My stupid script has ie problem

Hello. I hate ie. I have a stupid script that works in mozilla but not in ie. I get that document.bill.message is null or not an object. Have i done something wrong?

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function textCounter() {
alert(document.bill.message.value.length);
}
</script>

<form action="smsf2.php" method="POST" name="bill">
<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" class="contentfont">
<tr bgcolor="FFFF66"><td>tt</td></tr> <tr><td>
<textarea name="message" rows="3" cols="60"
onKeyDown="textCounter();"
onKeyUp="textCounter();">
</textarea>
</table>
<br>
<input type=submit name=proceed value="Send SMS">
</form>

Well if your script is stupid... its likely that it does not work correctly :o . Btw the script loooks ok.. browser problems are the most common problems. There are lots of websites were you can compare the possibilities of Mozilla and Ie. Try google or microsoft.com

It seems to work fine for me in IE.