. "The deposit regulations of the Copyright Office do not specifically address works transmitted online. Until the regulations are amended, and under the authority granted the Copyright Office by 37 C.F.R. 202.20©(2)(viii), the Office will require the deposit of one of the following:

"Option 1: a computer disk (clearly labeled with the title and author) containing the entire work and in addition, representative portions of the authorship being registered in a format that can be examined by the Office (printout, audiocassette, or videotape). .."

and

"Option 2: a reproduction of the entire work, regardless of length."

So I have to send them a disk with representative print pages or print out all pages which is impossible as many are interactive and change with user input. In this day and age, I find it hard to believe that you need to submit paper for an electronic document. I understand that there are a myriad of formats and they can't take them all but you should be able to submit a representative PDF of the necessary pages. Good grief, holy crap, pass the Tylenol.

Oh yeah, there is another option, you can send them a printout of the file code. Sheesh.

[M>B>]

ISBN number, yes even for e-books.

http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.asp

[archipirata]

Yeah, I think ISBN is a scam to keep people from self publishing. If you buy 1000 they're $1 each, if you want one, it's $125. I went ahead and got 10 when I got mine because it was 1/125 or 10/250. I figure I'll be publishing something in the future so I got them. You can't get a book or ebook sold without one.

[eustacetilley]

Um, I think that the Copyright office should be _more_ Luddite. (Please hear me out before evisceration...)

The big elephant in the room is plagiarism. It happens everywhere, even here. (I'm guilty of this myself; often I will give a fragment of a quote or song without proper attribution.) Plagiarism is why copyright _exists_.

If I was King Of Copyright, not only would I request a physical form, but it would have to be delivered in person, with an official ID.

Also:
"So I have to send them a disk with representative print pages or print out all pages which is impossible as many are interactive and change with user input."

I don't see how something that hasn't been created yet can be copyrighted, without written releases and any other number of legal means. A word or phrase can be trademarked, the means of interaction could possibly be patented. But I find it disturbing that under the terms of this discussion, I could beat you to the office and copyright now anything that archipirata may possibly produce in the future.


Eustace (Possibly a trademarked name in my case, but I've given the New Yorker all sorts of credit in previous posts.)

[mrlynn]

First of all, there is copyright, and copyright registration—not the same thing. Anything you create is protected under copyright, whether or not you register it. But, as the Copyright Office will tell you, registration offers a much greater measure of protection, so it's worth doing.

Second, is submitting a "computer disk" an onerous requirement? I should think a CD or DVD containing a PDF printout would suffice.

A larger question is how you register an 'interactive' work that changes with user input. I would guess that the part you own is the framework that the end user gets, not the product after it's been modified by a user.

/Mr Lynn