14 DAY TRIAL // The U.S. Copyright Office plans to do a favor to artists, in a program that allows them to go online to register certain works for copyright protection. The copyright policy scheduled to take effect in October would allow certain types of works to be "preregistered" for protection before they are released on the market. Its purpose is to discourage piracy of movies and other digital entertainment.
The problem is this generous program would mandate the use of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser.
And that's not fair, according to W3C. They say the effort is limiting the open use of World Wide Web.
Specialists argue that the U.S. Copyright Office is setting a bad precedent and should work with all browsers.
Copyright Office rushed into statements on that not being a favor for a certain company, but a logical choice based on the fact that Internet Explorer is being used by the large majority of computers users. And that's not even their decision, according to Julia Huff, Chief Operating Officer for the Copyright Office. Mrs. Huff stated that the company Siebel Systems Inc., which they hired to manage the registration system and database, could not guarantee that online forms to be filled-in would work using other browsers than Internet Explorer.
Apparently, there is no time left until the 24 October launch for the system to be altered.
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