Back in April, Congress passed the Family Entertainment Copyright Act and as a result, by October 24th, a copyright preregistration system must be in place and is slated to launch on schedule. Because of the time table for launch however, it will only be available in Internet Explorer (IE).
In a recent letter to CNET, Julia Huff, COO of the U.S. Copyright Office said, “Other browsers may work well with the version we are using now, but they have not been tested. Because of our tight schedule and resources, we cannot do that testing now.”
The premise behind the law is to stop the unauthorized release of materials tied to unpublished creative works. A good example might be early photos or artwork tide to a movie that had been preregistered. It’s a protection measure for intellectual properties.
There has been quite a bit of debate over this choice. According to ZDNet, W3Schools said that while IE owns about two-thirds of the browser market, Firefox owns 19%. A version for Netscape and IE is will be ready in October. They did state that a Firefox version will be available when the roll out their new version next year. Industry watchers suggest that this greatly reduces consumer choice, regardless of intent.
Huff did state though that, “There was, and is, no intent to endorse a particular vendor.”
Regardless of intent or what others may say, IE is still dominates all others in total market share. Most users use IE. The Copyright folks were looking for the fastest, most widely used browser and IE is it.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
