[Ecommerce] W3C tells US Copyright Office: IE is not the only fruit

[Michelle Childs]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/25/w3c_browser_copyright/

W3C tells US Copyright Office: IE is not the only fruit
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Thursday 25th August 2005 15:25 GMT

The US Copyright Office wants to limit the number of browsers that can
submit online forms to its site. The agency has proposed that, temporarily
at least, it will accept copyright claims via forms submitted from only
Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers.

Perhaps it is just feeling very retro, but whatever the reason, the W3C is
not impressed, according to a report from InfoWorld.

In a letter to the Copyright Office, Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Weitzner,
W3C director and W3C technology and society domain leader respectively,
wrote: "The proposed system would be contrary to at least the spirit of
federal information policy adopted by the E-Government Act of 2002."

The office says that it does intend to be compatible with a wider variety
of browsers, such as Mozilla, Firefox and Safari. It said that it is
developing its systems using off-the-shelf Siebel Systems software which
has only been tested with IE and Netscape.

Julia Huff, the Copyright Office's COO said that the agency was under
tight time constraints as it is obliged to have a pre-registration system
up and running by 24 October. "It [our system] may work well with other
browsers, but they haven't tested those yet with the version of the Siebel
software we're using right now."

She went on to say that the agency plans to upgrade next year, to a
version of the Siebel software that does support other browsers.

Meanwhile, Berners-Lee and friends, called for a vendor neutral approach
from the agency, and warned that single browser compatibility would
restrict access to the agency's services. Many MacOS, Linux and Unix users
wouldn't be able to access the service, and disabled users could also have
difficulties, Berners-Lee said. =AE



--
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