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US Copyright Office Considering MSIE-only website
wikinerd writes "The United States Copyright Office asks whether you would have any problem if you were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work via their website. The Norwegian government recently said no to proprietary formats, but it seems that the US government sites should be informed about the existence of non-Microsoft Web browsers, such as Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. I have written a letter about this issue, which is posted on my blog for everyone to copy and base on it their own response. If they see how many people use alternative browsers, they'll probably reconsider and stay within the W3C standards."
From TFA:
"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."
So support for other browsers is already planned. I imagine that if enough people complain about it starting out as only IE, they will just postpone this preregistration plan until they have the other browser support ready. All that does is make people who want to use IE wait longer.
Stupid.
Hahaha, I kid, I kid.
I find it extremely interesting that the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software. Not to mention allowing ONLY their software, they are ensuring that any user who wants to visit their site also must "pay" Microsoft, thus even further contributing to the "monopoly".
I would have thought that if the government was under the impression that Microsoft was a monopoly (true or not), they would have taken steps to help prevent adding to that situation, and support a different browser for their site, or *gasp* don't require *ANY* browser, but rather just design it to be functionally usable by any W3C compliant browser. Add in the 508 compliance for web accessbility, and you can't go wrong.
Government, make up your mind.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Just stick to the standards, then all browsers will be able to access it.
Haha aHahaHaha HahaHaha
HahaHahaHa
haHahaHahaHahaHah
aHahaHahaHahaHahaHahaHahaHaha
etc.
Get the EULA T-shirt
Browsers should support HTML. Websites should be written in HTML.
These are not fundamentally architecturally different pieces of equipment. If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
I have a big problem with "protest form letters". On the surface it seems like a pretty good idea. Get a lot of people mobilized using an easy to duplicate form and get your collective voice heard by those in power. However, the reality is more likely to favor individually written letters that express original sentiment, or at the very least an original statement of a widely-held sentiment.
Yes, it's bad that the copyright office wants to make the website IE-only. But look at their reasons, try to address their reasons without sounding condescending and elitist or like a victim of some huge crime. Better yet, get involved in your local politics and make a real difference in your government.
There are many ways to make political hay. Sending form letters to your representatives is, in my opinion, one of the least productive methods of making your voice heard.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Don't let them make the mistake.
Write an intelligent and well-informed comment to:
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400
My blog
It'd be easier to respond to their question if they posted an estimated date for when other browsers will be supported.
First, this is the Copyright Office, not the Patent Office.
Second, they're not looking for, nor will they likely accept, arguments along the lines of "single-standards are dangerous". And they claim that Firefox and Safari standards are planned for the future. So you need to give them a good reason, now, not to do this.
What are such good reasons?
Well, for one, preregistration is for copyrighted works that "have a history of pre-release infringement". And, as a publisher in such a field, there's no way in hell you're going to expose that information to known security risks, such as MSIE. It's like starting an antitheft service for cars likely to be stolen, then requiring the owners to leave the cars in an unguarded lot with the keys in the ignition.
Likewise, you can argue that no ultra-secure, enterprise-critical information, such as copyright pre-registration data, resides on any machine capable of running MSIE. Again, it's an issue of security. Denying this service to all but MSIE users effectively removes it from all except those who really need it.
Now all you need is someone willing to fire off a letter in sextuplicate.
ID Number: G00125170, "Design Web Applications for Standards, Not for Browsers", (2 March 2005)
Without a deadline, it can easily get pushed back and back, until they can say it's working fine with IE only; why bother?
"If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401 of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows: Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays in processing receipt of such deliveries."
..."
Which is French for...
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Why is it web designers aren't expected to achieve the same level of competency as any other professional? All I ever hear is how hard it would be to make a site cross compatible.
Well, you know what? Tough shit. Life's hard all around. Let me tell you some day about the vpn solution I had to implement across a dialup link. Oh yeah, and it had to support a full sql application. Any other professional is expected to show, you know, *professionalism* in their field.
Not web designers tho. They expect to be coddled, and allowed to half ass it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Unbelievably, it's not. Have ever talked to these developers? They do it on purpose, because they think it looks good. Not because it causes problems. They like the scrollbar colours to match the colour scheme they have for the website. The fact that it's hard to spot the scrollbars is irrelevant - same as using microscopic font sizes - they just tell you to "get glasses, grandpa".
Anyway, Konqueror applies those scrollbar styles as well, so it doesn't just affect Internet Explorer.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
When you write, remember to include five copies plus an original.
(For some reason, they require that "if sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to...")
As covered on Groklaw, this is due to the fact that the Copyright Office is using an old version of Seibel CRM.
Opinion:
Of course, why they'd use some substandard MS-only piece of garbage is beyond me, but it's not because they were actively looking to cut out non-MS people...just someone suggested a crappy product and standardized on it.
Nothing new.
Uhm... Doesn't Section 508 HTML/design standard make it ILLEGAL for a government web site to not follow the standard?
Section 508 has all sorts of stuff that goes beyond W3C to include formatting, layout, table naming, etc. to ensure that a web site is easily browsable by non-sighted users' browser tools. (i.e. Lynx-like)
They can't do what they are saying they want to do without breaking the law.
(It's not that hard to make a compliant web site, you just need to work it in the process from the beginning.)
- Most web designers aren't programmers or even that techincal. They can see that there is a problem if they test with other browsers, but have no idea how to fix it.
- This is because fiding out how different elements behave in different browsers is incredibly difficult.
- As an example, I found after many hours of frustration that when using nested tables, IE will only size properly when each row element is sized where as netscape will enforce the widest size
- I looked and looked for examples or explanations and found nothing but I was determined to make sure the site worked cross browser.
- So I get it all done, test it in Opera, and guess what, the fucking fonts are not taking styles. Great.
- This leads me to stating that people who write browsers interpret the standards in different ways, making life difficult for web site designers.
- I have stopped sending webmasters emails pointing out that I won't visit thier IE only site and I point out the problems and I eithger get ignored or flamed. I haven't sent in a complaint in years and won't.
- I can tell you from a corporate point of view that as long as people don't complain about non-compliance, the PHBs assume that as long as there are no complaints, then all is well.
- Many of the books and other resources on HTML and web design blather on about non-essential issues and many of the browser compatablity charts are woefully out of date. Yet adding yet another chart or tutorial is pointless because you won't find it in the morass of bad information.
So I can't completely beleive that all web designers are inept. And to be frank, it's eaiser and more cost effective to design for one browser than all of them. Now don't tell me about how great standards are, I am a believer, but I also know that having a deep knowledege of IE and ActiveX will allow designers to do more, easily.And they should. Why release something half-@$$ed that works in some browsers and not others? It means they'll make their page in Frontpage and then change things until it works in other browsers- it's a hack job.
Please- Planned means nothing. It means it might be months out when it makes no sense. I can understand Google Toolbar coming out late for Firefix (it's a whole new program), but this is HTML that should display in all browsers.
And a large part of patents is (supposed to be) fairness to all parties. I shouldn't have to go find a Windows machine with IE to hog for a few hours and transfer all my documents over to paste into their Web form. It's something I should be able to do right away. If I can't do it, nobody should be able to (in this case). Otherwise it gives some people *cough* M$ *cough* an advantage on Patents.
Though I'm not a fan of that guy's letter. He touts lists of acronyms like CSS, XHTML, IE, OSX, etc that the developers would know but the _managers_ won't. A simple:
"Internet Explorer, while being used by the majority of Web users, is not used by all Web users. This is in favour of countless browsers (some of which are listed below) which offer considerable advantages to non-Windows users (Mac, Linux) as well as Windows users who are looking for superior alternates to Microsoft's Web browser. Statistics on the number of users utilizing each browser are available at http://..../ Please do not underestimate the 10% of hundreds of millions of US and foreign Web users who choose to utilize alternate technologies. It is unfair to provide an advantage to Windows/Internet Explorer users over others, when it is entirely unnecessary. All Web browsers support standards, such as those set by w3c (http://www.w3c.org/ which your developers should build their Web site to conform to rather than utilize proprietary methods exclusive to IE.
Simple, to the point, doesn't tout acronyms and explains most of them when it does. References a statistic, and really emphasizes the number of people affected and how common they are.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
In other news, Microsoft filed a patent today for an "Interface for accessing an online database of patents".
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
But how many of you have ever registered a copyright? If you haven't, isn't it a little disingenuous to write to the Copyright Office complaining?
I'm seeing a lot of comments demanding plain-jane HTML, and denying that it costs anything to support multiple browsers, because you just check for "standards compliance". I used to think this. It's completely wrong today. Many web applications today have rich interfaces approaching desktop apps. Getting them to work cross-browser is damn hard. It is definitely worth doing for a mass-market thing like gmail, but for a niche site used by a handful of attorneys? Hard to justify.
Of course, the rich interface is probably not needed or justified in this governmental site.
The problem is not solvable by standards compliance, at least in the automatable sense. You can have CSS that passes validation, looks fine in IE, and piles things on top of each other in other browsers.
It is not just the copyright office.
At the level of state abd county governments I'd say that over 80% have problems if you don't run Microsoft products. Most give you Word documents, and assume you are running I.E., usually with Flash.
At least one state University, when confronted on this issue said (and I quote) "Most computers are PC's, and if someone runs some off brand machine instead, they should just buy a PC like the rest of the world"
This statement has so many misconceptions I didn't even respond to it.
I read the notice, and, seeing they didn't have an official email address or Webmail site to submit comments, called them.
./, and that she now understood why I'd said that if they had an email address for comments, their server would have crashed....
I then spoke to one of the lawyers.
She tells me that
- this spring, Congress mandated that they set up to do this "preregistration" business online by late October;
- that they're funded mostly by registration fees, unlike the patent office, and so do not have a huge budge;
- they're, ahhh, somewhat behind the curve on technology (quote from nice person: "I won't say neanderthal, but..."), and
- the department that's implementing this (direct quote) "will guarantee that the forms will work with IE, but won't guarantee that it will work with other browsers."
I explained how, though I am very much not a Macaholic, most of the artists I have read of or know personally use Macs, which would preclude them from using this system. I also pointed out that not a single Website that takes your credit card requires IE.
She and I had a nice conversation, and she requested that I send the letter w/ five copies. So, folks, send the letters, ASAP.
mark
PS I told her, at the end, that I'd heard of this on slashdot, and her response indicated that she may have heard of
And make sure you do RTFA because it says that 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. Meaning this is a temporary problem, albiet a needless one.
If it's Siebel powered, the site will probably be Windows-only even when it supports more browsers. Last time I encountered Siebel, it used an ActiveX control in the browser. That is really a bigger story than what browsers they support this week.
Netscape can use the IE renderer... This is why they say they can support it. New Netscape is just IE in sheeps clothing. Therefor, as a result, the content in question would still be IE only.
From the article:
At this point in the process of developing the Copyright Office's system for online preregistration, it is not entirely clear whether the system will be compatible with web browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 5.1 and higher. Filers of preregistration applications will be able to employ these Internet Explorer browsers successfully. 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.
Translation:
Yeah, we know that we're supposed to provide uniform access and all that, but those stupid hack developers went and built an IE only site. Now we're staring down a government mandated deadline and there's no way we can fix it fast enough. We're kind of fucked at this point, so we'd better bite the bullet and come clean. Lets see if we can marginalize the issue as we do it, then we kill two birds with one stone and maybe even keep our jobs.
So, um, yeah... this has nothing to do with Netscapes IE renderer. Nice try though.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Here is a possible letter body that is less tendentious than that linked in the article.
--
Dear Copyright Office:
I am responding to your August 4 notice on Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims (37 CFR Part 202 [Docket No. RM 2005-9]), in which you ask whether potential preregistrants will unable or unwilling to use Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher with the new electronic form. I am one of an estimated 20% of browser users who does not use Internet Explorer.
I understand that the problem is that you will not be able to upgrade to Siebel 7.8 in time for the October 24 launch, and that Siebel 7.7 offers inadequate guarantees of multiple browser support. I understand that you plan to offer multiple browser support "in the future".
I commend your for developing an electronic form and allowing preregistration. However your announcement of this implementation limitation is worrisome for three reasons.
- You do not identify the source of the limitation. If the electronic form will be compliant with modern web standards (http://www.w3.org/) but will not have been fully tested with other browsers, that is a minor concern. In this case there is high likelihood that all modern browsers will work with the site. If on the other hand the electronic form will actively block other browsers or will contain IE specific code in violation of web standards, this is a larger concern.
- You do not explicitly address section 508 compliance, which as I understand it is a legal requirement upon the Copyright Office. http://www.section508.gov/ It is hard to understand how section 508 compliant website would be unusable with essentially any modern browser.
- You do not identify a time frame for removal of this limitation. If you will fix things in a few weeks, fewer users will be affected than if you will take a couple years.
OMGWTF!!! U = N00BS!!!1 F1r3f0x pwns IE.
K BYE..
gg
Your Name.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?