Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Office: Everyone Uses MSIE, Right?
richardtallent writes "Tim Bray caught that the United States Copyright Office's upcoming copyright pre-registration web application apparently only works with Internet Explorer, and they are seeking written comments from anyone who might have a problem being forced to use IE. Slashdotters, start your snail-mail."
Yeah, right.
No, no, the reason they want you to make 5 copies of the letter is because they want to distribute it to 5 different people and they don't want to get caught copying it themselves in case you have copyrighted it.
The article doesn't make it very clear what this is talking about, but here's what I've pieced together from the various links:
* "The ART Act amends section 408 of the Copyright Act to add a new subparagraph (f), which directs the Register of Copyrights to allow reregistration for any work that is in a class of works that the
Register determines has had a history of infringement prior to authorized commercial distribution."
In other words, if in danger of infringement, you can register your copyright in advance. (Remember that under U.S. (and many others) law, you HAVE copyright from the moment of creation, but REGISTERING lets the government know. I'm guessing from context that they normally only let you register upon publication.
So this is enacting a law to let studios sue more easily when their movies get pirated on day 0.
Later:
* "Therefore, this notice seeks information whether any potential preregistration filers would have difficulties using Internet Explorer (version 5.1 or higher) to file preregistration claims, and if so, why. More generally, in the interest of achieving support for browsers in the Office's preregistration processing environment, this notice inquires whether (and why) an eligible party who anticipates preregistering a claim on the electronic-only form will not be able to use Internet Explorer to do so, or will choose not to preregister if it is necessary to use Internet Explorer."
So: Unless you are someone who is going to file one of these, they don't care about your comments. Slashdotting the postal system isn't likely to get a response. (Of course, they COULD respond to the comments anyway, but they aren't asking for them)
Because even the government doesn't trust the government.
Nice Marmot
From the federal register link in the /. article:
"Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect. Present users of these browsers may experience problems when filing claims."
It doesn't seem that they plan on restricting usage to IE users only, and in fact sounds more like they have the position, "it might work on firefox, but we haven't tested it."
Do you have to say that you're using Linux? Just say something like "I use the Firefox web browser which currently holds 10% of the browser market. I feel that it's important the U.S. government support at least the top two web browsers on its web sites as this will promote free market competition in this area."
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
it comes pre-installed in OS X
Not anymore it doesn't. At least it didn't with my copy of Tiger, and I did a default installation.