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The Ability to Register Groups of Unpublished Works May Be Limited by New Copyright Regulations

Last week, the Authors Guild submitted comments to the Copyright Office on its new proposed regulation that would limit the number of unpublished works that can be registered together as one group (and therefore with one application fee) to five.

There is currently no limit on the number of works that can be registered together as one group—as long as they are all unpublished and put in some order as a “collection.” The types of written works that will be most affected by this proposed limitation are poems, emails, and unpublished blogs and articles—including many of those that are posted online but are not “published” in hard copies.

In our comments, we strenuously objected to the proposed limit and also addressed the need for a clear and up-to-date definition of what “unpublished” means in the online environment. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Association of Garden Communicators, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Songwriters Guild of America Inc. also signed onto our comments.

Read our comments below.

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