I got a little peeved by this
news on Slashdot stating that the Library of Congress Copyright Office was going to mandate MS Explorer form submissions for preregistration of copyrights.
When I attempted to contact the Copyright Office via their "Contact Us" email form, I got this reply:
"We have received an email from you regarding the
proposed rulemaking on electronic-only preregistration.
The comments you submitted cannot be considered because
they were in the form of email. As the instructions in
the Copyright Office's Federal Register notice state,
comments can be delivered to the Copyright Office by the
following means:
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. "
What is this crap?!? Lets see, it's been how long since Federal agencies have had to figure out how to deal with electronic comments as opposed to paper? 12 years? And how much would be saved if comments were in electronic form only?
I had an earlier, equally frustrating experience trying to comment on an INS case last fall and then trying to copy my Congressional representatives in on the email reply:
- The response from INS came in the form of a .GIF!
- The only way to contact my Congressional representatives was a text-only entry form on their House and Senate websites: no way to cc them on the original email, and certainly no way to include both the .gif image and the email wrapper with RFC822 information.
I gave up then, but now, I think I'm pissed enough to make this an issue.
It's been a problem for a long time and I think it's about time that the Feds figure out a standard way to deal with electronic comments and input. This is a fundamental issue of democracy in the 21st century and whether or not we need or want public input on issues of public policy.