Slashdot

hes got the right idea. we have many end-users that really lack the skills to respectably own a machine, but do anyway... and their rights are as good as ours. surely we cannot throw away "oss's greatest gift" for them... it all boils down to the need for linux for the masses. get that down, and have this put a major disadvantage to using commercial softs, and open source will win out much sooner then it was first predicted.

Anyone stupid enough to buy software under those terms deserves exactly what they get.

That means anyone who is using commercial software. While it might be good for open source in the long run, it still hurts a lot of innocent people in the short run.

While I agree 100% with your intention, in the end I think it won't make that much of a difference (at least that example):

1. People from outside the US have no restriction on reverse engineering the format. They can then release the results as open source to the benefit of the entire community. (Of course, I don't know if it would be legal, but it seems like a reasonable loophole).
   
2. Isn't MS Word going to an XML format? That, hopefully, would be easily reverse engineerable. (I can see it now...MSXML, oh wait, that already exists :)
   
3. Civil disobedience. I know that I will disobey unjust laws such as these. I'm sure many millions more will as well.
   

Never underestimate the power of the individual

Anything that is "xxx-compatible" was created through reverse engineering. Do you think Microsoft published the format of Word files, to help their competitors be "Word-compatible"? People had to reverse-engineer it.

Not to defend MS, but this is actually false. Microsoft does publish it's binary file formats for all of the Office suite on its msdn web site (the Word 97 format is at link [microsoft.com] and display the TOC). And, before you say that you have to pay for it, that's wrong, too. It is available without a membership to the MSDN. Now that I've said that, I read a passage that makes the file format a little less "open". "To access data within a Word binary file, the file must be opened using the OLE 2.0 docfile APIs, and it must be read with the appropriate docfile APIs." So, it is dependent on the openness of the OLE 2.0 docfile APIs.

Anyway. Microsoft has always claimed that all of their APIs are open. I don't believe them, because WINE has not been completed and has very smart people working on it. There are undocumented APIs. Theoretically, it should have been able to create WINE without reverse engineering. Microsoft knows that even if they publish their APIs, few companies have the resources to duplicate them quickly enough to cause concern (if Corel writes an import feature 3 months after Office XX comes out, that's 3 months that Microsoft has had to sell Office XX without a compatible competitor).

I don't know if the SMB protocol is published at all. I think the Samba team does reverse engineering, but that may just be to optimize (not to do basic implementation).

No it doesn't make sense. The SAMBA developers are already known to use reverse-engineering to figure out NT's network protocols. You could find this out by reading trade publications, Linux web sites, etc. Why would a computer have to announce "Here's what user X is doing"? If reverse-engineering becomes illegal, that throws SAMBA's legal status into question, period. That would make any business gun-shy of going near SAMBA.

Why does no one in a place to actually have an effect on this (Congress, Legislatures, Courts) ask this?

Simple. They're either stupid or corrupt.

Umm... Samba originated in Australlia...

Sorry if this is a repeat, I browse at 2...

The ACLU [aclu.org] helps defend matters relating to civil rights.

This, IMHO, is indeed a violation of basic rights, not the least of which is freedom of speech. This bill allows organizations to, among other things, dictate and enforce regulations regarding "proper use" of their software. That means that Microsoft (for example) could say "you are not allowed to use Word to disparage Microsoft" and shut down your license if you do. Given the fact that most people don't read their EULA's, items of this nature can and will appear.

Another effective tack would be to vote with your money. Educate your employer about the dangers of using UCITA-protected software and suggest free or non-UCITA alternatives. It sounds to me from the nature of this bill that would merely allow EULA's to contain clauses allowing things such as remote shutdown -- if product EULA's don't include this clause, then UCITA is ineffective. Simply put, if it's UCITA, don't buy it.

Also, take the time to let vendors know that you will not purchase any software from them if it is protected under UCITA.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer (IANAL), nor a lawmaker -- my interpretations are subject to error. Further, I am human... :P

Posted by the Proteus

As I see it this can only be good news for the Open Source movement. If it passes then IT professionals will begin looking for cheaper solutions. If it doesn't pass it still will raise enough hype to make the Open Source concept so much more appealing.

I might be missing something obvious (I am up past my bedtime, afterall), but it seems to me that nothing could be better for the alt-OS market (Linux, FreeBSD, Be, etc) then for this bill to pass. When people are angry at a provider of a good or service, they tend not to use/purchase their product. Not to mention the large number of markets that this kind of action could lock out for a company that actually used this functionality ... heh, and you don't think Microsoft hasn't already drafted up a new end user license.

The advantage for the Open Source folk (who I am partial to -- Debian all the way!! -- ) is obvious. This legislation doesn't change the way Open Source products work in the least. So OSes like Linux will be able to carry on as if nothing had happened. Other OSes, like Be, which is not based on an OSS model, have a couple of different options. They can either try to use the law to their advantage and perhaps make a few extra dollars in the short run before they see their customer base dwindle to zero, or they can change their license to explicitly state that they will not utilize the powers given by the legislation. This could then, of course, become the centerpiece of a powerful marketing scheme.

Such a marketing scheme would quite possibly be very effective. Just how mad do you think the average American will be when his copy of Microsoft whatever just up and quits, leaving a nice little bit about sending a check to such and such address if they want to continue to use Microsoft whatever. And then you have the people who have put a second morgage on their house so they could buy Office 2000, and because of either some dolt at a control panel in the hallowed halls of Redmond or a bug in the auto-shutdown software their copy of Word shuts down right as they're putting their finishing touches on that big report that was due in yesterday. It won't be too long before the general public starts to get extremely fed up and begin to look for alternate solutions to their computing problems.

Then there is the whole governmental angle. Do you actually think that the government would allow software to be used in the offices of Congressmen and Senators that could be remotely shut off by some third party. While I don't think the suits at the Capital building are the most computer savvy blokes around, all it would take is either one incident or a buzz about what would happen to peoples' jobs if such an incident were allowed to happen. And who do you think the government would turn to? OS/2? Be? I doubt it. With such legislation in place, their only option would be to go with a form of OSS based software, which is immune to the ramifications of this legislation.

Of course all of this is pure late-night speculation on my part, fueled by a boiler loaded to capacity with 'what ifs', but I just don't see how this legislation could be anything but bad for any commercial software company. Americans will put up with a lot and turn a blind eye to many things, but there does exist a threshold, and once it is crossed things can get very ugly. And I also realize that I've been portraying this like Microsoft would be the only company who would use this legislation to their financial benefit, and while this would certainly not be the case, I think when people read about this law the spooks up at Redmond are the first group of undesireables that come into mind.

You got to wonder where Microsoft's PR people have gone. Public opinion may not matter much in the short term, but if enough of the public hates you, life can be very very difficult. Good press helped Microsoft immensely when they were fighting 'Big Blue' ... have they forgotten that, or have they just ceased to care. I'm not sure which timebomb would cause the most damange.

Well, to anyone that has gotten this far, sorry I've burnt up so much of your time with my frivilous surmising, but hopefully you found some small pieces somewhat interesting and/or mildly entertaining.

If you set your machine up to respond automaticly, and documented it in /etc/issue or a web page or something, you could claim it's a 'service, freely available to anyone who does such and such', and if a script kiddie sets it off and gets burnt, that's their problem. Particularly if you warn against misuse in the documentation. Of course, this all hinges on the fact that they shouldn't be misusing your system, and should have read the documentation.

No. UCITA is a step in the wrong direction. It outlaws reverse engineering. It makes EULAs enforceable.

The tighter they squeeze, the more justification they have for squeezing tighter. Don't count on them going too far, seeing the error of their ways, and then swinging them back.

think of it as war. every battle counts.

information is free.
the only question is:

UCITA sounds like a fair law to me...and i could
really care less, i don't use any software that
has such restrictive licenses that would need to
be recalled in such a manner.

also, how do companies plan to remotly shut down
their products? i don't see how you can't just
undo what ever they do to disable it (edit windows
registry, reinstall software, block w/ firewall),
of course, this would be piracy i guess, since
you're no longer authorized to use the
software...but if you break the license, even w/o
UCITA, couldn't MS just call you up and demand you
stop using Micosoft Foo '99?

Instead, kill a million birds with one stone by replacing all career politicians by community delegates with strict 1-year tenures, rather like doing jury duty, requiring all laws to take 2 years to be voted in, and banning all access to government by external lobbies.

Then, stupid delegates wouldn't matter, nobody would have time to build up a power base which is the root of all corruption in politics, and there would be far fewer stupid laws passed because the absence of lobby power would mean that delegates would only create laws if the topic interested them and hence if they knew something about it from their previous occupation.

But hey, obviously that won't happen, so we're stuck with a totally assanine political system. Don't worry about it. Nanotech is just around the corner, and then everything will change.

Fortunately good cryptography is rare. A secure key exchange would be unlikely to break. I have more ideas on how to make it impossible to break secure cryptography, but I won't post 'em here for fear "they" might implement it. Just say I've seen it done in research.

I meant to say "I have more ideas on how to make a software distribution system that's impossible to break with secure cryptography" but somehow hit sumbit instead of preview. need coffee...

Once UCITA gets passed, software companies could do something similar to what DIVX players did. Require the program to contact some central server once a month or so. If the customer is still allowed to use the program, the central server will send the program the insanely large private key that goes with the correct one of a large sequence of public keys stored by the program. If the private key matches the public key, then the program will continue to work. Else, the program will shut down until someone feeds it that private key.

The strength of this plan is that it requires action on the part of the installed program. So simply blocking communication between the installed program and the central server will not help you escape the restrictions. Similar safe guards could be used to make sure that you don't just reinstall the program (every freshly installed program needs to contact the central server for a new set of keys, etc).

Nothing is completely secure, but the above setup could be made very hard to circumvent.

Aren't a bunch of Attorneys General, about 10 or 12 states' worth, fighting this?

(was this story really up for over 2 hours before someone posted? none of whom felt compelled to holler "First Post!"? Is this still Slashdot?)

I personally email every congrassman, and state legislator I can, whenever something like this come's up (I did for this action too). Unfortunately my email is apparently one of four:(

No, the problem is that legislators (or, more accurately, their staff who deals with correspondence) know how easy e-mail is (and how easy it is forge a lot of messages to fake a groundswell of support), so they don't lend it much credence. I would guess that one real, paper letter is probably worth at least twenty e-mails.

That said, an e-mail is better than nothing. But if you really want your voice to be heard, send a paper letter, or call your representative's office. If you can't or won't do that, at least send an e-mail...

The problem is that while individuals may not choose to use software with such (comparatively) draconian licensing terms, every day of our lives we are affected by people who do use that software -- the word processor at the office, the application development environment, etc. etc.

I don't think any technical solution would NEED to be implemented for remote deactivation. That opens up a can of security worms that I'm sure most big software houses are sick to death of by now. In today's lawsuit-charged climate, if a ten ton boulder rolled down the hill and a lawyer issued it a cease-and-desist letter, that boulder would stop -- legal pressures are quite sufficient to implement the remote-deactivation clause.

I sincerely doubt that the level of remote-shutdown "license recrimination" that many people are predicting will come to pass. It's much more likely that the no-reverse-engineering clause and the slippery-slope principle will get a lot of people. After all, how much time before the Samba team (housed in Australia) will find themselves on the business end of a lawsuit from the Australian government after something like UCITA passes down under?

Well, Reverse Engineering, I don't see to be much more enfourceble then in the past.

When do you call it reverse engineering? I don't see that clearly defined in UCITA, it basically states it's illegal. If you haven't looked at the source code or haven't tried to disemble the program is it reverse engineering?

Okay, I don't see Microsoft going after mom and pop small free software projects -- it would be just a pain in the ass for them (there are so many of them), it would be hard to prove, and most importantly it would be really bad press.

Think of the headlines in the bussiness section, "World's Largest Software Maker--Attempts to Crush all others via. Power of UCITA", "Microsoft Tries to make Populuar Free Product Illgal", etc.

Blunders like this don't look good -- they make the software company look like a large tyrant trying to hurt everybody out there. And if enought software developers just get fed up, they will choose to go with another existing software plaform, and build on top of that (such as Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Amiga NG etc.)

Reverse Engineering has been illegal for years -- but it's almost never enforcable for sevral reasons:

1) It's Hard to Create Enough Proof
2) Laws allow it partially -- as long as it's not an obivious copy.
3) It's too much time and money to waste on small companies.
4) At least with free software, who do you sue?

There is nobody to sue, as said in the license, except for maybe support companies, which already have rules in place to avoid that. Lawsuits against the FSF won't seem to go to far -- since FSF can claim that software is done by indivuals and not themselfs. And suing a non-profit organisation is quite hard to do legally, especially if they didn't blatently do something illegal.

Reverse Engineering is kind of a strange thing -- since it is quite difficult to prove... especially if you didn't decompile the program, and how can one prove that you accutually reverse engineered the protocol instead of actually completely clean boxing the code.

WINE is probally mostly designed clean boxed -- I don't see them use Microsoft code themselfs, it is written by the programmers themselfs, and is quite different for Microsoft code (that's why the widgits look different and why some programs refuse to work with WINE). AFAIK, none of the WINE developers have yet to get there hands on Microsoft Windows source code.

So you get a policy like this with WINE: It may be compatible with Microsoft Windows products, but it may not. This is an entirely new set of API's designed to make it easier for software developers to easily port there programs to Linux x86. No code was taken from Windows, nor was any code reversed engineered -- all was based on documented APIs (from various programing manuals or from populuar open source progams) and based on completely Free code.

Samba is kind of the same thing -- it was designed to work with other pieces of hardware, using a protocol similar and possibly comaptible with Windows NT SMB networking, but it contains no Microsoft code, and was not reversed engineered, therefore, none of the developers had access to Windows NT SMB source, it may not be compatible with your network, or it might be. Samaba is a totally new protocol, in which some cases may be compatible with Windows NT SMB, but it may not be.

Making sure that you don't claim your product is 100% compatible with a piece of software, and claiming that your software is totally new, and contains non code from a previous piece of software, makes proving reverse engineering almost impossible to prove.

As long as you can prove your code is 100% clean and contains no code from previous places, and was not reversed engineered, your okay. Since Open Source Software is completely open, and any person can look at it, it would be quite hard to find spefic lines that have been reversed.

I am not sure that would make WINE illegal, if you look at the clause you could say WINE is just a compatiblity layer to help ease porting of programs to Linux x86 (such as Corel). It does not contain any Windows code at all, and is simply a system to remap API's from populuar programs, that run on systems with implementations of Win32 APIs or Win32-similar APIs.

WINE could be claimed by it's authors that it's not neccessarly an clone of Windows, but a compatiblity layer, designed to work with many populuar programs, that use these APIs.

Yep. And MS Instant Messanger

Didn't the details of GIF compression get mostly published as well...?

Also, might it be possible to hit MS for all the reverse engineering they do?

Makes me wonder: If you're not even allowed to take their software apart, how do you prove that they did reverse engineer parts of it?
Or, to take this further: How, for example, could we prove that they're using GPLed stuff?

Worried (even though not located in U.S.A.),

Argathin

Or... what if SAMBA becomes contraband in USA due to its reverse-engineered nature. Product of an illegal act....

That's when I say to hell w/ it, I'm packing my parka and heading for Sweden..

Both of the letters presented in that link are very good, and either could be used.

I still really think that one of the more major orginazations need front-page links to these types of letters. Wether they are sent by email or by snail mail they are still seen by the legistlature. Send them to your local, state, and national representatives and senators. Send links to colleagues and friends that may be interested in the topic. Get The Word Out in other words.

If I get time tonight I might write a quick page that has links etc to all the important sites, with example letters and such. mmm... javascript.

I know the EFF has standard form letters for these different causes (which reminds me, they should really get involved in this).

Is there a spot for a form letter for this occasion? I'm sure if it was advertised properly, it could be of enormous help. I know I've not written cause I really don't know what to say without sounding rather dumb. Then provide links to the sites mentioned that provide state legistlature addresses. ...

Not to defend MS, but this is actually false. Microsoft does publish it's binary file formats for all of the Office suite on its msdn web site (the Word 97 format is at link and display the TOC). And, before you say that you have to pay for it, that's wrong, too. It is available without a membership to the MSDN. Now that I've said that, I read a passage that makes the file format a little less "open". "To access data within a Word binary file, the file must be opened using the OLE 2.0 docfile APIs, and it must be read with the appropriate docfile APIs." So, it is dependent on the openness of the OLE 2.0 docfile APIs.

The usefuleness of those documents is actually restricted by the MSDN EULA (based on the assumption that accessing MSDN from the MS web site also falls under its EULA). See section 2.1.b which contains this passge:

b. In addition, for the MSDN Library, this EULA grants you, as an individual, a personal, nonexclusive License to make and use an unlimited number of copies of any documentary material ("Documentation"), provided that such copies shall be used only for personal purposes and are not to be republished or distributed (either in hard copy or electronic form) beyond the user's premises and with the following exception: you may use Documentation identified in the MSDN Library as the file format specification for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and/or Microsoft PowerPoint ("File Format Documentation") solely in connection with your development of software product(s) that operate in conjunction with Windows or Windows NT that are not general-purpose word-processing, spreadsheet, or database management software products or an integrated work or product suite whose components include one or more general-purpose word-processing, spreadsheet, or database management software products. Note: A product that includes limited word-processing, spreadsheet, or database components along with other components that provide significant and primary value, such as an accounting product with limited spreadsheet capability, is not considered to be a "general-purpose" product.

Thus to avoid a potentially expensive lawsuit from MS you really have to do a "clean-room" implementation of document reading and writing. Its really too bad that is is even legal to hold hostage the data someone creates like this.

Try GNUcash.
It's no Quickbooks but it is a start!
---------------------------
^_^ smile death approaches.

That will never work, i'm sure people will find a way to exploit it.

That's the obvious problem some not so obvious problems is interaction between programs.
Say program X,Z depends on program Y remove Y and you cripple X,Z.

If X,Z are important server programs, that could take down your network. It would be problematic if you could not reestablish the programs because the network is down and the codes can't reach the programs. Now lets say these are mission critical machines, you can loose millions of dollars in downtime.

I'm sure companies like Netscape have to use Microsoft programs to get some projects working. If Microsoft decides it does not approve of what Netscape is doing, they could disable servers. Could goverments be held by the balls by companies like Microsoft? Who is going to regulate the ability to use this power? I now understand why protections like copyleft and GPL exist. Businesses are not looking out for you, they are looking to get a piece of you.
Please avoid dumb ideas like these they can only cause problems in the long run. Support licenses that protect you, own software and don't let software own you.

Wow it is late let me stop ranting!!!
---------------------------
^_^ smile death approaches.

What will we do about this? Probably nothing. This piece of rap legislation will get shoved down our throats like the CDA only there is no secion of the Bill of Rights upon which this can be overturned.

We take this shit lying down and the people who propose it get bolder with each pass. You non-thinking law and order types who spout drivel like "Kevin Mitnick is getting exactly what he deserves. Don't give me any of that 'constitutional rights' crap you anarchist!" are the very reason for this. Bad laws should never come into being, if they do they should be nullified.

How long before GM and Ford make an EULA for their cars? You can't reverse engineer your new Mustang, so that design flaws are forever a protected secret under the force of law. If you allow this to happen it will get worse. You can't allow the camel to get his nose under the tent.

This is not some minor change in copyright law, this is a VERY big deal. It has to do with whether or not you have the right to control what is in and on your own computer.

Are geeks the gutless wimps that they say we are? Or are we strong and capable of uniting against a common enemy? UCITA is that enemy. If we can't unite to stop this, we may as well bend over right now, because implied consent to anal rape will be added to EULAs next and there's not a thing we will be able to do to stop it.

LK

Here's a place to create a petition on any subject. There's a list of Congressment, the President and more that you can choose from to receive the petition. I'm not all that familiar with UCITA, so i'm not sure who the petition should go to. If someone will create the petition and post the url here, i'll sign it. http://www.e-thepeople.com

You personally may use all GNU/open source software, but as someone else pointed out with Foobar Inc, your bank, grocery store, ect. probably uses commercial software. With the ability to change license agreements after the sale of a product and the ability to disable software remotely, companies can hold their customers by the soft spot because their customers may depend on their software. You know why Microsoft supports UCITA? They can sell Brand X Inc Windows 2000 Uber-super preium server edition but then Brand X Inc hits it off with an IPO or their product kills everyone on the market, Microsoft says "hmmm, they can afford a hugely inflated license fee now", then they change the EULA so all Uber-super preium server editions need extra licensing fees whenever someone visits a website hosted on the server. Microsoft gets a huge cut of Brand X Inc's profit but then Brand Y Inc which didn't have a successful IPO and hasn't made much money cant afford the new EULA, they go out of business. Don't ignore this or pass it off because you personally use open source software, not everyone else does and you have bank accounts with them or buy groceries from them or maybe they're you're local elementary or high school.

Hmm, I haven't noticed anyone else comment on this
so I will..
Imagine if a piece of software listened on a particular port, and if the right code came in, the software would disable itself.
I could have so much fun with that actually.
Next time some script kiddy annoys you with some lame nuke attack that'll never work (because you don't use faulty software like Windows), just disable their copy of Windows.

The first thing is this is not "passed" until various states enact the model legislation. The first line of defense is to write your state legislators and get active at the state level to oppose this legislation.

Second, write your US Senators and Representatives. The federal government has typically left this type of regulation to the states but the federal gov't has the power to set nationwide standards in this area tha override the states. I wrote my Congressman (woman, actually) already (there's a copy of my letter someplace in the slashdot archives. Search for me and UCITA. I think it's a pretty good template letter).

Third, use free software! Reject all proprietary "solutions".

somewhat offtopic,

...some lame nuke attack that'll never work (because you don't use faulty software like Windows)

Is that why thousands of boxes running faulty software like Linux were crashed by teardrop.c?

The UCITA would make the anti-reverse engineering clauses in software licenses legally enforceable. That could chill the development of such things as SAMBA, which is dependent on reverse-engineering NT protocols.

Here [infoworld.com] led by Ed Foster, who first brought this to public attention.

Do me a favor and look up their license for that data, please. Is it only licensed for making plug-ins for Microsoft products?

Anyway, they didn't document SMB that way.

Thanks

Bruce

Nope,

There's not a thing you can do about it. Why?
It takes more than one person to make a difference, and nobody cares to.

Those are just the facts, I personally email every congrassman, and state legislator I can, whenever something like this come's up (I did for this action too). Unfortunately my email is apparently one of four:(

Until we reach a point where the general population does something more than just complain, it will always be the same.

My personal recommendation if you are not discouraged by now, is to take the initiative and find out who your state reps' are, and email them.
Hell we will spend four hours sweating over HOWTO's over one little doohickey, but we can't spend 2 minutes searching with altavista? Take that 2 minutes. Maybe you won't make a difference with your emails, but I tell you from experience, you'll feel more justified when you complain, cuz you actually tried to do something about it.

peaCe

One of the main reasons the UCITA is required for shrink wrap licenses to work is that shrink wrap licenses break one of the primary requirements of any contract -- that both sides have to be aware of the terms of the contract before agreeing to it. With shrink wrap licenses, you basically agree to the license before even getting the chance to read it (since it is inside the shrink wrap and becomes effective as soon as the shrink wrap is broken).

Therefore, you can't just refuse to buy stuff that has outrageous licenses, because you won't know what the license is until *after you buy it*.

This point isn't getting the attention it deserves: If "reverse engineering" is banned, then open systems and system compatibility will be victims. This will push any dominant product toward a monopoly, and will entrench existing monopolies.

In fact, I suspect Microsoft was a major lobbyist for this particular clause of UCITA. Don't forget, in the Halloween Documents, they talk about the threat of Samba and they propose to complicate SMB just to make it difficult to reverse-engineer.

Anything that is "xxx-compatible" was created through reverse engineering. Do you think Microsoft published the format of Word files, to help their competitors be "Word-compatible"? People had to reverse-engineer it. This is true for any proprietary file format or network protocol, like SMB for Samba. If reverse engineering becomes illegal, then all software that can read Word or Excel or Powerpoint or Whatever files will become illegal! Samba will become illegal.

This would greatly damage any migration path that would allow users and businesses to escape from a proprietary system.

I agree that this makes OSS even more attractive, but we have to be realistic here; OSS can't do it all yet....(and I stress yet).

We have to deal with pesky little things like users. How many common everyday end-users would be willing to give up their cushy Windows9x point and click box for a Linux box running X (lets face it many of these people don't like clicking on "Start" and then "Programs" in the Windows world)?

And then there are the apps that just aren't there yet in the OSS world. I would LOVE to find an OSS Accounting app that can compare to comercial products like Solomon, Great Plains, or Oracle Financials (or hell even QuickBooks), in capabilities and usability. These are the apps that are driving small-medium sized companies (which there are a lot of out there) and there just aren't any OSS solutions available.

I'm all for an end to comercial software, and achieving the Software Utopia that we all are working for, but it's a ways off yet.

Personally I plan to draft a few letters to a few offices of a few of the State Officials hanging out around town (I happen to live in the State capitol).....maybe if I convince a few more people to do so something will happen.....(is that Arlo I here?).....

Dr. Random

I recommend that you write your state legislator and your governor. Your letter should be short and simple at this point:

Dear [whoever]

I am deeply concerned about (and opposed to) the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which may soon be introduced in our state's legislature. Would you advise me when (if) this bill is introduced in our state?

Yours truly

====================

Also, the Free Software Foundation has come out against UCITA. Check http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/1999/RRE.campaign .against.abu.html.

====================

Don't kid yourself that this bill is just about software. It governs electronic information in general. Libraries have come out en masse against UCITA because of its effects on them.

Additionally, UCITA creates a precedent that makers of other kinds of merchandise want to use. There is nothing different about hiding the terms of a software contract from the customer until after the sale and hiding the terms of any other kind of merchandise. It is partially because non-software manufacturers got pretty excited by the UCITA sales rules that they invested a lot of money in "tabling" a technical revision (12 years in the making) to Uniform Commercial Code Article 2 (the current Law of Sales in the US.) The bill was tabled in a way that seemed calculated to insult the drafting committee for Article 2. And, indeed, the Reporter (senior author) and Associate Reporter of Article 2 resigned shortly after the draft was tabled. Next year, I predict that we'll see something for traditional merchandise that looks a lot more like UCITA.

====================

Carol Kunze, http://www.2bguide.com is one source of information about UCITA. The site has a pro-UCITA bias, even though it carries some of the opposition materials. I point to a few other materials at my site, www.badsoftware.com.

====================

26 attorneys general, the Federal Trade Commission, libraries, software professional societies, insurance companies, and many others opposed UCITA. see http://www.badsoftware.com/oppose.htm for a list and links.

UCITA passed despite this breadth of opposition. A lot of money will go into supporting it in the state legislatures. This is a powerful example of law for sale.

We CAN fight this turkey, by bringing pressure on our representatives, by asking the press to look at it (write a letter to your local paper's editor, asking for more coverage), and by providing examples of the problems that a bill like this can create.

It won't be easy, but it is far from impossible.