Wall-E wrote:
'Publishing' has a legal definition in the law.
Posting on the web does not fit within that narrow definition.
Wall-E is quite the legal Eagle; very few people realize that posting on the web does not necessarily constitute "publication" in the context of copyright law. The copyright office refuses to take a position. My own position is that it depends on the context and purpose of the posting.
Here's an interesting few words from a site with a lot of legal info, which also clarifies the 3-month grace period:
Unfortunately, there is no consensus yet on whether posting a work online qualifies as a legal publication. The Copyright Office has refused to offer an opinion. Some people think posting online qualifies as publication because it allows multiple people in multiple locations to view the work at the same time, which is analogous to print publication. Also, in fact your computer technically makes a copy of the work when it displays the web page.
Once a work is online, it is very easy for viewers to make printouts of the work, which is also creating a copy. However, the law is clear that unauthorized copying does not count as a legal publication. Therefore, if you post your work with a copyright notice (and, for good measure, a clear statement that it may not be copied without your permission), theres a good argument that you have not made copies of your work available to the public, and thus your posting is not a legal publication.
So in the final analysis, you can decide whether you consider your online posting to be a legal publication. The advantage to calling it published comes in the registration process.
Normally, if you register your copyright before an infringement happens, that prior registration entitles you to collect statutory damages and your attorneys fees. If you wait until after the infringement occurs to register, you dont qualify for those extra remedies. That makes it harder to go after the infringer (their risk upon being found liable is less, so your bargaining power to stop infringement and get paid for it is less). (See Legalities 1)
However, for published works, there is an exception to this rule. The law provides a 3-month grace period: if you register a published work within 3 months after the date it was published, you would still be entitled to statutory damages and attorneys fees even if the infringement happened before you registered.
As we know, works can be copied instantly as soon as they go online. So, it is often more advantageous to register your online works as published works that way you get the 3-month grace period to register them and still get full protection.
Much of copyright law is straightforward, but this issue of what constitutes publication is not. Now you see why I try to register BEFORE any possible publication, i.e., before the works leave my computer. Or if there is possible publication, then I register within the 3-month window and give the date of "publication" on the registration paperwork.