Friday, February 21, 2003

Crummy UCITA Legislation is Back

By John C. Dvorak

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the American Bar Association refused to endorse the horrible Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA), which is designed to standardize the total legality of rigid licenses for software and more. The bad news is that the promoters of this vile law are still at it, hoping that a long-term push will win out because a fickle public loses interest over time. Many of the anti-UCITA Web sites, for example, are suffering from a failure to update and will soon be offline or ridiculously out of date due to fatigue and boredom.

UCITA is seen by most critics as an onerous end run around the legal system so software companies can do whatever they want without fear of any legal action whatsoever. Here is a good FAQ on it http://ucita.com/what_faq.html from a very credible group. And for a good argument try this site http://www.badsoftware.com/nondisc.htm. Good, but dated.

Only two states have, stupidly, passed this law—Maryland and Virginia—and the law they passed incorporated earlier wacky provisos that could make it illegal to review or criticize software! This, to me, is incredible. I always thought the people of Virginia and Maryland were some of the smartest in the nation, but this sure proves me wrong.


In an attempt to get this moronic legislation passed in the rest of the country, the promoters have softened a number of provisions, hoping they can turn the tide. The new changes, made at the beginning of 2002, included, among other things, a softening of the wording that made software reviews illegal. The perpetrators also gave up on the notion that there's no problem with software companies remotely going into your computer and disabling software and possibly anything else they want if they think you're a pirate. And the controversial edict against reverse engineering was only softened enough to allow limited reverse engineering for cross-platform compatibility.…
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,890836,00.asp

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