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Software Licensing, 2001
A bit of background for readers unfamiliar with the process: The Uniform Commercial Code is a body of law which is enacted, pretty much identically, in all 50 states. The object is to have a similar business environment for the basics of commerce, so that neither buyers or sellers are blindsided. If the law is fair, both buyers and sellers benefit from uniform expectations about basic commercial transactions.
But of course, laws evolve. The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act began its life as an amendment to the UCC, but it was so unbalanced in favor of software companies that one of the initial sponsoring organizations dropped out, and it could no longer be considered a UCC amendment. Yet it lives on.
UCITA legitimizes heinous license restrictions in software, actively promoting the worst software practices. Should it pass, the very concept of "used software" (video games, etc.) will disappear, since that can and will be prohibited by licensing terms. Better sell your Funcoland stock. Badsoftware.com has many more examples of how UCITA legitimizes things that big software companies only dream of today, such as prohibiting reverse engineering or even criticism of their products.
As you read this, UCITA is being pressed in states across the country, starting with those where the software industry giants have the most highly-paid lobbyists. Virginia appears to be one of the lead states, and is considering the bill right now in committee. By this time next year, UCITA is likely to be the law of the land. This may seem to be somewhat dry reading, but if you ever use non-GPL software or purchase a computer in the future, this is what you can look forward to. -- Michael Sims, michael @ slashdot.org
Cem Kaner writes:
The August 30th, 1999 issue of the National Law Journal carried an article favoring the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act. I protested to the Journal about the bias of the article and was invited to write a response, but the inviting Editor left the Journal shortly thereafter, and my response was never published. The claims made in that article, which was written by the Chairman of the UCITA drafting committee and two of his colleagues, are being (and will continue to be) repeated to legislators who are considering the Act. Perhaps your readers will find this rebuttal of interest.
[Editor's note: the pro-UCITA article referenced above is available at http://test01.ljextra.com/na.archive.html/99/08/1999_0822_61.html.]
I grant permission to any reader to recirculate or publish this article, so long as it is attributed to me and published in its entirety (including endnotes). If you are recirculating or publishing it, please let me know.
THE UNIFORM COMPUTER INFORMATION TRANSACTIONS ACT
In the August 30th, 1999 issue of the National Law Journal, Carlyle C. Ring, H. Lane Kneedler and Gail D. Jaspen presented the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act ("Uniform law for computer info transactions is offered"). Mr. Ring chaired the drafting committee that wrote UCITA.
UCITA is a proposed law that will govern all transactions involving computer software, electronic databases (such as WestLaw), downloaded books, and some entertainment products. It can also apply to computers and some other goods if their manufacturers put an appropriate notice in the product packaging.
Although the Ring et al. article reported years of work on UCITA as a proposed Article 2B addition to the UCC, it failed to mention that the UCC is a joint project between the American Law Institute (ALI) and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL). It failed to mention that the ALI called for "fundamental revision" of the draft in May, 1998 (1) and withdrew from the project in April, 1999, effectively killing 2B as a UCC project. Thereafter, NCCUSL renamed the project as UCITA and went forward alone. The ALI members of the Article 2B drafting committee refused to join the UCITA drafting committee. (2)
Although authors Ring, Kneedler, and Jaspen acknowledged that UCITA is a controversial proposal, they listed only its supporters and not such opponents as the Attorneys-General of 24 states, the Bureaus of Competition, Consumer Protection, and Policy Planning of the United States Federal Trade Commission, the leading software developers' professional societies (such as the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Society for Quality, Software Division), software trade groups representing small developers (the Independent Computer Consultants Association, the Free software Foundation), the five main library associations, leading intellectual property experts (including the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Committee of Copyright and Literary Property of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and fifty intellectual property law professors), other copyright industry associations (such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Newspaper Association of America), and every consumer advocacy group that has looked at the bill. (3)
UCITA will have profound effects on intellectual property rights and the quality and security of computer software.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Under UCITA, almost all software-related transactions will be licensing transactions. When a consumer buys a copy of Microsoft Word and a copy of a book about the program, the software transaction would be a license while the book transaction is a sale, even if the two items were side by side, the customer bought them both from the same cashier, and the software license was not available to the customer until after she paid for the product and took it away. Under UCITA 102(a)(42) a transaction can be a license even if the licensee is given title to the transferred copy.
This is a shift from long-established treatment of intellectual property in the mass market. To see the history of this issue in copyright law, shepardize Jewelers' Mercantile Agency v. Jewelers' Pub. Co., 155 N.Y. 241 (1898) (rejected the fiction of a lease offered to all comers that restricted transfer of the book and use of information in it); Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908) (rejected a restrictive notice on a book that prohibited the buyer from reselling the book for less than a minimum price. Under the first sale doctrine, publisher lost its property interest in an individual copy of a book once it sold that copy. The restrictive notice could not transform a sale into a license); RCA Mfg. Co. v. Whiteman, 114 F.2d 86 (2d Cir. 1940) (Licensing language on record albums could not convert a mass-market sale into a license.) For patent law, look at the doctrine of exhaustion, starting with Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film Manufacturing Co. 243 U.S. 502 (1917).
According to authors Ring, Kneedler, and Jaspen, "UCITA is intended neither to avoid nor to contradict the large body of existing federal intellectual property law." Others vigorously disagree. For example, the American Intellectual Property Law Association (4) protested to NCCUSL that UCITA "eliminates the 'first sale' doctrine" (which allows the owner of a copy to sell it or give it away). Under UCITA 503(2), "a term prohibiting transfer of a party's interest is enforceable, and a transfer made in violation of that term is a breach of contract and is ineffective." A vendor who puts a no-transfer clause in the license achieves a market-wide restriction -- equivalent to elimination of the first sale doctrine. By allowing vendors to enforce such restrictions in the mass-market, UCITA allows them to evade the federal balancing of private and public rights in intellectual property.(5)
Reverse engineering is another example of the intellectual property reach of UCITA. Reverse engineering is a normal engineering practice.(6) Clauses barring reverse engineering have been enforced in negotiated licenses, but not in mass market cases.(7) Some software publishers want to ban reverse engineering in the mass market. Despite authors Ring, Kneedler, and Jaspen's claim of UCITA's neutrality on this issue, UCITA makes contractual use restrictions (no-reverse-engineering is a use restriction) prima facie enforceable. Individual courts might rule that such a restriction is invalid under federal law or against public policy, but it will take several expensive court cases before software developers will know whether they can still lawfully reverse engineer mass-market software in the face of a shrink-wrapped contract term that claims that they cannot.
The AIPLA letter noted that "The President of . . . [NCCUSL], Gene Lebrun, wrote . . . that it is 'expressly stated in Section 2B-105 [that] Article 2B does not displace or change intellectual property law.' . . . We are extremely concerned that the proposed UCITA draft is not consistent with . . . the assurance of President Lebrun." UCITA Reporter Ray Nimmer complained of "distortions" in the debate on UCITA, identifying as a "misrepresentation" "that UCITA allows licensors to prevent licensees from commenting about the products. This allegation makes nice copy and superficial impact, but is simply untrue. You can scroll through the UCITA draft and will not find any such provision." (8) Opponents quickly point to UCITA section 102(a) (20), which defines "contractual use restriction" as "an enforceable restriction created by contract which concerns the use or disclosure of, or access to licensed information or informational rights, including a limitation on scope or manner of use." Section 307(b) states that "If a license expressly limits use of the information or informational rights, use in any other manner is a breach of contract." Under the statute's own definition, a nondisclosure clause is a contractual use restriction. Under Section 307(b), such a restriction is enforceable.
These provisions may keep vital information from the marketplace. Consider the following restrictions, downloaded (July 20, 1999) from www.mcafee.com, the website for VirusScan, a mass-market software product, on July 20, 1999.
"The customer shall not disclose the results of any benchmark test to any third party without McAfee's prior written approval."
"The customers will not publish reviews of the product without prior consent from McAfee."
Clauses like these are enforceable in traditional, negotiated licenses, and they are used to block magazine reviews.(9) UCITA arguably extends the enforceability of such clauses even in mass market products. Perhaps they will eventually be found to conflict with public policy but until then, the plain language of UCITA will have a chilling effect on criticism of mass-market products.
SOFTWARE SECURITY
UCITA section 816 allows software vendors to place disabling codes in software and to activate them remotely (such as by sending an e-mail) to shut down a customer's use of the product.
Such disabling codes create a hole in the customer's system security. UCITA section 816 remedies for wrongful use of such codes are probably not triggered if the software is shut down accidentally or by a third party (such as a cracker who learns the code or a disgruntled former employee of the vendor).
Self-help was portrayed in the UCITA meetings as something essential to protect the interests of small licensors. However, the only group attending the UCITA meetings that represents only small licensors, the Independent Computer Consultants Association, urged NCCUSL to reject self-help. It recommended that licensors be protected without creating the disabling code security risk to customers by statutory authorization for recovery of attorney fees by licensors who obtain an injunction to terminate misuse of the software. This proposal was repeatedly rejected.
CONSUMER PROTECTION
UCITA is hostile to customers of all sizes. It validates post-payment presentation of material terms and permits licensors to put in a form contract a term that allows them to keep changing terms. Licensors can exclude incidental and consequential damages even when an agreed remedy fails of its essential purpose. The drafters rejected proposals from the software engineering professional societies (ACM, IEEE, and ICCA) to allow customers to recover damages caused by defects that were known to the licensor but not documented or disclosed to the licensee. Instead, the standard form exclusion of incidental damages allows the licensor to charge a support fee (such as $5 per minute on the telephone) when a consumer calls to complain about a defect that was known by the licensor when it licensed the software. Software products are often sold in the mass market with hundreds or thousands of known defects. (10) For additional detailed notes on consumer impact of UCITA, see the articles in the note. (11)
Authors Ring, Kneedler, and Jaspen say that "UCITA alters no state laws relating to the applicability of consumer protection to databases, consumer services or software." In contrast, 24 Attorneys General and the Administrator of the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act said that UCITA's "rules deviate substantially from long established norms of consumer expectations. We are concerned that these deviations will invite overreaching that will ultimately interfere with the full realization of the potential of e-commerce in our states." (12)
The Attorneys General also said that UCITA's "prefatory note and reporter's comments incorrectly present the proposed statute as balanced and as leaving 'in place basic consumer protection laws' and 'adding new consumer and licensee protections that extend current law.' . . . [I]n instances in which provisions are described as new consumer protections, such as the contract formation and modification provisions discussed below, consumers actually have fewer rights than they do under present law. . . . NCCUSL . . . should revise the explanatory materials accompanying the statute to scrupulously identify the instances in which the policy choices embodied in the statute either extend or resolve controversies in current law and to clearly explain whether such extension or resolution favors sellers/licensors or buyers/licensees."
NOTES
(1) Jean Braucher, "Why UCITA, Like UCC Article 2B, is Premature and Unsound", UCC Bulletin, July 1999, www.2BGuide.com/docs/0499jb.html.
(2) (www.2BGuide.com/docs/50799dad.html).
(3) See www.badsoftware.com/oppose.htm and www.2bguide.com.
(4) Letter to NCCUSL, July 16, 1999.
(5) Robert P. Merges, "Intellectual Property and the Costs of Commercial Exchange: A Review Essay," 93 Mich. L. Rev. 1570, 1613, 1995; Mark A. Lemley, "Beyond Preemption: The Law and Policy of Intellectual Property Licensing," 87 Cal. L. Rev. 111,1999, http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=3D98655.
(6) Cem Kaner, Article 2B and Reverse Engineering, UCC Bulletin, November, 1998, 1, www.badsoftware.com/reverse.htm.
(7) Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992); Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd., 847 F.2d 255 (5th Cir. 1988). "Correcting Some Myths About UCITA", http://www.2bguide.com/docs/rne.html
(8) "The Test That Wasn't" August 1999 PC Magazine 29. According to that article, Oracle "formally declined to let us [PC Magazine] publish any benchmark test results."
(9) Cem Kaner & David Pels, Bad Software: What To Do When Software Fails.
(10) Federal Trade Commission letter www.ftc.gov/be/v990010.htm; Steven Chow (a member of the UCITA drafting committee) "Proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act: Bad For Commerce And Innovation" www.2bguide.com/docs/citopp.html; Cem Kaner, "Comments on Article 2B" (section-by-section analysis) October 1998, www.badsoftware.com/kanerncc.htm; "Bad Software: Who is Liable" (analyzes software economics and UCC 2B) May 1998, www.badsoftware.com/asqcirc.htm; and
(11) "Article 2B - Report from the November 13-15, 1998 Meeting", www.badsoftware.com/uccnov98.htm.
(12) Letter to NCCUSL, www.badsoftware.com/aglet1.htm and www.badsoftware.com/aglet2.htm.
Um, I think what the poster was talking about when he said he's paying for the physical copy of something is that the right to use it is implicitly bought along with the object that is bought (IOW I think he agrees with you).
This is Anonymous, so no one will likely read it. However, that appears to be the case about UCITA on this board as well. In fact, something that Cem doesn't mention, is that UCITA actually GUARANTEES that the consumer has a right to return the software if they refuse the license. If it passes, the stores, and the software companies, would have no choice but to give your money back. Given that the open source movement is based upon the assumed enforceability of the GPL, I don't understand the hostility to a proposed law that would clarify that the GPL is enforceable.
This is slightly off topic... anyone care to guess how the typical first time record contract with CBS/Sony, or Capitol Records breaks down? 95% to 5%. You can guess who gets the 5%. Not only that, but if there's any ad campaigns or publicity done for your album, that comes out of your 5%. Just a reminder that these corporations are making money hand over fist most of the time,and I tend very much to agree with posts about supporting independent artists. At least they keep more of their record sales, even if there aren't quite as many...
If you call everybody who disagrees with you a "neo-socialist", you are precisely the kind of irrational, paranoid bonehead that I was portraying. The weird thing is, I was deliberately exaggerating. It was a parody (as seven different moderators so far were able to grasp) and I was playing for laughs. It's not at all often that I run into a real-life libertarian who fits the stereotype anywhere near as well as you do.
Congrats, I guess.
Libertarianism is a moral philosophy based on natural law. We have certain rights: period. Nobody "gives" you your rights; you don't have to "earn" them from anybody; you do even have to declare them, and nobody even has to acknowledge them, but that doesn't make them go away. It's part of human nature.
Duh, that's common knowledge. What I'd like to know is what these rights look and smell like, how they came into being, what they do, how they operate, etc. You seem to be implying some kind of underlying moral principle, perhaps a supreme being. If so, which supreme being do you have in mind? I'm not familiar with any who are reputed to hold libertarian views, but then again I'm not a comparative theologian and I've probably missed a few deities here and there.
It's a lot easier for me to relate to libertarianism coming from a utilitarian outlook than coming from a religious/mystical outlook like yours. You'd make A. J. Ayer's blood run cold, and mine's getting a bit chilly too. We have to draw a line somewhere between the rights and responsibilities (funny, you don't hear much about the latter from many libertarians) of the individual on the one hand, and on the other hand the rights and responsibilities of the community. People live in communities, and that's the way it goes. The dispute here is mostly about where the line should best be drawn. It's an optimization problem, with very little clear data to work with; a libertarian is one who draws the line very far over towards the individual on both rights and responsibilities. People disagree about what we're optimizing for, as well. I guess it's a lot easier to avoid the whole issue by shrieking "neo-socialist!" at anybody who tries to discuss it. "Politicking BS", indeed.
--80md
I've been asking around, trying to find anyone who is organizing the fight against UCITA here in Minnesota, and have been having little luck. If we're going to beat this, state-by-state, we're going to need to be organized, state-by-state. We'll need to track when and how UCITA is proposed to each state legislature, and make sure the legislators get the real info at the appropriate time. The companies who have been pushing UCITA will do their best to make sure that the bill goes through the state legislatures on a fast-track basis, before real opposition can be organized. The best defense against this is to be prepared before hand. The Minnesota legislature lists submitted bills on their web page, and I've been watching that, but a great deal of manuevering happens in the background, before a bill is formally submitted, and the only way to track that is to have someone in place at the state house, keeping an ear to the ground. And that means either a paid lobbyist, a volunteer with a lot of time available, or a member of a friendly congressperson's staff. I'm hoping that there is someone in each state working on this fight, and I'd love to help, here in Minnesota, but I've been unable to connect with anyone. Which suggests that we need a way for those who are opposed to UCITA to connect with each other, and to keep track of what is going on with UCITA in each state legislature. Is there something like this in place, somewhere?
How about this...
Company A buys a very critical software program for Accounting from software Company B to run on their server. Company B is completely UCITA compatible and has a backdoor encoded to shut off the software remotely in case of a liscense violation.
Cracker C figures out how to gain access to the backdoor, and just for fun, disables Company A's entire accounting system remotely. Under the liscense agreed upon by Company A, Company B is not liable for damages accrued to the system as a result of this security hole. Now, regardless of whether or not Company A has a legal leg to stand on in a lawsuit, do you think they will continue to use the accounting software made by Company B? Once a few businesses realize that there is no such thing as a "secure back door" I doubt they'll support UCITA in its current form. I mean, if Company B is MS or AOL/TW/Netscape it would be cracked and distributed netwide in less than a month. Opponents of this bill could use it as an effective scare tactic, I think...
"Also, we call your attention to paragraph 432c, p59. The law allows us to recover from you any losses we suffer as a result of your telling others that our product consists only of this looped message."
Aside from that, what about the OS? Apple could simply refuse to allow clone vendors to buy licenses for pre-installs. So then the consumer has to buy and install the OS himself - this will hurt sales a lot. And suppose Apple deliberately makes OS updates hard to install - or releases OS updates that refuse to install on a machine that doesn't already have an earlier version of the system?
The RIAA tried to get the Rio court to extend SCMS to computers; when the court refused to misinterpret the law, the RIAA tried to get the court to rule that it was illegal to copy copyrighted audio on computers. The court also rejected this attack on home recording rights ... noting that just because the AHRA applied to one class of devices, that didn't negate Fair Use principles as applied to others (e.g., computers).
I would take this to mean that if you own the CDs used to make the compilation, it is legal to make a compilation CD for your own personal use.
In the early 1990s, Congress passed the Audio Home Recording Act. In exchange for a small royalty tax on blank digital audio media (DAT tapes, MiniDiscs, etc.) and the implementation of Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) on consumer digital audio gear, the law *specifically* allows consumers to copy music for their own use. (Assuming they legally obtained the original.) So making a compilation CD for your car is *specifically* legal (and probably would have been under general copyright law, anyway, even before AHRA).
Legalize prostitution. I'll never buy a Jennifer Lopez or Brittany Spears CD, but I'd pay either of them a few bucks to suck me off.
and any federal law over rules a state law hmm not really true. Federal law has limited breath specificaly provided for by the constitution. Congress probably cannot pass laws regulating commercial transactions unless all these transaction are part of interstate commerce.
Ever read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand? The lesson I've taken from that is that they can't really stop a pure capitalism. They can whine and complain, they can kill themselves off, but there will always be a Galt's Gulch somewhere where people can do as they damn well please.
Two parallels: one, the drug trade. It's a pure capitalism where people pay what they think is fair for what then becomes their own property. It's pure, it's holy, and it can't be stopped or regulated out of existence because it already defies regulation. The second is firearms: members of gun culture always maintain that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Einstein himself remarked (about the alcohol prohibition, but the sentiment rings true today) that a government that passes laws it cannot enforce cannot be taken seriously.
You may think it's a major problem, people trying to unfairly deprive you of your rights. Maybe it's time for a paradigm shift. Live the way you know you should live, respect the rights of others as you want them to respect yours. Prepare to defend your right to live that way. Then let the rest of the world do whatever the hell it wants. They can't touch you. It sounds tough, but I've done it on a technical level: I've been using computers intensely for the last fifteen years and have never once used a piece of software licensed to me by Microsoft. They are completely irrelevant to me and my life; they demonstrate how little control one can exert over me if I refuse to let them.
The EULA is a *Contract* that establishes
4 49,2583,00.html?01)
the rights of the parties to an AGREEMENT...
Good overview at this link ( a bit dated....
Nov.'98)
Lawrence Lessig, "Sign it and Weep",
http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1
UK law? The UK has no more sovereignty these days than an American State. Less, even. If some judge in Brussels decides you have to accept that California law, then you do.
If I was under 18 and went out and bought a copy of Quake 3, then started copying it and distrubiting it, would I be subject to penalty under law? to my understanding contracts entered while u were a minor gain effect when you stop being one. If this law were to be passed, would it be illegal for people under 18 to purchase software? I dont think so. the state will not enforce any contract resulting from that purchase however. i am not a lawyer yet so all legal disclaimers apply.
Just think of the results if this law were in place and the author of the Melissa virus had put the proper wording in an EULA. He couldn't have been held responsible for the results of the virus. In addition, he could have sued everyone who posted a warning about the virus. All by itself, this should demonstrate the absurdity of the law.
Imagine something like this: "This product may not be exported from the USA (United States of America) or from this state for the specific purpose of reverse-engineering or re-sale."
This would mean you could get at BEST an (expensive) court-ruling in your favor if you actually DO manage to convince a lot of people that reverse-engineering was just a 'by-product' of your copy's excursion out-of-state. At worst, companies and individuals simply cannot do this any more.
--
AC
So funny in fact, I pissed my pants.
No, wait, that was before I read the story...never mind.
But it is still funny. Moderate up!!!
both of these paradigms, . . . are attempting to use government power to ensure their culture's survival. The commercial paradigm is attempting to use government power (through UCITA) to enforce its way. It takes no small leap of the imagination to foretell the Free Software paradigm doing something similar.
So you claim that the free software community IS NOW attempting to use the government to support themselves, and then two sentences later you mention that in fact they aren't, and you're just imagining that they will.
It should strike nobody by surprise when calls for banning closed-source software arrive
Why?
This is typical libertarian thinking: You make assumptions based on your ideology, and then you treat those assumptions as axioms and use them to justify your ideology. This intellectual dishonesty also happens to be typical of socialists, religious fundamentalists, and most other "I-know-best-shut-up-and-do-as-I-say" philosophies. A more compact term for such philosophies is "religions". Revealed truth, baby. Yeah.
A new paradigm is coming and it is for the marketplace of ideas to decide what it will be.
That's true, whether we like it or not. One example this phenomenon would be the way the "marketplace of ideas" has consistently rejected libertarianism throughout history.
There will be a way for developers to sell their software while letting it remain free.
Your faith is touching, Mr. Pangloss. "Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds". Unfortunately, what I know of history seems to indicate that most things are for the worst in practice. Good luck anyhow.
. . . already there have been calls for government funding of Free Software.
That's actually an intriguing notion if you approach it with an open mind. If it were done with grants'n'contractors, it might very easily produce much more good than harm. A hell of a lot of very good scientific research has been done on that basis over the last fifty years, not to mention engineering. The internet is one good example of something which couldn't have started happening until the government funded it. The free-market solution to a national network was closed, limited proprietary crap like Compuserve. The government solution is the one you're now using now. If the company which builds the infrastructure has an obligation to generate ROI for its shareholders, it seems on the face of it unlikely that you're going to get anything open or interesting. History (Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, et al. v. the internet) seems to justify this assumption. What we've seen here is a near-ideal example of the unique strength of a mixed economy: Government creates a sandbox for private enterprise to play in, and everybody wins. No ideologically-constrained system can compete with an arrangement like that. The internet thing so far is a lot like westward expansion in the 19th century, which could never have happened if the western states had been created by private enterprise. Had that been the case, the Oregon Trail would have been compatible with only one kind of wagon (available only at a premium from one vendor -- ROI, baby!), and they'd never have thought to implement gold in California. They'd also have charged high admission fees to users, again because they'd have had a massive capital investment to recoup. Obviously I'm getting a bit fanciful here, but the point seems clear enough.
You know, I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying. Ok, listen carefully, I'll only say it once. This law will let any software manufacturer put any clause they feel like in their licenses, and this is the kicker, change the terms of the license anytime they feel like it, after you've accepted the license
Hey, cool! So, like, I can release my software and bury in the license that if you use my software you have to let me come to your house and put hot grits in your pants. Then, later, I can change the license without telling you, so that now, if you want to continue to use my software, you have to arrange for me to have sex with Natalie Portman!
That's way cool!
While I'm at it, I think you have to give me 40% of your gross income, you know the 40% that the gov't doesn't take. Hey, wow, cool, I like your car, and your girlfriend is hot, too! Is that a new house you just bought? Pay off the mortgage and fork that deed over, boy, you need to use my software.
Hey, there, mister state government. I see you guys use my Frimsoft 2000. Well, I think I'd like 200 Acres of prime real estate. Hey, don't bitch at me, you enacted the law that makes it possible.
Do you really think, that's going to fly?
This entire debate about "legality" is amazing.
Who cares? Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but civil disobedience is alive and well
in the U.S (and in most other countries, I'd imagine). UICTA will be unenforceable, big fish get nailed, millions of little fish get away (and get what they need to do the job.)
Here's a novel idea (not really), there are quite a few Open Source type licenses available today, and a huge number of developers who use those licenses. Patronize them! Let's face it, most users don't give two shits where the software comes from, just as long as it does what it's supposed to. Give them better tools that are freely available ( close to being a done deal,that! )and silly software legislation becomes about as relavant as the dinosaur.
The whole issue is NOT about software, it's about protecting a few endangered species, lawyers and lobbysts who continually feel the need to "protect" everything that could conceiveably make them a buck.
Shakespeare had it right, "First we kill all the lawyers." In this case, starve them.
Truth is: the only rights you have are the ones you're willing to kill or to die for, period.
I've had to work with a dongle before - it was for a plasma simulation program developed by the air force. The software (or rather, the dongle) cost $30,000. No kids, I did not accidentally hit an extra zero there; this is niche high tech work. So, I can see dongles being a good solution in my case. But for consumers/mass market? I mean, c'mon.
Borland was, as you say, a socialistic gang of intellectuals. We are well rid of them. The market they once served is now being handled by proper capitalists, lovers of freedom. They will not commit the same crimes that drove Borland into extinction.
we're not selfish bastards, we're leftist nerds!
the whole damn world has gone insane. corporations own 3/4ths of the planet. the US government is OWNED by corporations. we live in a fascist state. we live on a fascist planet. fascism sucks.
the solution always involves an ar-15.
If DVD's cost $1000 each, you still do not have the right to obtain them without paying for them.
.. we've been paying ~$17 for a CD that costs 2 bucks to make. They've been gouging us for years. It's my right to pirate their stuff, and I'll keep doing it. I would have bought Star Wars EP1 on DVD, but not that there isn't going to be one anytime soon, I'll be looking for the bootleg. They do it to themselves ...
---
bullshit
it.
Get off this sinking ship while you still can.
In ten years, there will be no more proprietary software.
Why wait? Avoid the rush. One positive side affect if this law gets passed, it'll motivate you to do something!
one word: LOL!!!!!!!! (anocrym for three actually, but that doesn't matter)
"then it's my right as a user to roll back my clock every time I use it, so I can KEEP using it. For free"
:P Have you ever stopped to think "why" there are no free tools of that quality available? It's because tools such as those take shitloads of planning and development time. Frankly, most gnu fans would rather spend their time sending hatemail to companies in hopes of getting a free program than coding anything themselves. Show me a full-featured FREE version of dreamweaver (and Portman) and I'll take that back.
If you've got a problem with the license of the software, then don't use it. No one is forcing you to use that freedom-killin macromedia shit.
"If Linux had tools on the same level as Director, Photoshop, Office, etceteras, then this wouldn't be a problem at all: people would just stop "licensing" things they can't really buy."
Yeah and if Natalie Portman were open source I wouldn't have to masturbate anymore
"Why isn't this same sort of vigor and energy being put into applications"
Nearly all free software programs are programs that have been done MANY times before, so they are fairly easy to whip out because the process is well known. Why do you think mozilla didn't get jack for assistance? Very few people have written web browsers. Compare this with compilers or operating systems-most colleges have classes dedicated to writing programs such as these.
"But I've got something to contribute- graphical skills"
I'm curious, how would you feel if a large group of people demanded that you create graphics for them entirely for free. And if you said no, they claimed you were violating their fundamental rights and stole all your work. Well I guess "It's about PEOPLE!" so I'll be contacting you about some graphics for my web site-slave.
Not me... I'm an orange.
Good for open source, not bad. The open source people could possibly even use it to make a computer that could only legally use open source software (not tied to any one manufacturer)!
I'm still not in favor of it, though.http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A "free market" leftist? That's the first I've heard of that...
If the law is flawed, and it still comes into effect, then use the law as a weapon against itself. How? Some methods come to mind. The first one is to write a shell program which launches all programs you run on your computer. Distribute the program as a commercial product. What this program does when it launches a program is produce a software/hardware liscence agreement. The software is only allowed to run on your hardware, and under your shell program if it agrees to your terms and conditions. Leave a little time for the launched program to respond (which it won't) after which time, it is in violation of the liscence agreement and that means you can do whatever your liscence agreement said you could do. Next, you could write some commercial software with a virus, or brutal bug that does virus like things. When the any company publishes info about the problem (virus) take them to court. The basic premise is to take the law and stretch it to absurdity and when it is shown to be absurd itself, then it would be easier to replace.
And, judging from the content of your post, you go to school in a wealthy school district (who else could afford to upgrade three times in a year, the schools I know of are still using Mac SE's), so they can easily afford these "extravagant" expenditures.
I understand that there is still a need for extremely complex software like Quark, and that free software does not yet fill this niche.
And it never will fill that "niche"...more like a gaping hole if you ask me. People (and wealthy school districts) will pay top dollar to have the best availible, even if they never use one-tenth of the capabilities of it, just to prove that they do have it. Am I making sense? I am drunk, you know.
They already have this in Japan, and it sucks. So if you want to see how it will work in the US, just take a peek at the land of the rising sun.
And finally, why stop at software? I mean, this could be used much the same way in hand-held devices. Rather than owning it, you lease it, and if you don't pay, they send a signal somehow and shut it down. I mean, that may actually be beneficial. Rather than paying $200 for a device, I pay like $2/mo. or something and when it stops being useful, I just stop paying and they shut it off. I don't own the now piece of junk and if someone else wants it, they can pick back up the fee. But I digress.
this is very close to how most mobile phone 'sales' work in the UK. You pay nothing up front, but you pay a monthly 'subscription' for a specified minimum period. You do end up owning the phone (usually after about 18 months), but if you stop paying, they can indeed disable the device. To the extent that it won't work on anyone else's phone network either.
AC
In France, they have just mandated the use of Open Source (Free) Software wherever possible for use in Government work. The official reason is that there is no reason why taxpayers should help fund companies like Micro$oft. Of course, this is wildly popular with French taxpayers. Assuming you are a taxpayer in your country, shouldn't you be lobbying your government to do the same thing?
I know this whole thread is kinda offtopic but somebody moderate #64 up.
We have more artists than anyone can think of a use for, so why encourage more of them? And worse more Media Companies and Agents and other parasites who don't provide any value in a world where the means of distribution is in the hands of the people.
He's right, IMHO. There would be a lot less crap music/movies/books if people weren't doing it for the money. Anybody remember Rick Astley? You'll never convince me he had a message other than "gimme money".
What else need be said? The UCITA draft is incredibly tilted towards software companies. If you read Bill Gates latest speach, you will see that he still has not given up on switching to a software rental model. AARRGGHH!!
On the other hand, if it passes Linux is going to become popular REALLY quickly.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
The fact of the matter is, most businesses haven't even read the licensing agreements that exist in mass market software and have no idea the kinds of restrictions that already exist in the EULAs and such, ... If businesses were aware of the restrictions that already exist, they wouldn't buy the software. Either that or they are aware of them and they just don't care.
After some lawsuits and some people go to jail over this they'll care. I agree with you that people don't pay attention to these licenses. Such licenses are widely regarded as rubbish. I found Borland's license refreshing. It's like a book, they said. That makes sense to me. None of this other stuff does.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Okay, maybe this is over the top, but something needs to be changed.
I just don't see how UTICA will change that. It makes the licensing terms more strict, but your problem customers are ignoring them anyway. And I think the stricter the terms, the more people are going to decide you're unreasonable jerks who deserve the piracy.
Don't just say "something must be done!" without considering the implications of what you are doing.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Microsoft put a nondisclosure agreement in the license to NT5 beta 1, and probably all the other NT betas too (I only saw the beta 1 license.) So it's been done already. But with UCITA stuff like this could actually be enforced.
Dumb US laws have no jurisdiction in the UK, we have our own dumb laws. Those strange licenses have no weight here and copyright is about copying.
If you reverse engineered here then the "crime" would have been commited within UK jurisdiction and the "crime" would have to be tried under UK law, i.e. not. Mind you, if whilst reverse engineering you ended up with a copy, then you would have broken UK law.
However, when you returned home, would the US see possesion as illegal? They do seem mad enough. Maybe moving is a good option.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Please don't forget that Slashdot is where many of us first hear about such things. 5000 Slashdot posts might not sway government decisions, but the lack thereof may ruin the opportunity to sway them.
the real at&t mix
Do you have any idea of how hard that's gonna be?
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
So, everyone in the UK got Win98 for free?
(ok, it was a nice thought, anyway :o)
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Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Natural law?
;)
We're talking physics right?
Actually in the early 1980's there were a few reverse engineered Mac ROMs avalible, that you could purchase and install in your Amiga, for example.
By the time of the Mac SE, ROMS had become pretty complex, and Apple basically shuted down anybody (in court with insane lawsuits that Apple mostly won), who even dared to attempt to reverse engineer an Apple ROM. Apple was known for putting quarks in it's early ROMs just so that they would show up in any copies that were bit for bit of the ROM.
Companies being afraid of being shut down by Apple just gave up on reversing Apple's ROMS. By the 1990's came around, Apple stopped caring, since Mac ROMs were big and complex and filled with useless garbage/easter eggs/stuff to fill ROM chips, the i386 had became the only popular platfrom, and finally non-Apple 68k Macs became extermely rare so reversing or copying the Apple ROM wasn't worthwhile.
Apple may start caring about Mac ROMs again in the future, when Mac emulators for Windows start using the Mac OS ROM file, which is included with all new System Software and is a free download. It includes a complete, bootable Mac ROM -- today the PowerPC Linux Mac OS runtime Mac-on-Linux uses this ROM file to boot in most cases (even on non-new/open world macs!).
Helms-Burton wasn't passed because it was a good law that we wanted to enforce; it was passed to politically appease Cuban-Americans in Florida. Outside of Miami, nobody cares if Canada trades with Cuba, which is why it had a suspension clause that has been used so that it never has taken legal effect.
:-)
Anyway, we don't want Quebec breaking off, so we have to keep giving you guys a demon U.S. to rally together against
From a major city north of Canada, I am...
Sure, intellectual property is property.
Because copyright lawyers want you to believe it is...
Someone had to create it, and at one time owned each part of it by virtue of sole unique possession (i.e. they thunk it).
Oh, sure. They just "thunk" it up. The idea for, say, Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" or Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" or U2's "The Streets Have No Name" just came out of nowhere.
I hate to break it to you, but no idea is 100% original. Everyone uses ideas "thunk up" by others -- they change them, improve them, alter them to fit a particular need and (every once in a while) replace them with something new.
(Which rather sounds like a particular software development model, come of think of it...)
Jay (=
I just had a realization as I was sitting here browsing through this article. In the whole debate about the Corel Linux licensing issues, a statement was made. In order to preserve the validity of the license, a person under 18 was prohibited from "purchasing" the software. If I remember correctly from my buisiness law class, this is because people under 18 are not permitted to enter into a contract without the consent of a parent or guardian. A license is a form of a contract, and thus, this holds true here also. What are the ramifications of this on the entire software industry? Most software programs I know of come with some sort of license agreement. If I was under 18 and went out and bought a copy of Quake 3, then started copying it and distrubiting it, would I be subject to penalty under law? If this law were to be passed, would it be illegal for people under 18 to purchase software?
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
If so, how will software companies make money? Support? Donations? Highway robbery? :-)
You should instead have used one of the "custom CD" services to pich three tracks from each CD onto the custom one.
The point is: Free market teaches that if you find that something is too expensive, you should either find a cheaper alternative, or set up buisness to provide one yourself: Obviously, if you're right that it's too expensive compared to costs, you should be able to.
(Of course, this fails because there is no free market, just differing forms of regulations and agreements between the "players".)
As the article states, the UCITA can, given certain circumstances, be applied to the sale of computers. Now, I could easily see Microsoft[1] buying up hardware manufacturers and sell the computers with a license clause effectively stating that one cannot run anything but Microsoft software on the hardware.
Wouldn't this be *terrible* for open source?
[1] Microsoft is just taken as shorthand for `big evil software empire', and you can supply your own variant any time.
We have more artists than anyone can think of a use for, so why encourage more of them?
This is the most absurd thing I have heard in two years of daily slashdot reading, and that is saying something! Give me a break. So all the music we will ever need has already been produced? There will never be anything better than what we have now? When all the current musicians die off, we won't need any new ones since we can just listen to them on CD?
What if I said this in 1993: "We have more software and programmers than anyone can think of a use for, so why encourage more of them? What else do we need besides a spreadsheet, word processor, etc." Yeah right. So then so much for developing Mosaic!
Disclaimer: this is not be construed to mean that I support UCITA - I don't. Artists can and will flourish without UCITA, maybe even more so
Um, Broadly speaking isn't this what has happened to slashdot, having been named as one of the defendants in the current DVD encryption debacle?
It will happen. A discussion board will be sued. And knowing the American "legal" system, it will be sued successfully.
Let's face it, with slashdot being as popular as it is, it will probably be next....
So sell your shares in andover now! (uh, just kidding about the last bit. I'm just jealous that I don't have any...)
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
Actually software needs to be handled more like engineering. As someone who has worked on many projects over the years, the ones that were handled with practices closer to standard engineering pratices always ran smoother, and produced better software. You need the design reviews, you need the code reviews, and you need the structured planned out testing done by people working off of the design. Sometime look up best engineering pratices. Follow them when you write code.
One Positive thing I can see this law doing. Helping Open Source software. There will be a greater demand for OS products which don't have stupid licensing restrictions because of the stupid restrictions possible under UCITA.
Like IBM trying to figure out how to license or pay for Apache. ....snickers....
Someone who knows the hole story, please fill us in one it.
I guess if your allowed to say a user can not reverse engenear software in a liccens your allows to say a user must boycott all software that asks this of it's users.
RMS could go to work on an update to the GPL in paralel with this law.
I wonder if one could argue this is interfearing with inovation and internstate commerce.
I don't actually exist.
If so, how will software companies make money? Support? Donations? Highway robbery? :-)
Support...
It is the one thing commertal software offers that open source dose not. However as of late open source support companys have been springing up.
Eventually we won't be paying for the software we will be paying for the support. To be notifyed of bugs and bug fixes you'll have to pay to be on an update list.
Oh well.. such as life
I don't actually exist.
This whole proposal is stupid. It's like putting down good money for a car then finding out that you don't have any right to sell it off when your tired/finished with it. If anything were 'licensed' like software is everyone would have mounds of broken/used machinery stacked behind their houses.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
A post on Slashdot is a good first step. But it will not help if it's also the last step.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
UCITA looks like a precedent to several large companies. Chrysler (a car company) strongly backs UCITA, for example.
This idea is very, very, scary. It implies that we're going to see a wave of similar laws that build into the economic system a structural bias in favor of vendors, and which stack the decks against consumers.
Admittedly, this is partially a response to overzealous pro-consumer legal strictures; companies feel a need, and reasonably so, to be protected from liability lawsuits.
But there needs to be a balance between protecting the consumer from deliberate negligence, and protecting the producer from frivolous liability. Unfortunately, our politics are not at the moment good at finding balances, so (having gone too far in one direction) we'll now go too far in the other.
On what basis have you drawn the conclusions you draw? What verifiable qualifications do you have to make your statements appear as fact? I sure as HELL know you aren't speaking on THIS nerds behalf. If I buy software, I OWN it, period. I can make as many copies as I wish for personal use. No rights are granted to me, nor do I need to earn them. I HAVE them by virtue of the democratic society I live in.
BTW, I'm not American, I'm a proud Capital C Conservative Canadian.
On the one hand, this law would suck.
On the other hand, maybe such a bad law would mean people would use software with a GPL (or even BSD) license.
On the third hand, software quality isn't having that effect right now, so why should that change in the future?
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I'm interested in finding out if it's even technically feasibly to have programs that can "disable" themselves.
"Push"ing - the software company sees a license key on the internet, and, as such, wants to disable all copies of the software using that key. Most people who are going to give out their license key, and certainly those who are going to steal the key, aren't going to register the software, and if they do, they certainly aren't going to give out their e-mail address. "Push"ing into an e-mail box seems ridiculous - every program would have to have a hook into every e-mail program to check for cancellation messages, or would have to be an e-mail program itself. (What about us who use Webmail?) And I can't see leaving open ports in the software, as they'd have to send out massive amounts of cancellation messages - one to every IP address.
"Pull"ing - everytime the software comes up, it contacts a special server to check for cancellation messages. This would probably be slightly more effective, unfortunately, most people aren't online 24/7, so Microsoft Word 2003 would either refuse to startup unless it could contact the server, or it would just let you in - in which case the pirated key is useless, also.
Either way, I can see both of these techniques being easily stopped by proxies/firewalls/IP Masquaring/etc.
What does everybody else think?
Mina Inerz [N. Reinking]
Whether consumers in US can change this proposed new law or not, it will have echoes everywhere in the world. The states constitute the biggest proportion in all of computer usage, and a defense of user rights there is a significant one.
Now, this case will only emphasize backers' position. It will mark a clear distinction between the people who would like to take your freedom away from you and the people who would like you to preserve them. This, I believe, is a great opportunity for free software to claim its cause.
Not only the Linux kernel and the GNU project but the totality of programs with a free software license, for instance the Debian distribution which I use on a daily basis, will provoke the users' enthusiasm for their own freedom. They will see that free software is designed to protect their rights and "The Industry"'s licenses and laws are made to destroy those rights.
Evidently, this will only be a proof recurring. As free software is heard and used, computer users will be even more aware of their rights and they will demand the thing free software grants them: freedom. I hope this legal assault is prevented, but even if it is not free software can help.
--exa--
Well said, Leo. Thank you.
The (unfinished) Open Patent License has options to do this.
For instance, if you agree to Option 4 of the Open Patent License, that means that:
Other companies can create products incorporating these submitted patents if 2 conditions are met. (There are more really, this is a simplification):
The general idea of the Open Patent License is that you agree to abandon your (patent and patent-like) IP monopoly powers over all those who abandon theirs to an equal or greater extent. I consider restrictions on reading, (that is, restrictions on reverse-engineering), to be very close to the type of restrictions patents create, and so I think anything that addresses the problems patents cause should address these UCITA-supported monstrosities as well.
In reading the text of the Nov 1, 1999 draft of UCITA, I noticed this :
[SUBPART B. GENERAL SCOPE AND TERMS]
SECTION 103. SCOPE; EXCLUSIONS.
(d) This [Act] does not apply to:
(3) a compulsory license
From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992, 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. (via gurunet)
compulsory (km-pul's-re) adj.
1. Obligatory; required: a compulsory examination.
If I purchase shrinkwrapped software off the shelf and do not have the opportunity to review the license beforehand, is this not a compulsory license?
While I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't finished reading (let alone interpreting) the entire thing, it would seem to me this would not apply to any over the counter (be it a bricks and mortor counter or an e-counter) purchase.
If by "Apple steals" you mean "Apple trades stock for", then sure.
(Score: 5, Repeats Common Misconceptions)
The reason there are no Mac clones (well, actually there are, I'm using one now. The difference is that UMAX licensed the ROM from Apple) is that nobody wants to rewrite a 4MB ROM. In theory, nothing stops someone from making a Mac-workalike by rewriting the mac Toolbox ROM. (Now, there's no toolbox code in ROM, just Open Firmware, so in thoery it might be easier now). Apple wasn't selling their ROM, and nobody wanted to reverse engineer it because it would be too much work. NOT because it would be illegal. The Executor people actually did start rewriting everything for a software emulator; no idea how far they are these days though.
They can write anything they want to on a little slip of paper inside a box; I already paid money, they sold it to me, it's mine. I have to obey copyright law, but I have no obligation to honor their little slip of paper. Until now. Now I get to agree to a contract sight-unseen.
If the company wants me to agree to a contract, they should make me -sign- something -before- I buy it.
Wow, this post is amazing. I'm sure it's about to be moderated into oblivion, but I think it's pretty funny. I'm not sure if it's parody or not, which just makes it that much more effective...I love the reference to "conservative Libertarians"!
Hahaha! beautifull! :)
This is no doubt the best troll I have seen in years, it even deserves a semi-serious reply
Ever heard of love-thy-neighbour? thou robber-baron ultra-capitalist pig!
hehehe Greets SlashDread, the original Geek lefty
Power to the people! Well enough to run our comps anyway please. Please?
You should instead have used one of the "custom CD" services to pich three tracks from each CD onto the custom one.
Last time I checked there was no site on the internet that allowed you to pick and chose from Clint Black, Reba Macantire, Ricky Martin, or any realy big name star. The only tracks that you can pick and chose from are no name bands (NOTICE: I like some no name brands) or classical noncopyrighted work. I tryed to pick some of my favorite songs / groups and they ALL were not listed (even some that I thought where no names.).
The post you where addressing had it right. The only way to get the tracks you like is to buy all the CD's and create your own Mix CD. Technicaly it is illegal to do that, But as far as I am concerned as long as no one else is using the original CD's I am moraly ok in using the copied tracks. And if the lawyers don't like it thay can kiss my posterior.
But if there are sites that that you have found that allows you to create CD's from realy big name's please email me and let me know, I am realy, truely, and honestly interested.
Since this is a state level law, and any federal law over rules a state law... (do you see where I am headed?) We just petition our congressional (Read federal) representatives to pass a law that make a software transaction aproximatly the same as a book transaction. Then they can pass all the UCITA type laws they want and they will have no effect.
And imagine the chaos as they work to shut down Usenet, or track down particularly noxious online critics, etc, etc. Suddenly it becomes unsafe to post via any route other than an anonymous proxy, and how long before they're all shut down for allowing such posts? Wouldn't running such an access point be aiding and abetting, under this rather horrible law..??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Someone said, "But the contents of the license agreements will become widely known."
And what if the license prohibits disclosing the terms of the license to anyone else?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sounds good in theory; but, it is not that simple in the real world.
First, you are not able to see the license until you pay for the software.
Second, most retailers have a no-refund policy for opened software. Don't agree with the license, too bad. They already have your money so their is not incentive for them to speed the refund process.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
Oh hell yea. Only another law will stop these criminals! But wait, they dont seem to care about stealing, so why would they care about reverse engineering being illegal??
Once again: LAWS DO NOT STOP CRIMINALS.
FunOne
FunOne
I am sure you Americans will have a great time when someone in America writes a devastating virus and incorporates it into some commercial software. As it is illegal to criticise the software at all (well, that is the computer software review magazines and web sites out of business) no-one can say that it contains a virus, and when someone tries to point out that there is a virus in the software, you can charge them $5 a minute for them to tell you.
More realistically, this will either kill off commercial desktop software and pave the way for open source, or whatever. The next step will be the rest of the world, unencumbered with this law, to overtake the US. This is the single worst law that the US could pass for US economic progress! It paves the way for super-high software licensing fees, as companies sell software with 1-year licenses, and then disable the software after that year until you pay another $500 to use Word, etc.
Software companies in general are out there to screw the consumer. Prices only get low when there is a lot of competition, when competition is lacking then the company will now have a legal way to ask their customers to bend over whilst they get a got old rogering.
If I was you I would find out which companies were campaigning for this law to be passed, and then write to them saying that neither you or your company will purchase software from them in the future if they continue to pressure for this law. Spread the word around as well, your corporate manager or CEO probably won't find out until it is too late.
Another question is, will this law apply to software purchased before it is passed? If not, then people will just stop upgrading software, if they have any modicrum of intelligence.
~~
So you're saying that you, in good conscience, would be able to write software for securing a system, and not care if it actually does that? I suppose it depends on your definition of 'essential purpose.' Where I come from, it's not an unreasonable demand to expect software to do what the manufacturer says it will do. Correct me if I'm wrong, or argue with me anyway, but don't lie to me about what your product will do.
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"Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and
Where can one find the actual copyrighy law test rearding fair use for the US and (especially) Canada? Many of us would like to look it up ourselves.
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"I already have all the latest software."
I think, if anything, what we'll see on the horizon is further popularity of illeagly pirated or used software. While what I'm running at home I'm running at work, and never both at the same time, I intensely resent the idea that companies can poke into my machine via the net and find out all sorts of booha about what I'm running and what hardware I'm using- unless you use a standalone system for your fun stuff, where's the privacy?
I'm a huge fan of spoofing the IP, blocking advertisements, and generally not supporting the greedy bastards that keep nosing into my life. I think that a hunk of SW that would block the damned ads from the net would be DIVINE- and who are They to demand that I HAVE to look at their ads? When I lose my freedom to piss on pictures of Bill Gates and Windows instruction manuals, then it's war: corporate intrusion is a violation of a whole bunch of amendments, last time I checked.
Whose turn was it to be watching Congress when they sold us out to the highest bidder?
You'd think that we, the people, could go for a vote of no confidence in the current govenrment, toss the bastards, and start over with properly informed sorts who know the technology, know the concepts of personal freedom, and know how to keep one from raping the other. [And at the same time have to sign a contract saying they get paid ten bucks an hour and get to be killed in whatever fashion their constituency thinks is viable if they accept bribes, kickbacks, etceteras.]
Corporations and individual rights... They're breaking the most fundamental lawss of personal freedom.
IMHO, now that Linux is the Next Big Thing, the Revolution is over- big names are all over the thing like flies on guano- who knows what ends they'll pervert it to? Time to move on and get the hell out of Dodge while the getting is good.
Get over Natalie-whatever-the-hell-her-name-is. I don't know, I don't care- I avoid TV and media as much as possible- the CBS thing last month clinched it. I DO agree that it is time-consuming and VERY knowledge intensive to create good software- anyone in their right mind who has a day job isn't about to go home and do the same thing- for free- at night.
Anyway.
I use DW because I'd prefer to get the site done in a few hours rather than days of trial and error. It's a speed thing that lets me work comfortably in a graphical fashion. I use it on a Mac because of the way the clocks work- I can roll it back or trash a preference and keep using it. Macromedia is NOT losing cash because of me- we've got all of the apps at work and we DON'T use them, even though we paid damned good money for them.
I don't put the work I value where people can find it, end of story. If that large group of people happened to be the GIMP, Gnome, KDE, etc. Development teams, I'd have one response:
"where do I sign?"
If it were the US Government or a flock of greedy fan-boys, they'd get the finger. If they pressed the matter, I'd incinerate my technical pens after dropping the case of my Quadra 650 on them a few dozen times. And if they came to take it all away, they'd find naught but ash.
If you truly LOVE to do something, you're not in it for the money.
In regards to your last paragraph:
If you're a "large group of people", then why didn't you sign "Anonymous Cowards", mmm? And yes, it IS about people- individual rights. As in "do whatever the hell you want as long as you don't hurt anybody." Kissing your girlfriend in public doesn't hurt anyone [if it does, they have SERIOUS issues and should be better off dead]. Neither does wearing a hammer and sickle t-shirt, a blue mohawk, and wearing a zillion different tattoos of your favorite metal bands on your arms.
Taking peoples property is bad- hence the fact that I use only MP3s that are ripped from CDs I own [of course, what I was doing six months ago is beside the point]- the band's got their cash, now I can do what I want with the product.
Corporations are NOT people. They are "Them", the faceless God lording over the collapse of civilization wraught by their own hands. [Hey, I don't need a flat TV, or even a TV- Sony can spend a zillion bucks in advertising and I'm STILL not going to buy one. Does this hurt them? Nope- some poor schmuck who likes to whack off to Buffy will buy one so he can see her clearly.]
Anything that damages a major corporation and proves a good point in a non-violent fashion is forwarding the cause. Call it a punk attitude: those who lust after power are by nature of their desire unfit to weild it.
You want graphics? What am I getting in return? Server space? Tech support? Barter economy, baby. Barter Economy. Certianly not money.
In the case of a superior product, the punk attitude of "damn the man!" which can easily be held to the world of software where the choices are nearly limitless, doesn't work. Hardware is the one thing you can't "pirate" realisticly, and if you're going to make a stand, Apple is far better than the competition. Backward and forward compatability has only minor issues from a software standpoint, and the hardware is truly sublime. Intel was the company that invented USB If I remember correctly, but Apple's license of the technology was what brought it mainstream.
While they may be behind in some areas [I don't use 3d apps and i don't play video games, so it doesn't affect me], I've never had driver conflicts. I've never had device problems [thanks to a "This is how SCSI works. DON'T FORGET!" lecture by my boss], and best of all, a damaged OS can be quickly repaired with minimal hassle, and I've never had to format a hard drive in order to upgrade or update.
Connections for free hardware are a hell of a lot harder to come by than connections for free software: I've chosen to go with a product that I don't have to think about or worry about. Read the manual? Why bother?
I fail to see how this is, in any way to speak of, good for anyone but the corporations. HEY, FOLKS! It's about PEOPLE! Sorry, but if I waste bandwidth on a trial copy of Macromedia software, then it's my right as a user to roll back my clock every time I use it, so I can KEEP using it. For free. The way it SHOULD be. If Linux had tools on the same level as Director, Photoshop, Office, etceteras, then this wouldn't be a problem at all: people would just stop "licensing" things they can't really buy.
Question: why so much emphasis on the various 'nix flavors? Why isn't this same sort of vigor and energy being put into applications that could shift the general user base over to linux? Yeah, a lot of us are idiots- I use Dreamweaver for all of my code and raid websites for Lingo to use with Director. But I've got something to contribute- graphical skills and an idiot-level understanding of UNIX as well as the capacity to actually know what people are talking about sometimes.
restricitve legal BS = BAD.
free = good.
Fight for what you believe in, folks. Me? I believe that software should be free for everyone, no matter how computer savvy they aren't.
I'm a diehard Mac user, to the death [or until OS 9 hit, at which point I lost a bit of faith]. But my lot is with the Linux ETHOS, even if I can't add a user to my Red Hat box to save my life.
Yep, exactly. The publisher of your playstation game could put terms in such that you would not be allowed to sell it, and they could disable it remotely, and they could add more terms later if so inclined.
Although that was inforced as much as any of the other millions of sites with "Click here if you're over 18" it does provide us with an example of lawyers realizing that inconsistancy.
However, right now, minor or adult, license agreements are not contracts, they are rants on behalf of software companies. As an adult, a contract you don't sign is almost always void.
This brings us to a stunning possibility: maybe people should still have to sign contracts to legally be held accountable. I only hope that the government will someday realize the obvious.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Don't go knocking down Congress about this, they won't be voting on it. You'll want to contact your state lawmakers and express your feelings about this law. For it to gain effectiveness, most states will need to pass it. If you keep your state abstains from passing it while other states pass it, your state will become a reverse engineering mecca and infact boost its economy.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
This right of return replaces current law, such as California's Song-Beverly Act, which says that consumers must be informed of certain terms (warranty disclaimers) BEFORE the sale. With very rare exceptions (In a careful literature review, I found only two cases this century), courts have insisted that customers (business and consumer) be given warranty disclaimers at or before the time of sale. Additionally, in about half of the United States, courts insist that customers be advised of remedy limitations.
UCITA replaces our right to notification of key terms before or at the time of sale with a right of return that says that after you have paid for the thing, taken it home, opened it up, and started to install it, if you don't like the license, you can send it back. You don't get to see the terms before the sale, for example when you are comparison shopping. Instead, after you take back the first product, you can go shopping again for something else, hope that it has better terms, pay for it, take it home, start to install IT, and if you don't like the terms, take it back. Etc., etc. This is a sick joke, not a consumer right.
One alternative proposal, from a leading member of the American Law Institute (which was co-authoring UCITA at that time), was to require publishers who sold software over the web to post the license terms at their website. The publishers protested, claiming that it is complex and difficult to post license terms at their web sites (REALLY, I'M NOT KIDDING! I WAS THERE! THEY KEPT A STRAIGHT FACE AND DIDN'T EVEN BLUSH WHEN THEY SAID THIS!)
In the face of these objections, the UCITA (then called UCC Article 2B) drafting committee refused to impose this requirement on the publishers. Shortly after that, the American Law Institute withdrew from the project, killing Article 2B as an amendment to the Uniform Commercial Code. The project was renamed UCITA and carried solely by the other sponsor, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. This was the first time in 50 years that the American Law Institute has withdrawn from a joint project with the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
Additionally, note that this "right of return" is available only to mass-market customers. Quite a range of software and information products (and all access contracts) bought by small businesses (including independent consultants working out of their home)are not mass-market. Those customers can refuse to accept the terms of the license, but they have no right of return, and no right to a refund, no matter how bad the terms are.
Additionally, this right of return expires as soon as you click OK to install the software. If you don't read the license while installing it, you are stuck with it.
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
For State Level Opposition, go to www.4cite.org
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
If you re-read the article, you'll see references to several United States Supreme Court decisions.
It is old news that software publishers want their transactions to be licenses, just as book publishers and record (music) publishers did. But that doesn't mean they get their wishes.
Throughout the century, new intellectual property industries have come up, tried ways to (in effect) license their products to the public, and failed. They can say whatever they want, but the right to restrict copying is rooted in the United States Constitution (the copyright and patents clause) and is a matter of law. The enforceability of the "license" is a matter of law, not of what the piece of paper says.
Here are some of the early cases. You can do a citation search to find a long string of consistent decisions throughout the century:
Jewelers' Mercantile Agency v. Jewelers' Pub. Co., 155 N.Y. 241 (1898) (rejected the fiction of a lease offered to all comers that restricted transfer of the book and use of information in it); Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908) (rejected a restrictive notice on a book that prohibited the buyer from reselling the book for less than a minimum price. Under the first sale doctrine, publisher lost its property interest in an individual copy of a book once it sold that copy. The restrictive notice could not transform a sale into a license); RCA Mfg. Co. v. Whiteman, 114 F.2d 86 (2d Cir. 1940) (Licensing language on record albums could not convert a mass-market sale into a license.) For patent law, look at the doctrine of exhaustion, starting with Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film Manufacturing Co. 243 U.S. 502 (1917).
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
UCITA is making significant legislative progress in Virginia, Maryland, and Oklahoma. If you live in those states (or if you have any connection to those states), please write state legislators to ask them to oppose UCITA.
We expect UCITA to show up soon in New York, New Jersey, Washington (state of), and California. So, letters to those legislators would be timely as well.
Thanks,
-- Cem
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
I used to work for an ISP who loved Linux, tried to give it to everybody who came in the door. Everybody knows Windoze, and won't switch. I now work in a less geeky place where I am forced to use outlook for email. --cringe-- Linux is getting there, but will they be fast enough?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
What planet do you live on? Where I live, most big companies already license everything per annum. Not just software, either. Many companies out-source their system administrators for extremely high rates, and go so far as to license the hardware that they run their licensed software on.
Licensing is hardly a new concept to big business. It's really the little consumers that will have a tough time understanding that even though they paid $50 for Quake 7, they don't actually own the game, they just have the right to play it for a while.
> A "free market" leftist? That's the first I've heard of that...
Go get a dictionary and look up irony.
What feedback mechanisms exist for consumers to register their concerns to their elected representatives? We can't let them just railroad this through as it stands.
-M
You know, I always had a feeling that I didn't really exist. I always had a sneaking suspicion that as a free-market leftist I was a walking contradiction.
/dev/null of nospace, I thank you for releasing me from my prison of paradoxes and hope that my karma is sufficient to bring me back as a gun control advocate with a hunting license.
You have so eloquently defined the paradox of my existence, and so as my life force fades into the
Ohm,
-M
The problem here is that we also have more than enough McDonald's employees, and receptionists, and everything else. These people need careers too. If the only thing I could do werll was sing stupid songs, I would definitely try to find a way to get paid for it. Wouldn't you? All of the software I write for the company I work for makes them a lot more money than I get paid to write it. Does that make me a Software Whore?
"There's one born every minute." - Steve Case
I understand your point of view, but my own experience is that most people are not stupid. They ignore current licensing terms because they are unenforced and unenforceable.
The moment these kind of restrictions are enforced, people get a clue in short order. Consumer reporters, comsumer activists, and others spread the word pretty quickly, but only after people start to get hurt. They tend to ignore hypotheticals, and focus on real stories about real people.
So, while I don't disagree with most of your post, I stand by my original assertion. Once people start to see real business downsides, they'll act.
If we play fair, we will win ... Isn't this the phrase that's engraved on the tombstones of countless optimists throughout history?
It's a pretty thought, but it doesn't work out that way in practice. We will probably win, but it won't be just because we played fair.
Unfortunately, the Government CAN regulate commerce:
..."
/ decorig.jpg
CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 1, Section 8
"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes"
Now as to whether the UCC is LAW in a state, is another question, since the jurisdiction of the U.S is:
"To excercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for
Remeber U.S != uSA
Read the orginal Declaration of Independence, and see that the founding fathers used "uSA":
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration
Cheers
> The contract can not take away rights that you have under law.
Not quite correct. Let me give an example in my field - software engineering, specifically: game development.
If I sign a NDA, I then can not use the argument "my right to freedom of speech permits me to disclose this info." as any judge would say "But you signed a contract limiting your rights."
In this case, a NDA contract is higher then law (assuming it wasn't signed under duress.)
Of course there are exceptions when a contract is lower then law, as it interferes with SOMEONE's right to life, liberty, or property. i.e. a contract to kill someone is illegal, no matter how you slice it.
> Insurance contracts, like EULAs, are "contracts of adhesion" -- you either accept the contract as offered or decline.
Interesting.
If a person never signs a contract, are EULAs still a valid contract? I thought contracts in order to be valid had to be agreed either a) orally, or b) signed.
I tend to think EULAs are valid by use, but I would like some "hard-proof". If you have any court rulings, links, that would be appreciated.
Thx.
I'm checking out Michael Froomkin's page.
Cheers
"Why do you people act like this is so new and so bad??? Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO. Why was it a big deal to a lot of people when they open sourced quake? BECAUSE IT WAS NOT BEFORE THAT!!!!"
What your talking about is outright ripping off the code, which is already illegal. What the new law would prohibit is someone even reverse engineering the saved files, which happens for every word processor out there. How would you like to have a word processor that could open its format only. If your friend has a different word processor you would not be able to open your document on his computer.
Also from everything I've experienced game companies letting people examine their files and modify them (for non cheating purposes at least) helps the game. And as long as someone doesn't try to sell these "expansions" for money I don't see what the problem would be. Instead of being able to just play the set game that I love, I can now go and modify it, try to improve it, and just have more fun with it.
And as others have mentioned the whole thing about being able to put basically whatever they want into the license isn't that great either. Maybe they'll start asking for our firstborns.
This started as a quick reply, and turned into a thesis (for me, at least) against free software, and paradigm shifts in general.
To understand this post, it helps to understand paradigms. A paradigm is a way of looking at a system, be it the world, or merely the patterns in the office you work in. A paradigm is a filter, a way of ignoring solutions which are really not useful, or not possible. An example was shown to me at one time. An vehicle was designed that had a low-horsepower engine. It got impressive gas mileage, but could also had very impressive acceleration. The specs were deemed impossible by conventional engineering. Its secret was that when the vehicle applied the brakes, the energy was stored temporarily, so that it could be applied to the next acceleration. The paradigm indicated that this was impossible. Paradigms are good in that they keep us from having to eliminate all possible solutions for every problem. It is bad in that other solutions, which lie outside conventional thinking, could be covered up and ignored by our paradigms.
Hopefully this gives some idea of what paradigms are all about. The rest of the post concerns itself with the paradigms of literature (books) and software.
The model for literature works (IMHO) something like this: Writer writes book, usually in digital form. Manuscript, after being looked at and processed by many people, is given to printing press, where it is printed. ALL the people in this chain are dependent on people buying this book. If nobody pays for this book, they don't eat, have no place to sleep, etc. So the digitial form, which can be easily reproduced, is kept secure, and the printed form, which is harder to reproduce, is allowed to circulate more or less free.
Software model is COMPLETELY different. All copies are digital. Can be copied freely, and is getting more free all the time. Copy protection schemes, restrictions, etc. are all attempts to make this new product (software) fit into old patterns of marketing. People are forcing these restrictions because of this paradigm; they cannot grasp any other ways of making money off software. Its not (neccesarily) that we are trying to constrict the freedom of everyone else, the people involved are simply trying to continue our lifestyle.
I am trapped in this same paradigm. I really cannot see any way of making money off of free software, which is why I work for a company that produces copyrighted software. Our copy protection scheme is simple, the software isn't of much use without the large expensive instrument it was designed to run, but I can understand the point of view of people who don't have such protection schemes. The system I live in involves people paying for software. Is there another system that will work? Probably. Is it the free software model? Possibly. But currently, free software is written by people who have other sources of income. If I join the free software movement, and it fails, I am totally without income.
I am a software engineer. I like having a nice car, and a nice apartment, being able to afford to eat well is a bonus. I don't make an immense amount of money. The question is, why should I give this up? Why should I risk this, for a paradigm that I don't understand, that may not work? I don't actually oppose free software, I really see both sides of the situation, and I am generally neutral in the whole argument. The difference is, that I have the ability to step back and see (perhaps) the situation (ignorance is bliss). This whole paradigm-shifting applies to not only software, but to the whole media industry. If people don't get paid for writing songs, very few people are going to write songs, because they're doing something else so that they can eat.
Having said all this, what you (free software people, libertarians, whatever you call yourselves) need to do is 1) Possibly figure out middle steps. See if there is a way, instead of making one large paradigm shift, to make several smaller ones. 2) In either case, get out there and DO something. Standing around talking about it doesn't accomplish anything. Organise, march, make posters, lobby in congress, convince friends and relatives of the "rightness" of your solution. So many battles have been lost for lack of communication; You are the architects, designers, and controllers of the largest communications network in history. 3) Make a plan. This should be done before item two, but I wanted to get across the importance of the second item. (Doing something is important!)
That's a good start. Did I mention that free software advocates should go out and do something?
>>>>>>>> Kvort the Duck
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
The fundamental idea of this legislation, and of a hundred similar laws, is not to stop piracy or any other crime which might hurt society; it is to ensure that at any moment any ordinary citizen is in violation of a large number of laws, and that the penalties for violating these laws are high enough that any cop or any court has the right to arbitrarily abuse unruly citizens to any degree they like. That way, whenever a cop gets pissed off at you, there will always be plenty of pretexts to fine you as much or jail you as long as he desires.
Consider the ordinary, mundane highway speed limit. On every open road in your town and mine, the speed limit is set way too low, and as a result better than ninety percent of drivers are constantly in violation. Practically everybody breaks the speed laws daily and usually nothing happens to them. But any time the cops need to generate a little extra revenue, they can park a couple radar cars in the bushes along the highway of their choice and pick off whomever they please, as easily as shooting fish in a barrel. Or if a cop sees something he personally finds offensive, like for example if one of our internationally infamous Suthrin racist cops sees a car go zipping by (in traffic with dozens of other cars, all going the same illegal speed) and there's a black guy and a white girl in it, and that Suthrin racist cop decides he don't like that no how, boom! that n----r's busted, that'll teach him who's boss.
Sure, you may have certain legal rights under the Constitution, but every day the law-n-order crowd strives either to repeal those rights or to make them irrelevant. What good is the right to free speech going to do you when, if you say something unpopular with the cops, your house, your car, and all your property can be arbitrarily confiscated with the legal presumption that you are guilty, and if you want your property back you have to prove to a heavily-biased court that you are innocent? (Actually, under seizure laws, the legal presumption is that your property is guilty; insanely, it's the property, not the owner, which is charged with the crime! That makes no sense at all, how can inanimate property violate a law? but that's the preposterous legal pretext championed by Rehnquist and Scalia and widely employed by drug-warrior judges to evade the fourth through eighth Amendments.)
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Apple originally put much of the OS in ROM for 2 reeasons:
1. Provide services at start-up, before the OS had fully loaded
2. In 1984, RAM was expensive and the size of the OS was a real concern. By putting functions which would have to be loaded in ROM, they could reduce the amount of RAM needed.
3. In 1984, ROMs could easily be made faster than RAM.
Apple switched to ROM-in-RAM with small Open Firmware-based boot ROMs with the Blue & White PowerMac G3, iMac and other machines of that era. The switch was made for three reasons:
1. ROMs had now become more expensive, and slower, than RAM.
2. Everyone puts a ridiculous amount of RAM in their machines now (except the pitiful iBook)
3. Putting the ROM in RAM allowed updates to the services which had formerly been embedded in ROM. This increased Apple's ability to add functions and services to the core OS.
These reasons will still be true, even with IBM's new PPC boards. In addition, IBM's new boards don't include the same Open Firmware Boot ROM as Apple's, since Apple's is a proprietary design, so they can't simply be made into Mac clones (although I'm sure some enterprising developer could come up with a software fix).
So what does this mean for the UCITA? Well, there will always be nefarious and underhanded ways to protect intellectual property, regardless of any law. But these will not always be compatible with the most efficient and elegant way to do things. As consumers demand more from companies, efficiency and elegance (=market share?) may become more important than the short-term protection of intellectual property. Look, for example, at OS X. For example, Apple still has a lot of proprietary stuff in there. But many basic functions, such as networking, 3-D graphics, and even the kernel, are open source or based very closely on existing open source code. In the race for performance, they have chosen the more efficient and elegant way to do things -- despite the fact that it gives many developers access to large chunks of their basic operating system.
If this example holds true, UCITA-adhering software developers will eventually fail in the face of superior software from, shall we say, more IP-liberal developers such as those from the Open Source community.
This could be a boon to GPL Software. If the software companies enforce these rules then the consumer market might just start looking for the alternatives that don't come with so many strings. It seems to me though that no company will be able to enforce these rules too strongly or the backlash will be tremendous.
This law is anticompetative at best, and downright evil to the core.
Tell your congressman "NO!" to this law. Maybe we need to form an Open Source PAC in DC to fight this BS.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
UCITA will be quite a coup for the advancement of open source software licensed under the GPL. The current software industry is getting away with a lot, peddling buggy unstable code of lower quality than some stuff you'll see in a high school programming class. The current situation can't last indefinitely -- it wouldn't surprise me if there was a consumer revolt in the next 3 or 4 years, and the UCITA will speed that along quite nicely.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You do realize that a copyright is not the same as a patent right? Do you really believe that the entire gaiming industry is using a charecter you created, a portion of your source code, or graphics you created illegaly in all modern games? You've got to be kidding!
Sig goes here
Reverse engineering copy protection schemes for the sake of "compatibility" needs to be stopped. This loophole will always be able to be exploited because there always is some platform mainstream media will always leave out. This means that all schemes will be cracked, and with this loophole the crack could be legal. A new law is necessary. Copy protection schemes are necessary in order for artists and companies to protect their work in the age of high speed internet connections.
It doesn't matter if you think software and entertainment companies are absolute scum or even if you think $3.00 is too much to pay for a CD, nothing justifies piracy. If DVD's cost $1000 each, you still do not have the right to obtain them without paying for them. If you don't agree with the system, don't purchase the goods. Piracy is the antithesis to our capitalist system. If enough people stopped buying CD's and DVD's, the media companies will lower the price. Piracy is not the answer. Copy protection schemes are inherently necessary when a single user can distribute an unprotected song or movie to thousands of users. Please tell me what else will prevent the duplication of illegal material?
The bottom line is new restrictions need to be in place to protect companies property. We as citizens can acquiesce and purchase goods from these companies, or vote with our wallets and let the media companies know that we don't agree with their policies. Piracy, however, is wrong and should not be practiced, and because it is wrong, new laws need to be enacted so that it is harder for it to be practiced.
Sig goes here
I'm not to sure about this. There are tons of great free email servers and clients, but my company chose to use exchange and outlook, which are _really_ crappy.
Busy, busy, busy...
However let's assume that somehow this law goes into effect across all the states, and that it is enforcable somehow. What would be the natural result of this?
First, they wouldn't be able to sell the product outside of the country and keep everything under wraps. Most countries wouldn't abide by the licensing agreements, and further they would be extremly paranoid about back-door issues with such software. They already are now, but it would become much worse. End result is no market outside of the U.S. for any U.S. software, period.
This creates a void, and that void will be filled. The United States isn't the only country with programmers after all. This would be a huge encouragement for foreign-based software development. They'll quite happily reverse-engineer anything they want. Good luck suing someone in India or Thailand. The phrase "Have fun storming the castle!" comes to mind here.
This means that the next thing that U.S. companies would need to have done is restrict the importing of software, since they wouldn't be able to compete with this 'end runaround' of their licensing. So the logical progression is from open trade to no exporting to no exporting or importing of software.
The other half of the pincer of course would be the OSS movement. Corporations would now have huge incentives to pour lots of money into OSS development. It will be cheaper for them to do this than deal with the licensing stupdities, and the inevitable decline in quality that such licensing laws would foster.
The end result of such absurdity is that this field of U.S. commerce would become insular and stagnant, leading to decay. Foreign software companies and free OSS based software development would eventually eclipse commercial U.S. companies in both size and quality. Basically the same thing that happened to the U.S. automotive industry in the 70's would happen to the U.S. software companies.
It's a pretty thought, but it doesn't work out that way in practice. We will probably win, but it won't be just because we played fair.
I acknowledge that not many people believe in fair-play right now, but I don't care, because races can't be won by everybody. Most races allow only one winner, and I believe that fair-play is a real help in many races that really matter.
Bullshit. If my antilock brakes fail because of a defective part, whoever manufactured that part is liable. If those same antilock brakes, or some metaphorical equivalent thereof, fail because of a software glitch, then the writer of that software should be equally liable. I don't see that software should be any different from any other product on the marketplace with respect to the creator of the product making claims about that product.
In addition, one of the reasons that so many consumer groups are concerned about the UCITA is that it lets a company avoid that liability. So, if I shrink-wrap the 'hello world' program as a Low Cost, Completely Secure Alternative To WorkingFirewallWhatever, with a disclaimer that says (may not do what the box says, and it's expressly forbidden to publish comparisons or benchmarks of the product without FooCorp's written permission) I can quite happily sell that and _never_ have to worry about bad print-press reviews. Because those clauses are now enforceable, by law.
When I write a piece of software, I cannot guarantee that it will function in a certain way, even if that is the essential purpose of the software - software is simply too complex. e.g. if I write a piece of software for securing a system, I cannot guarantee that the system will now be uncrackable. Placing unreasonable demands on software developer will have a chilling effect on software produced in this country.
I don't think that asking a product to behave the way the company says it will is unreasonable at all. Try replacing the word "software" with "car engine" or "airplane" and see how ridiculous it sounds.
--
Mike Hoye
Bullshit. If my antilock brakes fail because of a defective part, whoever manufactured that part is liable. If those same antilock brakes, or some metaphorical equivalent thereof, fail because of a software glitch, then the writer of that software should be equally liable.
What you've described falls under the category of mission critical applications, which I agree should be held to much higher standards - and if I'm not mistaken, is in fact held to higher standards by the law. But this wasn't the type of software I was thinking of. I was thinking of retail, off-the-shelf software, and most retail software explicitly says in the EULA that the software is not for use in mission critical applications (like hospitals, flight control systems, etc.)
So, if I shrink-wrap the 'hello world' program as a Low Cost, Completely Secure Alternative To WorkingFirewallWhatever, with a disclaimer that says (may not do what the box says, and it's expressly forbidden to publish comparisons or benchmarks of the product without FooCorp's written permission) I can quite happily sell that and _never_ have to worry about bad print-press reviews.
I think this would fall under the category of gross negligence. My point is that provided the software publisher has made reasonable effort to ensure that the software performs as stated, and has not deliberately hidden critical information from the consumer, then the software publisher should not be held liable if flaws are later uncovered in the product.
And for companies with a decent policy getting ahead:
How many people actually reads the license before opening the shrink wrap or clicking "Next"?
Abusers of this law will lose out, of cource, but they will have followers, and more followers.
A bad thing is a bad thing.
*Side note*
A friend of mine tried to contact lotus support to report a security bug. They directed him to a pay-per-minute support number.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
So now we know what Bill Gates is doing since he stepped down as MS's CEO: he is posting rants to /.
Cheers,
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Copy protection schemes are inherently bogus. Why? Because copyright eventually expires, and material passes into the public domain, yet the copy protection is still there.
If such a law were passed I would move to all open source software. And I would devote a great deal of my time to writing programs that would be gpl'ed just to take money away from any software company that tried to use such a crummy liscense.
Thank god I still have enough freedom to move to another country if this one keeps going the way it's going.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Near the begining of the article is says something about used software, and FuncoLand going out of business. If this were to go into law does that mean that if I bought a Playstation game I would not be allowed to sell it to someone else?
Microsoft already has an NDA in their standard EULA. Wonder why all the NT vs. Linux benchmarks look so good? :-)
disclaimer: opinions contained therein are not neccessarily those of my employer.
Would you be happy if every TV you bought had a license saying "we are not liable it this blows up and kills you and all your family".
What i mean is programs should due what the say on the box and it should be possible to sue software houses for negligence if their product does damage (just like anything else you buy)
While this law may hurt the average consumer at first ( because of restrictions placed on software they have been using for years ), in the long run it may help the open source community. For example: if Adobe refuses to let a certain publication review it's next generation of Photoshop the publication will still have a desire to reach a segment of the market interested in graphics software. They might instead turn around and review GIMP, giving the average consumer a better look at the tools created by the Open Source community. More press == more support == growth of open source. In essence, any missuses of this law by the commercial closed source sector only increases the market base of the open source sector. This is bad law that only help our cause.
Y'know, so far nobody has mentioned what is, IMHO the most entertaining way to fight UCITA. Instead of writing letters to your representatives (boring and tedious), let UCITA pass. Then, start a small software company, and sell 20 or thirty copies of whatever it is you make. Then add a clause to your EULA stating that you now own the users Immortal Soul :) UCITA will be revoked so fast your head will spin (if it wasn't spinning already, in regards to the Immortal Soul agreement :)
From what I can tell, the law takes the present licenses that come with software and pushes their limits some, but not unrecognizably. If you read the licenses that are distributed now, they are darn harsh creatures. Come to think of it, mandatory arbitration (like they pick the arbitraror) for hardware isn't exactly peaches and cream either.
The original spirit of the Uniform Commerical Code was to codify everyday commercial practices in effect, sometimes for centuries, through custom and common law. Also in the spirit of the UCC, is that it is written mostly for business transactions, and is not/was never intended to be a consumer protection code.
A long, long fight over the part of the UCC that deals with the purchases of goods (think computer, camera, food, grain, etc) has been to make that code "consumer-protective." After decades, it has just getting to be more so. I am not in the least surprised that the first cut at the "information" dimension follows the old pattern.
I think the reason this has come to pass is that consumers really don't care about the licenses they have now. They never read them, and they blatantly abuse them. Consumers copy software, use it on multiple computers, etc, etc, all against the terms of their licenses. Enforcement is practially nil. If a significant player in the market, perhaps an abusive Redmond, WA company, were to start pulling stunts like remotely switching software off, triggering your online banking software to pay for the extra copies you made, erasing your HD under the terms of the license or what not, the law would change QUICK.
It's a shame that we will have to go through that firestorm once to get something reasonable. I can't see the uniform state law people getting a good law out the first time around.
That doens't make sense... :)
What he's saying is he gets his kids to buy and install the software, thus they have to 'agree' to the EULA when installing it and he will NEVER see it and isn't liable for whatever it's clauses are. His kids are, and since they're minors they can't be held to the EULA's terms and conditions.
So, he is (a) using a licenced copy, just he didn't agree to the EULA and (b) he isn't using a copy without permission since he bought the software and has his kids install it on 'thier' computer.
-BK
Summarizing, I've learn a lot around /., but are slashdotters good lobbyists? And even so, we can make thunders roll in the techo-babble world, but my mother doesn't look at slashdot; most of the people who I hang around with don't.
Meanwhile, in *my* country (Portugal), there are people who look at US laws (read habits or culture), and think that what they see is good.
So, the problem is with the widespread fear of tech, and with the old myth that "US *is* right."
What we need is to *open* those minds. Like Nicholas Vining said, the important is public awareness.
But public awareness brings me to think of something *I* feel EVERY SINGLE DAY: I'm an outcast! I'm writing this in a room full of computers (I've installed Linux in all of them), but I'm the only one NOT running Machosoft Windows. The same happens with teachers, they don't even know about OUR world.
What we need is someone with social recognition who can uphold our standars and thinking in the mass-media world.
We've got some media attention around here: The second to most popular channel in Portugal once made a story for the evening news about some students who ran Linux on their laptops. But the 'kids' spoke like evangelizing. It didn't work. I've never seen another story about Linux in my TV set.
The way I see it, shrinkwrap software has become a big business because most people think that purchasing software is like purchasing beer. So people who can afford to pay for software have mostly been willing to do so.
But since they think of themselves as buying a physical object, they're going to expect the same rights they have with physical objects that they've purchased: the right to take it apart (i.e. reverse engineering), the right to tell their friends what they think of it, the right to sell it to someone else (i.e. transfer of licenses). If this new law allows software makers to eliminate these rights, they will be going rather sharply against the grain of the customer's expectation and intuition regarding what he or she has purchased.
Companies that actually use such restrictive licenses and attempt to enforce them will likely face an enormous backlash from customers. This backlash could mean people moving to open source (or at least less restricted) software. Or it could take the form of legislation that reduces the powers granted by copyright over all sorts of IP.
People who make this claim demonstrate an astonishing lack of historical perspective. Have you never been to a movie theatre? What about a concert? Here are some hints: Music existed long before the phonograph or CD. Movies existed long before videotape or DVD. The 'entertainment industry' is not entirely dependant upon the model in which people buy hunks of matter encoded with a piece of IP and use a player at home to view or listen to that IP.
I've seen some of those people that enjoy paying for software...ugh.
Anyway, UMBC is hardly a "wealthy school district" (It's a state college, in case you didn't know). We're quite a computer-centric school, so there's lots of money to go towards computers (even for the art and music departments computers, though they don't get money for anything else).
The reason that we as an organization can afford to pay for this lame-osity is that we manage to sell a lot of advertising for a school newspaper, equal to 2x the money we get from the SGA. I think that it would be nicer to be able to spend that money our Ad dept. works hard to earn on something else.
I hope this clears it up a bit...sorry for not mentioning that earlier.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Will reverse engineering make Third Eye Blind and Oasis get real jobs and go away? If so, where do I sign up?
Seriously, I'm part of an independant radio station, and I play in a local band. Nobody with music that I want to listen to wants to stop me from getting it.
You want copy protection right in the media? What if I BUY a bunch of CDs, and only like 3 songs on each one? I would like to make a "mix CD" for my car, so that I don't have to switch CDs and keep hitting the skip button, increasing my chances of crashing into someone. I'm about to build a computer-based CarMP3 player. Do I not have permission to copy music that I BOUGHT onto it?
I buy Bela Fleck, Autechre (who'd have guessed
Without copy protection, perhaps people who write bad pop songs will not continue to make more money than teachers.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
My band used to have a song called "Corporate Rock Sucks". It consisted of fake interviews with rich rock stars during the verse over elevator music, and us yelling and thrashing guitars on the chorus. (yeah, I know:) Here's an excerpt:
...uhh...
Interviewer: So, you guys are really upset about Ticketmaster charging your fans all that money?
Eddie Vedder: Yeah, that's totally messed up, man!
I: Really? So your CDs really cost $15 to manufacture?
EV: Yeah, man! We're practically, like, GIVING them away!
I: If you really care so much about your fans, why don't you just start your own label and release all your own albums like Fugazi did?
EV:
EV: This interview is OVER! I'm gonna go shoot some heroin!
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
What an outrageous post. "If you do not accept the license agreement, you have no right to use the software. If you use it anyway, you are a felon. This crime is far worse than rape or murder, because it strikes at the heart of the system of natural incentives which drives our free economy." Worse than rape or murder? These crimes naturally do not strike at the heart of anything particularly or comparably important!?! I thought at the heart of our system was the concept of individual liberty, based on the notion of negative freedom (i.e. freedom from things... like being raped or murdered by our fellow men...) After such liberty is gauranteed then and only then is our "free economy" possible as this economy rests entirely on freedom from arbitrary confiscation of property, etc. In other words, our system is based on everybody having oodles and oodles of rights and (surprise) for every right I can be said to possess, you have a corresponding obligation and vice versa... Voila, liberal democracy; more or less what we are living in. This is not a question of consumer vs. vendor. The is simply a disussion of whether or not the proposed legislation will lead to a dangerously lopsided transaction between two parties. In my opinion, based on a rational weighing of the issues, it will. Thus it sucks and sucks large. I am more than half convinced that the "Consumers" have no "rights" post is simply a very good satire, in its' amusing combination of rabid irrationality and cheap sloganism. If this is this case, Bravo! If this is not the case it is even funnier (after you get over your sadness, outrage and indignation).
A plot, by none other than ESR, RMS, and Linus himself, to subvert commercial software! "If we manage to screw over closed-source software users enough, they'll turn to us and use OURS! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!"
~svoboda
~svoboda
Practice kind randomness and beautiful acts of nonsense.
Imagine getting carded at CompUsa when you go to buy software. I have pictures of kids running out to buy Quake or something, and making up good stories for the clerk like "I forgot my ID in the car" or "I'm buying it for a friend..."
Hey, maybe somebody will start bootlegging software... Buying games for minors, spend a year in prison... but I digress...
Sorry, couldn't resist...
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
Sorry to point out the obvious, but you didn't PAY for the badsoftware website.
If he CHARGED for legal advice and then had the disclaimer, fair 'nuf.
90% the lawmakers in Washington don't have a clue what they are talking about here. I mean, really. Most of the politicians I have talked to don't know the difference between the internet and an intranet, FTP or HTTP, Linux or Unix, etc. Al Gore claims he invented the internet. Do we really have to have people like this making laws about this stuff?
kwsNI
Software should be like a book
I totally agree. Books are as easy to copy as software, and as easy to distribute. Having a binding EULA on a book would be considered ludicrous by just about everyone. So would regional coding, copy protection of any description or restrictions against resale. Why is software different?
"INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Under UCITA, almost all software-related transactions will be licensing transactions. When a consumer buys a copy of Microsoft Word and a copy of a book about the program, the software transaction would be a license while the book transaction is a sale, even if the two items were side by side"
Uhhh yeah since like the 80's, give me a break this is OLD OLD OLD news.
"the customer bought them both from the same cashier, and the software license was not available to the customer until after she paid for the product and took it away"
Yeah it never was. I guess this is just FINALLY a law to enforce this. This sounds like a good thing for commercial software, although to make this legally binding for real I'd think at some point they will have to have the license agreement on the back of the box and the retailor will have to ask if the customer read it.
Have you people been hiding under the Linux/other nix rocks of free software? Welcome to reality.
N
There have been laws against what you describe ever since compaq et al reverse engineered ibm pcs to make clones. They had some engineers reverse engineer the processor and what it did, and then write up a big manual of a new processor and what they wanted it to do.
A second set of engineers then came and made a processor based upon that which opened up the market for clones. Since that time the laws I believe have become more strict which is why you don't see any Mac clones.
Do people just assume that everyone is too nice to come out with their own G3's or whatever to compete with Apple? I can think of 9 or 10 companies who would sell them cheaper than apple does.
What I am saying is that just as no one does any reverse engineering of Apple computers in some other country and makes a computer here that uses the same software, a software maker can't either.
Why do you people act like this is so new and so bad??? Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO. Why was it a big deal to a lot of people when they open sourced quake? BECAUSE IT WAS NOT BEFORE THAT!!!!
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
Yeah, it would be great if everything was free except then you would have no idsoftware making fantastic games cause they have money shooting out of their arse.
Have you looked at the games just made for linux lately??? Have you played them?? They are crap. One of the reasons I still boot up 98 is for games. I'm happy as hell that they have those license agreements since it makes them money giving me a BETTER PRODUCT.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing. Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
I always followed the license agreements anyway not giving every software product I bought to friends or reverse engineering it(like I'd know how to reverse engineer.)
International copyright has protected software in similar ways the world over for years, except in countries like Romainia and the USSR where you can go to flea market like open stores with racks and racks of burned games and software, because they don't follow or enforce those laws at all.
I'm glad this is finally going to possibly be law, no more supposing what I can and can't do based upon different license agreements. Also it will only help the free software movement more, although it seems like anyone who can make games or such things goes to work for a commercial company where they actually make money.
I won't waste my time pointing out your many flawed arguments, since others have already done so. I just want to nitpick on one little issue: compaq didn't reverse engineer the processor in the IBM PC, it was the BIOS.
---Bless those silly trolls---
But if the contracts can be written in such a way as to allow changes (which the article states is allowed), this wouldn't do much good. All the software company would need to do is to change the contract, and the users are stuck with it - either that, or they'll need to abandon the package midstream, losing time and money. I do agree that this could be a boon to open source, but I would rather not see this thing pass at all.
Once a piece of software is purchased, it is mine. Not yours, not the creators, not god's even. If I want to make 50 copies for My personal use, I can. What I can not do is give it to someone else. That is the crux of what, in their twisted warped methodology, are trying to establish. I agree with you that you are bound by the license agreement. I liked Borland's concept of it, like a book. Software should be like a book.
From the country where life is "TRUE BLUE" and tech support reigns..
I have to disagree somewhat (and probably get flamed). Software is not like math. Software principles are like math, but software is like engineered devices, copyrightable (Is that a word?). What you choose to do with software once it is written is up to you, but it belongs to the writer. I would certainly argue that it is preferable to release it under an open licence, but that is only my choice if I write the software. I am also not saying that the writer has the right to enforce any random contract he wants, as these laws imply, but software is not like math or science. it is like engineering, and engineered products can be copyrighted.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Scientific ideas are patented all the time. If scientific innovation were not patentable, industry wouldn't spend money on research. Publicly funded research results are patented too. Universities can hold patents on processes and advancements. They then license them to private industry and use the proceeds to fund further research. Even if the idea is published, it can be patented (I think that the patent has to come first). Government funded (or even privately funded) research that has security implications can be classified, which is an even deeper black hole than a patent. "Free" science would stifle innovation and competition. Why spend money developing a lucrative idea or process if it becomes public property?
"Corporations are NOT people." Correct, but limited. Most people who can see more than ten minutes into the future invest their money in corporations. (And if you say "I don't have any corporate investments", what do you think the bank does with your money when you deposit it? Why are they paying you interest for your savings?) Anyways, you are indirectly harming every Joe Schmo who has money in that company. Not harming them much, perhaps, but enough that you ought to climb down off your high horse. If you're really serious about "Anything that damages a major corporation and proves a good point in a non-violent fashion is forwarding the cause." then I suggest you trash your current hardware and never buy again from the evil Apple corporate giant. That'll show 'em.
Utter tripe. I know this particular AC doesn't believe what he writes, which may be construed as funny if only it were close to a true parody. But when the part about "conservative Libertarians" is used by others in mockery...well, that just becomes pathetic.
As a (basically) libertarian, I have to say that this is the worst "parody" by a neo-socialist I've ever read. Libertarianism is a moral philosophy based on natural law. We have certain rights: period. Nobody "gives" you your rights; you don't have to "earn" them from anybody; you don't even have to declare them, and nobody even has to acknowledge them, but that doesn't make them go away. It's part of human nature.
Leveraging government power the way the UCITA does is a violation of practically every libertarian principle. Don't give me this politicking BS cheap swipe at libertarians or conversatives. Try doing some reading next time.
And yes I am logged on. Slashdot thinks I'm not, and I'm in no mood to try remembering my password (it should see the damned cookie it set, as the main page does...grrr...).
UCITA section 816 allows software vendors to place disabling codes in software and to activate them remotely (such as by sending an e-mail) to shut down a customer's use of the product
Under the UK's Computer Abuse Act, this would be a criminal offense leading to custodial sentences. There are plenty of precedents.
AC
I'd like to point out a few things WRT people having the technology to reproduce entertainment materials.
Compare the dollar value of the recording industry before and after the introduction of consumer tape recorders. Now adjust for inflation....
Compare the dollar value of the movie industry before and after the indroduction of the VCR. Now adjust for inflation.
The entertainment industry is a growth industry. I wouldn't expect a big drop in their profits until the earths population is on the decline.
Software is likewise a growth industry. I don't dispute any individual or companys right to license their IP as they see fit, but I do have a problem with passing extraneous legislation.
There are already laws on the books which protect IP. UCITA only serves to further absolve software houses et al from their responsibility to hold up their end of the bargain.
The software to buy is decided on by going for the software house that offers the best incentives to the *person* (not the company!) buying the software.
I can see that point for the current situation (it happens all the time), but under the new rules things change. Productivity losses due to bad software are hard to count now, but just wait until a LARGE corperation looses millions because their POS software got shut down remotely by mistake and a court holds that the vendor bears NO liability. The stockholders will sue the executives into oblivion for accepting such a needless risk.
In truth, I'm more outraged in the abstract than in the personal sense (Since I stick to free software). I do worry about the slippery legal slope here, especially the parts about the vendor being able to arbitrarily re-write the agreement at any time and the potential legality of hidden contracts that can be accepted without even knowing it exists. It can only be a matter of time before that becomes very ugly.
The problem is, the new laws would allow a company to prohibit bad reviews. Suppose I try a new game and it wipes out my hard drive and flashes the BIOS with junk. Posting that fact on Slashdot would be a violation of the license and they could sue me for lost sales (but I could not sue them for lost data or a replacement BIOS).
Moral of the story: if this goes into effect, never buy non-free software again.
As far as I can see, the UCITA, despite all the hype I've heard about it, changes nothing. Here are the major poison pills in it:
-> Prohibition of reverse engineering.
This changes nothing. Reverse engineering is already illegal here (the US) as far as I know, and de facto illegal just about anywhere. Even if there is no legal merit to an attack, anyone who successfully reverse engineers something can expect to be subjected to a barrage of legal harassment, court cases, and extreme negative publicity, and to incur either huge legal fees, huge penalties (if they lose), or both (references that come to mind: various video game emulators (N64, for example), DeCSS)
-> Shrink-wrap licenses
Again, as far as I know these are already binding; the only thing that saves us is that the megacorporations that make software don't bother leaning on individuals when leaning on other corporations is more profitable (since with most software it's almost physically impossible to simultaneously use the software in any useful way and obey the license agreement)
If they might not be legally binding, see the note for reverse engineering -- I know I can't afford to get hit with a lawsuit, whether it has legal merit or not.
-> The example given above -- buying Word and a book -- is true even today, without the UCITA.
-> I don't think it's possible to return software even today. One of the points in the above article was that the terms of the license can be presented after the software was bought; this is already common practice. If you think this invalidates the license, see my note on shrink-wraps and lawsuits.
-> Computer companies already charge ridiculous amounts for support or don't even bother. Computer programs are already shipped with piles of bugs (Win9x anyone)
In sum, the UCITA is nothing other than a statement of existing laws and practices. That it sounds so terrible is more a reflection on the ethics and techniques of the proprietary software industry it covers than on the proposal itself.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
...and stop bitching about what your customers want! Either give them what they want or be an asshole about it, but don't bitch that "Something needs to be done!"
Installing 100 copies when only one is licensed is ALREADY a copyright violation. Or did you mean, you want to shut your customers up?
And you wonder why "the general public has no respect for software licenses or software companies".
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
And I like the fundamentals of our intellectual property laws (gasp!). They exist to prevent secrecy by treating disclosed ideas and works equitably. We all benefit by encouraging people to express what they create. It moves us forward culturally, economically, and technologically. Sure, the implementation has the inevitable bugs, but the design is solid.
Because the length of copyright protection has been continuously extended, almost nothing's gone into the public domain since World War II.
Copyright protection is now for such a long period of time that the "limited monopoly for long enough to compensate the author/artist, then let it become public domain to encourage the advancement of the arts" model is completely broken.
DNA just wants to be free...
Hi, Andrew!
Frankly, I'm not sure UCITA offers much aid to enforcing the GPL. The GPL, and most other OSS licenses, differ in a key way from traditional shrinkwrap "agreements".
Shrinkwraps state, "You must agree to this wide array of covenants and restrictions, or we forbid you from using this product." The GPL, on the other hand, states, "As a lawful posessor of this code, you use it in any way you like. But because it's copyrighted, you can't make or distribute copies without a license. We will grant you a license to make copies if you fulfill these conditions:..."
Absent the UCITA, either shrinkwraps or the GPL (or both) may be found to be non-binding. If so, then default conditions of law apply. If the GPL is found to be non-binding, then copyright law by default precludes you from making and distributing copies. OTOH, if a shrinkwrap "agreement" is found to be non-binding, are we to presume the software can't be used at all?
It is my firm belief that, in retail venues, Right to Use is concomitant with purchase. I think a software publisher would have an uphill battle arguing that a person who lawfully obtained a piece of software can't lawfully use it without an enforceable "agreement" in place.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Many mainframe software packages are not sold, but rented on a monthly basis. You pay $500 a month to run UltraBase on your mainframe. The software vendor has a legitimate interest in being able to disable the software if you stop paying the monthly licensing fee. The question is whether the vendor must get a court order or can use some technical means to disable the software.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I agree. Years ago, I asked AT&T for information on some UNIX applications software that they were selling. They sent me the information and a legal contract that had to be signed and submitted with the order before they would ship the software. That seemed much more honest than the shrinkwrap licenses that are so popular today.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Apple used to have very big ROMs with lots of software (some of it quite obscure and undocumented) until the Power Mac (forgot which modle, I thinkg G3). These were too big for reverse engineering ;-)
Nowadays, since Aplle switched to Open Firmware your only problem to build an Apple clone are the exclusive agreements between Apple/Motorolla/IBM. These agreements are now mostly dfropped: Since G4 IBM has decided to release a full MB design. As a result Apple clones are actually in the works.
This means that Apple (being thy small MS) will most likely once again start putting a few megs of software into a ROM so that the reverse engineering effort becomes formbiddingly expensive.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
and you all seem to have fallen for it.
________________________________
Most ordinary people I talk to think that when they buy a product, they are a PURCHASING a copy of the program, with full rights to do whatever they want with it. What they are really buying is a license, and the UCITA legitimizes this practice.
Actually you are buying a copy of a program. The software vendors don't want you to think so. Federal law gives you certain rights as a purchaser of a copyrighted work and a state law can not take those rights away. I expect that if it ever comes to it, most of the egregous provisions like reverse engineering and bad-publicity clauses will be found to be unenforcable.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it.
Bullshit. The average American dosn't see it that way today. I don't see it that way today. If you were a software producer and tried to make that case in court, you would be laughed out of the courtroom. The software is worthless without the right to use it. It would be fraudulent to charge for it.
You in fact have the right to use software under ordinary Federal Copyright law. You do not need a license to use it.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I'd like to see someone make this argument in court. Federal Copyright law gives you "Fair Use" rights. No state law can take those rights away. You do have the right to use software that you have purchased consistant with Federal Copyright law. The software vendors would like it to be otherwise, but it just isn't so. The legal fiction that you aren't purchasing a copy is just that -- a legal fiction.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
My point is the these provisions of UCITA conflict with Federal Law. They should be struck down as such.
I agree that most people would think that they are enforcable because most beople think that all the provisions in current EULAs are enforcable. Whatcha gonna do?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I don't believe that your comments are accurate for all nerds. I've run into a few competent programmers who've actually bought into leftist "Round Earth" theories.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
My feelings about UCITA are that it imposes such horrifying terms on customers that many businesses will turn to open source software to protect themselves.
I wish I could say that were true, but its not. The fact of the matter is, most businesses haven't even read the licensing agreements that exist in mass market software and have no idea the kinds of restrictions that already exist in the EULAs and such, enforceable or not. This law simply legitimatizes these existing gestapo (sp?) restrictions.
If businesses were aware of the restrictions that already exist, they wouldn't buy the software. Either that or they are aware of them and they just don't care. (I find this hard to believe, though). Case in point: the Microsoft EULA restricts reverse engineering, the McAfee license doesn't allow for negative reviews. Yet, there is no shortage of companies that use Microsoft Office or McAfee VirusScan. Companies either don't know about these restrictions or they just don't care.
Most consumers are just simply clueless. They don't read the licenses and don't care. Most ordinary people I talk to think that when they buy a product, they are a PURCHASING a copy of the program, with full rights to do whatever they want with it. What they are really buying is a license, and the UCITA legitimizes this practice.
My journal has hot
Right now, yes. But if UCITA becomes law then this will no longer be the case.
My guess is that if most (lay) people were to read the software licenses, they would actually think that they are enforceable.
My journal has hot
I understand your point of view, but my own experience is that most people are not stupid. They ignore current licensing terms because they are unenforced and unenforceable.
Well, bear in mind that Slashdot readers, are on average smarter than the general population. I hate to say it but most people are basically ignorant of anything technical and especially software licenses.
I'm not saying that they're stupid, merely uninformed. Ask your average grandmother what a software license is and she'll probably have no clue.
My journal has hot
The next step for the software giants would be threatening to sue discussion boards unless they remove negative posts about software. Microsoft could sue /. if someone posted benchmarks for SQLServer. Currently, it's unenforcable (though most of these sites lack the legal resources to oppose a big company). This law would make it enforcable. That would seriously damage our ability to pre-evaluate systems.
They could also try to sue Linus if a driver showed up that they felt was the result of reverse engineering their windows drivers.
Okay, maybe this is over the top, but something needs to be changed.
I work for a small floundering software comapany.
We are not wealthy, in fact we barely scrape by each month. My 5 years here have taught me that the general public has no respect for software licenses or software companies. They think that everything should be free. They will call on the 800 number that we pay for, talk to a paid employee and yet they can't understand why we have to charge them for our software. sheesh.
I just want to scream people call and demand a free upgrade for the software they bought 4 years ago. "Microsoft gives away free software, why don't you..."
It makes me crazy when people call and tell me that they installed one disk on all 100 machines in their office and they really don't care what the license says. "Well, the comapny paid for the disk so they should be able to install it anywhere in the office...right..."
So yeah... maybe this proposed license is over the top, but something needs to be changed.
UCITA handles these objections better than the status quo.
First, you are not able to see the license until you pay for the software.
True, UCITA does not require mass market licenses to be available, although it does require the existence of the mass market license to be disclosed. However,
Second, most retailers have a no-refund policy for opened software. Don't agree with the license, too bad. They already have your money so their is not incentive for them to speed the refund process.
UCITA fixes this. The contract isn't enforceable unless a return is permitted, together with reimbursement of reasonable expenses incurred and compensation for costs of getting back to the status quo. Under the status quo, there are no such guarantees. The critics don't focus too much on that kind of thing in their analysis, do they?
Hi right back at you Leo!
Absent the UCITA, either shrinkwraps or the GPL (or both) may be found to be non-binding. If so, then default conditions of law apply. If the GPL is found to be non-binding, then copyright law by default precludes you from making and distributing copies.
Leo's point is salient, but only so far as it goes. The recipient of GPL'd code who is not bound by GPL is entitled to do all sorts of things with it, so long as he or she doesn't infringe the copyright in the work. This can include using the code to write a detailed specification for building a knock-off, and in many cases using large snippets or ideas drawn from the code for proprietary projects, so long as it can be justified as fair use.
If GPL becomes binding under UCITA, things become far more interesting. The same hand that binds us under non-reverse-engineering provisions with proprietary code binds the OSS "thief" who would take open code proprietary.
It all depends whether you buy RMS' argument that the GPL handcuffs are necessary to keep the software free. If you do, then UCITA helps (ironically from the point of view of most UCITA advocates) to enforce those tenets. If you do not, then it doesn't matter.
It is my firm belief that, in retail venues, Right to Use is concomitant with purchase. I think a software publisher would have an uphill battle arguing that a person who lawfully obtained a piece of software can't lawfully use it without an enforceable "agreement" in place.
Belief doesn't equate with truth. At least under the cases I have read, it seems fairly clear that these "licensed copy, not sold goods" provisions have the effect their plain meaning announces.
I've got legislators on the lookout for it, and checked with the Attorney General. If they try to backdoor it, it has to come through one of the committees they're on. And as a longtime friend, they owe me big time if they don't even tell me when it comes through.
But I would worry about Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland. The corporate HQ concentration there makes it highly likely to be a State of first invokation.
Will in Seattle
Yeah, but
No Jail Time = Cost Of Doing Business
Until you make the Board of Directors and Execs do jail terms, it's meaningless. A cost of doing business.
Will in Seattle
Actually, that won't save you. Did you forget about Free Trade and NAFTA? You already bought in to our legal system if you buy US software.
Sigh.
Will in Seattle
Next thing you know you'll be saying that Corporations should have to provide some public good (true until 1930) and should be liable for their actions (true until the 60s, 1965 I think).
;-)
Will in Seattle
In my day we had to write the assembler code by hand and compile it ourselves. Then we had to manufacture the floppy disks ourselves and mail them. And we had 8 inch floppies. None of this CD-ROM stuff.
...
And we didn't have help desks. We didn't even have 1-800 numbers. And 1-888 numbers didn't exist. We dialed the phone manually, and it was a rotary phone. And since there was no voice mail and no call waiting, we had to hope they were in the office when we phoned. If they could afford an office. Or a phone.
And if you wanted to download the patch, you had to connect at 110 or 300 baud.
And we liked it
Will in Seattle
I've had extensive discussions with some of the Washington State Reps and Senators on this issue, including some of those on the Technology and Commerce committees (which have names I can't recall right now). I believe you are misstating the true impact of UCITA.
A wolf in sheep's clothing, actually. Under UCITA, if it passes in Virginia and Texas, they could get a judge in Texas to allow a firm to get the back door access to a firm in Virginia, provided they did business there. And, with the Net, that's not hard to prove. You just have to shop around for a judge who gets elected in a city where this issue might mean a lot of cash to his reelection campaign.
My extensive involvement in politics leads me to believe this will occur, regardless of all the "it can't happen here" statements of UCITA defenders. Just like the Roth IRA will be taxed by the time I retire. Politicians, and judges in many states, will do what works for them and come up with a fancy reason why it's ok.
I'm not saying there aren't some good concepts in UCITA, I'm saying that the approved language is severely flawed in practice and implementation. These issues do need to be addressed, but not at the cost of consumers who are supposed to read pages of inserts in legalese with their bills which refer them to a web site that changes the terms of their contract which they haven't even read. It's like buying a house - when I did it, I read the contracts, which very few people do. And I found three substantial mistakes, by doing so, that could cause trouble down the road.
Ignorance under the law means you lose and the lawyers on the other side win.
Will in Seattle
Not if there is an NDA agreement in one of the cluases. Many companies now exclude the right to review or benchmark the product. Since UCITA will be enforceable under contract law, they could just as easily stick in a 'can not reveal the terms of this agreement' clause.
...
And which company would use that? They'd have to be a monopoly
Will in Seattle
Not if there is an NDA agreement in one of the cluases. Many companies now exclude the right to review or benchmark the product. Since UCITA will be enforceable under contract law, they could just as easily stick in a 'can not reveal the terms of this agreement' clause.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
One major difference between the typical EULA and the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer is that the EULA seeks to remove rights you have always had, and the IANAL seeks to remind you that you never had the rights to begin with.
Another major difference is that the IANAL disclaimer is made by someone who, by law, cannot dispense legal advice -- and is stressing that fact. A software company, on the otherhand, openly advertises it's services and products, and makes boldprint claims of what they do -- that the EULA tries to take away.
If you were to take your Porche to the local Ford mechanic for repairs, and they said "We don't know Porche's all that well, our expertise is in Fords. I'd recommend going to the Porche dealership instead.", but agreed to try when you insisted, I don't think you'd have any recourse if they broke your car.
But if the Porche dealership broke your car, then pointed to the fine print on the back of their invoice disclaiming all responsibility and all warrantees... A good lawyer would have a field-day with that.
In addition to writing your legislators, on paper, with good spelling and polite language, I would recommend talking to your purchasing department.
If you've ever been asked which product to buy, or participated in an RFP, those are huge opportunities to influence the process. Calmly explain to purchasing all the bad things in UCITA. Try to get a standard clause in all your purchase contracts to get all vendors dealing with your company to waive UCITA.
If you're dealing with vendor marketing, tell them you don't like UCITA, and products that don't come encumbered with it's trappings will rate higher in your evaluations.
When dealing with your peers, enlighten them on UCITA, and get the word to spread.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Skip Lockwood, 4CITE Coordinator, 202-257-7007
Press Conference: January 7, 2000
8:30-9:30 a.m.
Virginia Capitol Building
House Room 5 "The Press Room"
Richmond, VA
Business and Non-Profit Coalition Urges Caution during Consideration of Legislation Affecting Software Purchasing
(Richmond, Virginia ? January 7, 2000) ? Fearing an erosion of the user rights of consumers and businesses, a coalition including Virginia
business leaders and public information advocates today urged state lawmakers to cast a critical eye on a proposed new law on computer software and on-line services. The coalition, known as "For a
Competitive Information and Technology Economy" or 4CITE, has been formed to oppose the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act(UCITA).
The Joint Committee on Technology and Science of the Virginia State Legislature (JCOTS) will expected to report on UCITA today. Even
though a broad range of consumer and business groups expressed opposition to UCITA before the JCOTS advisory committee, the advisory committee on Tuesday of this week favorably recommended UCITA to the full committee. Several members of the advisory committee voted against the proposal.
Opposition to the controversial proposal is mounting. 4CITE is a diverse coalition of pro-electronic commerce business and non-profit
end-users and developers of computer information technology. "We support the development of high-quality computer and information technology and the growth of fair and competitive markets in technology licensing and electronic commerce. But UCITA is unbalanced, anti-quality and anti-competitive and will not promote these objectives. It provides no benefit to the Commonwealth of Virginia or its citizens, other than burdening the courts. We should think long and hard before tinkering with the engine of Virginia's economic growth," says 4CITE director Skip Lockwood.
UCITA is controversial not only with users but also within the software industry itself. Numerous quality and software development associations have come out in opposition to UCITA. Additionally, alterations in the purchasing playing field deeply concern library and educational organizations. "The fact that you will not know until after you buy software that it comes "as is", like a used car, is just one of UCITA's many problems," said consumer advocate David McMahon.
The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act would grant broad new powers to software and information vendors at the expense of businesses and consumers. As currently drafted this legislation would:
* Allow software and information vendors to shut down mission-critical software remotely, without court approval and without liability
* Allow software vendors to avoid liability for damage caused by known defects
* Allow software vendors to prohibit the transfer of software from one company to another, even in the course of a merger or acquisition
* Allow software vendors to impede the development of innovative products
* Allow software vendors to collect confidential information about businesses and consumers
* Binds a user to terms disclosed only after the user has paid for the software and then grants software vendors the right to change terms of the contract unilaterally by e-mail
* Curtail the use and circulation of public information
* Deprive consumers of adequate legal remedies
* Dramatically shifts the balance of existing contract law in favor of software vendors when contracting with businesses and consumers
* Through "shrink-wrap" or click-on licenses, undermine libraries', abilities to preserve, make fair use of and lend information products.
Virginia is not the only state that needs to be concerned with UCITA. It is anticipated that a version of UCITA will be introduced in several states in the U.S. over the next year. 4CITE will vigorously oppose UCITA wherever it is introduced.
Members of 4CITE are:
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
Art Libraries Society of North America
Association of Research Libraries
Caterpillar Inc.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Digital Future Coalition
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Infoworld
International Communications Association
John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company
Law Office of Cem Kaner
McLane Inc.
National Consumer Law Center
National Humanities Alliance
Principal Financial Group
Prudential Insurance Company of America
Satisfice, Inc.
Society for Information Management
Special Libraries Association
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
The Independent Computer Consultants Association represents independent CUSTOM programmers. After studying several versions of the UCITA proposal to let vendors shut down customers, they recommended:
(1) UCITA should BAN "self-help" (sending a shut-down message to the customer's computer)
(2) UCITA should allow a custom software developer to get an injunction against a customer (a court would shut down the customer, after hearing the facts) and require the customer to pay the developer's costs if the court granted the injunction. This makes the action affordable for the custom developer but protects the customer and the public (when you shut down a hospital's software, you don't just affect the hospital) from unreasonable shut downs.
The Society for Information Management (representing large customers) also supported this proposal even though their members would end up paying the costs of some injunctions.
The UCITA committee repeatedly rejected this proposal and variations of it.
Another issue -- my core issue -- with the self help provision is that it creates a hole in the customer's security. There is now a way for a remote party to send a message that shuts down the customer's system. The vendor/developer will be liable if IT sends that message without authorization, but what if someone else figures out how to send such messages? (e.g., a disgruntled former employee or a cracker?) The vendor has no liability in this case, and a contract provision stating that the VENDOR will never use self-help doesn't protect the customer from third parties taking advantage of the built-in shutdown routine.
UCITA encourages the adoption of this style of contract enforcement, and thus encourages the creation of new security risks for customers. There are better ways to protect developers' rights.
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
Good thinking, but the drafting committee walked through this idea with care, to make sure people couldn't do this.
If you make a copy of a program (onto your disk or, in the 9th Circuit -- Washington, CA, etc -- into memory so you can run it) then EITHER
(a) you are making a licensed copy (you agreed to the terms of the license)
or (b) you are making a copy without permission, i.e. infringing the publisher's copyright.
So, you get the rock or the hard place. Take your pick.
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
You would think that large non-software companies would hate UCITA, and some are fighting it, mainly insurance companies.
UCITA looks like a precedent to several large companies. Chrysler (a car company) strongly backs UCITA, for example.
Think about all those consumer protection rules that apply to traditional merchandise and then think how cool it would be (if you sold cars, for example), if you could get rid of them.
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (the people who brought you UCITA) are currently working on Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (this is the Law of Sales in 49 of 50 of the United States). The Article 2 Revision Drafting Committee refused to adopt some of the shrinkwrap contracting terms into Article 2 last year. They were then treated so badly at the national meeting of NCCUSL annual meeting that the Reporter (senior author) and co-Reporter (second author) of the Article 2 revision resigned after about 12 years of work on the update. Several other members of the committee resigned and there is now a new, improved drafting committee working to revise the Law of Sales.
UCITA is not just about software. It expresses a "post-consumerist" philosophy about law and economics, one that can be (and is being) applied in many contexts.
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
"Software publishers should be held responsible for gross negligence or for intentionally witholding essential information from the customer, but no more than that."
Funny thing, but I proposed that exact idea. So did Ralph Nader. So did the Independent Computer Consultants Association, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
The problem is, it holds software publishers accountable for gross negligence and for withholding essential information (we said, records of known defects) from customers. Several publishers don't want to be accountable for anything.
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
in The UK the Law lords decided a few years ago that many of the terms in software licences were in fact Illegal. before this the software coumpanies basically took the attitude that If you opened the box it was your own problem.
But the law lords decided that the sale of software came under the sale of goods act and so the software companies should no longer be able to get away with selling you things that are unfit for their proposed use, or charging you to fix problems that they know about when they ship.
Given a choice between having software that can be remotely turned off on any pretext a licensor might wish to cite, and having stable software which legally cannot be taken from them, which would a prudent business choose? One imagines the latter.
You would hope so, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. In any large company, the majority of software purchases are not made for technical or financial reasons, they are made for political reasons. The software to buy is decided on by going for the software house that offers the best incentives to the *person* (not the company!) buying the software. I've experienced this a great deal, as I'm sure many people here have. $500,000 per-licence software bought without consultation or review by the people who will be using it, without review by the people who understand the requirements, but bought by someone who has the budget and the authority to make people use it and to cut off the alternatives.
Only small companies and small groups make good decisions. Larger companies merely stumble along with the momentum created by many stupid decisions. If this law is passed, then the companies will respond not by changing their vendor, but by implementing more auditing, more processes and more forms to be completed. This is the nature of a medium/large company.
Everybody is saying that this is going to be a boon for Linux and OSS because people will move away from shrinkwrapped software. People get so caught up in thinking that Linux is the one true OS they forget that something like this is a bane to people who's living is dependent on the so-called 'shrinkwrapped software'
.02 cents might be high than yours. be sure to convert wisely.
Take me for example. I'm a musician. I have a USB MIDI interface. I use Cakewalk (sequencer) and I use a whole slew of DirectX, VST, and TDM plugins to aid in my creation. I have used linux before, infact, the box is sitting at my feet as I type this. If there was equivalent software for linux (drivers for the MIDI interface, and comprable sequencer, and comprable plugins) I'd fly over to Linux in no time flat. But since there isn't, I can't and Linux is forced to remain a hobby. And even if something like this was passed, I would still be forced to use shrinkwrapped software, because there is no viable alternative.
What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. But this is bad news for everyone, especially people like me with no place else to turn.
warning - due to inflation my
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- You can't see the license until you've already paid for the software and taken it home (and maybe already installed it), and
- You are not allowed to return the software after installing it,
exactly how do you do what you propose? The software company doesn't care, they have your money and immunity from suit. Any negative consequences for them are months or years away, and in the mean time, you suffer. Not a good deal.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You're actually raising a good point. It would mean that I (since I live in Canada) could reverse engineer the think legally and sell it, while an american company couldn't. It would basically mean it's an american law that shoots in the foot of americal software companies (not that it would be the first). Though of course as always, they'd try to impose the law to other countries (again Canada first) and I predict the same response as for the "anti-trading with Cuba" law (Helms-Burton or something). (As a reminder, the response was: "screw you")
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Maybe Im a pessimist, but I think you are fooling yourselves if you think the big, wealthy corporations are going to let open source cut their profit margins that much.
Of course this insanely stupid proposal will probably be a benefit to OSS in the short term, but wont that very fact lead to anti-OSS legislation?
Lets face it, the big companies has a lot of money, lawyers and lobbyists, and as we know; politicians are up for sale. Of corse they will try to disguise it to be in "the interest of the nation", or industry, or even the consumers (Sic!).
The primary function of laws is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless. It has always been thus.
/Dervak
It seems to me that this is what Linux and other fair-play alternatives to closed source need to finally go mainstream. This law would let some intellectual property publishers to take advantage of consumers, but to behave badly is always voluntary. Not all consumers are stupid, and most of the smart ones will need worthwhile alternatives.
I am in Spain, an European country. Although this law could be a problem in the USA, European politicians like to borrow American ideas (we are about to allow software patents, for instance). If some law is approved and suddenly it is legal for my competitors to make their customers feel robbed and betrayed, some of them will take advantage, but I will not. If we play fair, our customers will help us to win the war.
Licensors can exclude incidental and consequential damages even when an agreed remedy fails of its essential purpose.
Ironically, the Badsoftware page has this disclaimer (at the bottom of the page):
"The articles at this web site are not legal advice. They do not establish a lawyer/client relationship between me and you. I took care to ensure that they were well researched at the time that I wrote them, but the law changes quickly. By the time you read this material, it may be out of date. Also, the laws of the different States are not the same. These discussions might not apply to your circumstances. Please do not take legal action on the basis of what you read here, without consulting your own attorney."
i.e. The material on the page may not fulfil its essential purpose.
Now this doesn't sound all that different from the standard disclaimer of warranties found in all software licensing agreements does it?
Software publishers should be held responsible for gross negligence or for intentionally witholding essential information from the customer, but no more than that. When I write a piece of software, I cannot guarantee that it will function in a certain way, even if that is the essential purpose of the software - software is simply too complex. e.g. if I write a piece of software for securing a system, I cannot guarantee that the system will now be uncrackable. Placing unreasonable demands on software developer will have a chilling effect on software produced in this country.
I have followed the development of the UCITA for several years with interest, prompted by the continuing coverage in InfoWorld . This article repeats many of the criticisms of the UCITA that have been aired elsewhere:
The conclusion seems obvious: This is a BAD THING. But before we just snort in derision and click to the next SlashDot topic, let's look a little more closely.
The UCITA addresses two markets:
The first thing to recognize is that the UCITA is written to define rules for two different markets: the consumer (or mass) market, and the custom software market. The UCITA would apply if you went into Circuit City this afternoon and bought a copy of Leisure Suit Larry for Linux. It would also apply if your corporation hired a small boutique firm (like, say, mine) to create a distributed e-commerce logistics project linking raw material vendors, transportation partners, and corporate customers. One is a $29 transaction paid with a Visa card. The other is $200,000 or more of development work. As the UCITA has been discussed, all too often enthusiasts (both pro- and con-) have tended to blur the distinction--citing provisions meant for one circumstance as the kind of Really Bad Thing (TM) that could happen in the other.
The Insidious Trap Door
No better example exists than the Insidious Trap Door(tm) argument. Buy a copy of Leisure Suit Larry for Linux, goes the argument, and someday the developer can send electronic minions scurrying through your modem to disable the software (and copy the contents of your hard drive).
Um, no. The UCITA gives a vendor the legal ability to include a provision permitting that in a contract that both buyer and seller sign. That means that a seller can try to include such a provision, but the buyer doesn't have to accept it. The provision is not for consumer software--if Leisure Suit Larry for Linux included a back door the entire world would hear about it in every review of the game. We'd all fuss and fume, and CmdrTaco would create a bitmap graphic for TrojanWare and tell us all about it.
What that back door provision does is overturn a common way for custom software developers to make sure that they get paid. In the custom software business it is common for small projects to be billed in thirds: one-third at the time the contract is signed, one-third at the time the software is delivered, and one-third 30 days after delivery. However--it is all-too-common for customers to make the first payment, make the second payment, but stiff the developer for the third payment. If the developer is in a different state, the developer's only recourse is to sue in federal court. And you can't bring a civil action in federal court unless the actual damages you are claiming (not potential damages, or damage to your reputation, etc.) is greater than $50,000. If the total job was $45,000, an out-of-state customer can stiff you for the last $15,000 and there is precious little you can do about it. (Lawyers will suggest that there are other remedies--such as suing in the buyer's home state, etc.--but the long and short of it is that the client can stiff you, and you have no options.) The UCITA provides a legal form of defense for the developer for this circumstance: a Trojan.
EGAD! A Trojan!
Oh, relax. Years ago I worked for a small company that dominates the market for accounting and marketing software for book publishers. They sell on the thirds principle, and have on occasion had trouble getting that last third. Their software now checks the system date: if the last payment has not been made, at 75 days each operator is warned that "a system issue needs to be addressed. Have your supervisor contact us." At 90 days the operators are warned that "a serious software issue exists. Have your supervisor contact us." At 120 days the operators are prompted "your employer has not paid an outstanding invoice for more than 120 days. The system will not function until the outstanding invoices are paid."
That was extremely effective--until Virginia banned the practice. All of a sudden it is a lot tougher to get paid by a client in Virginia--they know your only option is through the courts, which effectively means you're screwed. The UCITA lets my old employer put that Trojan back in, to make sure they get paid. (Truth in messaging: my company does not do that. We typically provide the source code to the client, and often have one or more of the client's programmers working with us.)
The Good Side of the UCITA
A couple of the elements of the UCITA that have not been highlighted enough are the "warranty of merchantibility" clause, and the "accidental click" clause. These are Good Things. The Warranty of Merchantibility is a hifalutin way of saying "lemon laws." If you buy a car in most states and it turns out to have all sorts of defects you can generally bring it back to the dealer and get your money back. The car you bought fundamentally does not function as an automobile--it is not suitable for the purpose for which it was sold. Back it goes. The UCITA gives you the same protection: buy a copy of Leisure Suit Larry for Linux and take it home. Open it up, install it, and discover that it only works on, say, LinuxOne. (Because of all the supersecret custom LinuxOne development, of course.) Well, if it only works on LinuxOne (or only works on KDE) then it isn't suitable for use on other Linux computers. Under the warranty of merchantibility you can take it back and get a refund.
The "accidental click" clause lets you install an app, click on the "I Agree" button, and complete the install. And then say, "oh--I don't want this." and send it back. You'll have to read the fine print to see the time limit (you could not say, "oh--I don't want this" 90 days after you installed) but at least you can look at the software, and see if it installs, without losing all your rights.
All in all, this is probably a good thing:
All things considered, this is a good thing. Yes--in theory consumer software can now include stupid rules in the EULA. In practice software companies will discover that pissing off your customers is not a good business strategy. This will have a much bigger impact on the custom software marketplace, where small vendors will be able to negotiate reasonable contract provisions.
The big losers in this are the lawyers--the UCITA spells out the rules of the game, so you don't need as much legal help to make up the rules as you go along.
PS: For those who would object that Leisure Suit Larry for Linux should be Open Source or GPL'd, let me refer you to http://www.theresnosuchproduct.org. JM
.. thank god I live in Canada.
Suffice it to say, this is just plain nasty. I suspect that IF this passes and becomes a de facto standard in the United States, then Canadians and other US Trade partners are going to be seeing government attempts to enforce similar legislation, assuming that the idiots are foolish enough to try and pass this thing in the first place. Obviously, software marketers are going to want to be able to sell software overseas and be able to enforce the same lucrative conditions that they have at home, and I bet they'll be pulling the strings in an attempt to get this happening.
Since it does have to be approved at the state level, hopefully we can see some boycotting in action and some public awareness happening. If not, well, then, as everybody says, looks like GPL'ed software's gonna skyrocket. Thank goodness my latest GPL product, GNOME Armpit (ARMPIT: A rewritten mikmod-powered impulse tracker) is nearly done.
disclaimer: opinions contained therein are not neccessarily those of my employer.
What business would possibly purchase software that legally allowed the creator of the software to shut it down remotely at a whim. That kind of clause would make go elsewhere if the developer put something so laughably ridiculous in thier license agreement. Open Source would certainly get a boost, as well as software companies that basically look at this an idiotic attempt by the larger companies to gain control. (damn, i'm in paranoid mode, sorry) After all, if you advertise "We won't shut your system down like *THEY* could", also putting an nda into the license agreement is pure lunacy. How does technical support help the client if by virtue of license agreement aren't allowed to talk about it. Or especially if someone else decided to help a friend navigate a specific program. Doing so under such an agreement would be tantamount to corporate espiage (sp?). Sure an nda makes perfect sense in beta software, in a controlled release environment. But releasing such an agreement to the general public would be like giving everybody a Ferarri and saying you cant drive it because someone might see it. I may be ignorant here, I might be makeing a mountain out of a mole hill here, is that what I *think* is going on here?
Stupid is as stupid dies.
Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO.
Of course. And we all remember the lawsuits that id issued against all the Doom and Quake clones..oh no, hang on, were there any? Anyway, you seem to be referring to code theft, which is a rather specialised form of reverse engineering, and already accounted for in law. If someone does reverse engineer your software and steal either your code or your methodologies then these can both be offenses covered by prior statute, namely those covering copyright and patent. No need for extra protection.
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
I guess people who use commercial software don't always pay much attention to what they're clicking on. Agreed, the business model is usually to trade money for a right-to-use license, but the whole point this is that up until now, these licenses have had many clauses which were widely regarded as unenforceable. In fact, in legal circles, there is considerable doubt about the validity of mass-market (non-negotiated) licenses, full stop.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing.
So, let's get this right. You're happy to support a law that will
- Let softies get away with producing shoddy, sub-functional or non-functional software, against which you have absolutely no chance of claiming any kind of compensation no matter what form of personal or financial injury you suffer due to the software's failure to perform.
- Allow them to prevent reviews or benchmark tests of their products
- Encourage proprietary lock-in strategies and lead us back to the dark ages of non-interoperability (clue: you know this funky Internet thing you're using? It only exists because of interoperability).
? I mean, really? If so, you're just the sort of citizen I require to help form my new police state: quiet, subservient, gullible...Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
You know, I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying. Ok, listen carefully, I'll only say it once. This law will let any software manufacturer put any clause they feel like in their licenses, and this is the kicker, change the terms of the license anytime they feel like it, after you've accepted the license.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
In net time this little tagline is _old_ beyond belief. It's almost finished it's predictions.. 'cept for the encryptation one.. mind you if the nsa can just turn the software off when it wants to...
"First they came for the hackers.
But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers.
But I thought there was too much smut on the internet anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users.
But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Finally they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
We will have to beef up the network security to keep crackers from deactivating the software...
;)
Looks like a few hundred hours of consulting fees from every business in the world...
Life _is_ good.
-- Never make a general statement.
This stuff isn't property. The name "intellectual property" was invented by lawyers trying to create a permanent monopoly right out of a bargain made by the state for the good of the people.
If the people don't like the bargain (and I don't) then it must be abolished. Increasing levels of piracy is a sure sign that the people, and therefore the state will soon end this bargain and return to the common law principles which prevailed prior to the introduction of Copyright.
Moaning about the "artists need to protect their work", is missing the point. We have more artists than anyone can think of a use for, so why encourage more of them? And worse more Media Companies and Agents and other parasites who don't provide any value in a world where the means of distribution is in the hands of the people.
Government protection for industries which have outlived their usefulness is wasteful and inevitably doomed to fail. If the music industry can't provide more value than my mate Dave with a CD Recorder, why am I paying them $10 more? It certainly isn't going to the "artist" who created the music...
If you are an artist and want my money, ask for money - don't whore yourself to a huge megacorporation so that they can bully me into paying $5 on the cent for your work. Why would I respect someone who does that?
PS Yeah, I write software, and my friends are in bands. I do not pirate
software, but I want a new deal, and an end to the bad Copyright bargain.
When they came for the warez kiddies, I did not stand up, because I don't copy software.
When they came for the hackers, I did not stand up, because I don't reverse engineer software.
When they came for the code kidz, I did not stand up, because I don't crack software.
When they came for me, there was no one left to stand up.
This is not a good thing. Something like this only keeps technology from progressing. The software industry should (and perhaps someday will be) handled more as math and sciences are. Information should not be bogged down by licenses. What if math equations and scientific ideas could be patented and licensed. Society as a whole would not be as advanced as it is if I had to pay every time I wanted to add. Of course science is at times commercialized but it seems that people perceive science as something which must be free.
What needs to be done is to sway people's notions of software towards that of a science. People must be convinced that software is like math, something which can help mankind only if it is not comlpetely restricted.
Doing nothing about it isn't an option.
Giving up a freedom may seem easy. Gaining that freedom back, after it's gone is a complete bitch.
Howsabout when everything is regulated to the point that you cannot do something you want or need to do without buckling down and submitting to such claptrap as UCITAS or something similar?
Sure, YOU have the luxury of saying "I ain't gonna us it", but what about others who don't have the same luxury?
I understand the sentiment. I'd dearly love to see these bastards stewing in their own juices. Unfortunately, the damage they'd do on the way down is unacceptable.
Something like this needs to be FOUGHT. Not avoided.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
First, everyone remember that UCITA is not Federal legislation; it's a recommended addition to the UCC, which means that it must be passed at the state level.
While this means that we haven't lost yet, it makes fighting the thing a real pain, as we have to do it at each and every state legislature.
Back on track.... Cem did a dead-on critique of the proposal last May. I saved it, and everyone interested should read it, as it's very, very, good.
Cem's critique of UCITA
UCITA sucks all over; it's one of the few pieces of legalese that I've seen that has absolutely, positively no redeeming qualities.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
You write your representitives. Had written on paper is generally best, then typed letter and signed, then phone call. Lest best is email. Not sending a letter means you don't care and are ignoreable. Remember when you are writing this up, clearly state your opinion and support it. Also do it in a calm reasonable manner. Never use personal attacks either against your representitive or others. Who knows your representitive or one of the staff may like the perons you attacked and dis your letter.
US House of representitives: clerkweb.house.gov
MN Government: www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/legdir.htm
Those are the two ones I have book marked. Can others fill in the rest or point to a site with them all indexed.
Does anyone (EFF, ACLU, some other acronym, whoever) have a petition online against UTICA, clearly stating the many points in this article? Is there a list of people to contact, preferably with recommendations not to flame? i can't see how this could stand up in courts (IANAL), but it would certainly be easier and less expensive to combat this before it can become law.
The big corporations behind this have the money, the lawyers, and the lobbyists to push their views. We have the Slashdot Effect, if we can only figure out how to use it.
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--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
I'd be interested to know, if such a bad law went into effect, would it still be legal to do the reverse engineering in another country, and then use the data gained from that to develop another proudct in the US itself, or if the product would even then be legal in the US.
This appears to be just the latest part of an ongoing effort by software publishers. Obviously, constant vigilance is necessary.
And the brethren went away edified.
I think you can't find a better incensive for people to use OSS. First, it kills the "who's accountable is the software crashes" argument. And let's face it, piracy (call it what you want) is good for software vendors, as people copy the software at home, and then buy it at work. If it were totally impossible to copy software, much less people would be using MS Office right now.
Now the choice will be:
1) Pay a lot for a closed source without any guarantee that it works correctly, risk having it disabled from the outside because you weren't nice with the company. And even then, you're not even free to use it as you like.
2) Download (or buy for $2) Open Source Software, do whatever you like with it (modifying it if you like) and then give it to your friends, your brother and your dog.
I guess the next step to this law is having to call the vendor to ask permission to use the software when you need it... or paying per minute fees for use of the software. The more abuse from closed source software vendors, the more good it will do to OSS.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
First off, these laws are passed on a state by state basis. If some states decide to not play ball, then things get very messy. For example, people will just reverse-engineer the product in one of the states that didn't join this stupidity. Or it would be done in other countries.
If the laws were passed and then they tried to actually enforce them, there would be such a huge consumer backlash that it wouldn't even be funny. Just wait until people try to sell their used game at the local swap meet, bookstore, or whatever and get told it's against the law for them to sell something they bought. I can smell the anger already.
Then of course there would be the movement to OSS based software. I for one do use a number of Microsoft products, and I'm an MCSE to boot. (Oh no! He's E-vil!) I like OSS and Linux, but I'm not rabid about it. However if something like this law went into effect, I WOULD become rabid about it. Hell, I'd start coding free stuff just to help bury the companies that were trying to take advantage of these laws.
Then of course there are the big time consumers. The government and the corporations of the world. Most of them aren't going to waste time with stupid licensing either. They'll say 'screw you' to the software venders and code in-house, use GPL'd and OSS stuff, or get it from companies that don't succumb to the stupidity. Big companies and such don't care as much about the initial expense of a product as individual users do since they write it off of their taxes as an expense, but they do care greatly about security (backdoors), future costs (how often do they have to upgrade and such), quality of support, and things like liability concerns, which would be huge for these types of licenses.
What it sounds like to me is that a few companies and some lawyers have decided that they can make a lot more money if these laws go into effect. Their greed and one sided view of things has blinded them to certain realities. It always amazes me the level of stupidity that such self-delusion can lead to. Just like Circuit City and their DIVX concept, they'll wind up salting their own ground.
In the US, minors (under age 18) cannot enter contracts (well they can, but they can bail out at any time and the other party has no recourse). So, when I need a copy of PhotoShop, Word, or whatever, I give money to my kids and they make the purchase and they install it on their computer, which they graciously allow me to use. No enforcable EULA's here! Tee hee!
Mr. Kamer's article offers an excellent argument, complete with citations to various findings of law to back it up. I had no such background when I wrote my editorial, By Reading This Article, You Agree to Subscribe to This Magazine for 25 Years . If you're interested in a philosophical (as opposed to legal) background into why shrinkwrap "licenses" are ethically indefensible and should never be taken seriously, I hope you might do me the privilege of reading it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Reverse engineering copy protection schemes for the sake of "compatibility" needs to be stopped. This loophole will always be able to be exploited because there always is some platform mainstream media will always leave out. This means that all schemes will be cracked, and with this loophole the crack could be legal. A new law is necessary. Copy protection schemes are necessary in order for artists and companies to protect their work in the age of high speed internet connections.
This argument is seriously missing the point. You might as well argue that people should be prevented from driving to work because of the chance that someone will get drunk, drive, and kill someone.
Basically, you want to punish all of the law-abiding citizens who are LEGALLY working towards compatibility for no other reason than to attempt to prevent a few from breaking the law.
The fact that you clearly miss is that there are already laws in place to address piracy. Just as you don't punish every driver to stop the drunk, you also don't punish the law abiding that reverse-engineer to stop the pirate.
The pirate is already breaking the law, and won't give a shit that he might have to break another one (your argument for outlawing reverse engineering), in order to further his goals. Your suggestion would only hurt those who actually OBEY the law, thus further engendering a greater amount of disrespect for the law.
Your suggestion is no different than those who support claptrap like the CDA. In both cases, there already exist laws on the books to effectively address the criminal behaviour in question, and it is unnecessary (and IMHO, criminal) to punish or otherwise curtail the rights of people who engage in legal behaviour.
If you are truly worried about piracy, address the piracy, don't go after the messenger.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Cem's excellent, albeit one-sided critique raises serious points about industry practices. What he doesn't do, however, is to explain how UCITA is different from the present situation. Upon analysis, the answer is: "not much."
Present shrink-wrap and click-wrap agreements either are or are not binding. Anti-reverse engineering provisions, and the other provisions, either are or are not preempted by the Copyright Act. All of Cem's parade of horribles provisions can and often are already written into commercial shrink- or click-wrap agreements. UCITA, enacted as state law, might change some uncertainty (there isn't much left) as to the former, but certainly not the latter (its still either preempted or it isn't). The courts presently treat licenses that say so as licenses of software, not sales of a copy.
The creation of a contract through X-wrap agreements isn't completely settled, but the only Circuit Court case directly on point seems to have held them to be contracts, the only question remaining being whether particular provisions are enforceable under public policy, contract law and applicable federal law. UCITA would resolve any uncertainty left on this issue, but IMHO, UCITA is far better for OSS than the status quo in this regard.
At the center of most OSS projects is the license. Never signed on paper, rarely even clicked for, the GPL or other OSS license. The hereditary provisions of GPL would be reinforced, not weakened by UCITA. While never tested, the status of GPL's "include-file-wrap" agreement would be reinforced, and given meaningful teeth. This would be better, not worse, for the OSS community.
My suggestion is to read the UCITA carefully, and consider the arguments made on both sides. The software industry engages in a number of practices we all find questionable and wrong-headed, but a law that incidentally continues to permit enforceability of the same things presently permitted is not a bad thing for that reason.
If the marketplace truly despises a term or practice, the industry will adapt, or competitors will exploit this. At the end of the day, things will change. Copy-protection, code-wheels and the like went the way of the ak in package products long ago for precisely that reason. If these provisions matter to customers, things will change. If they don't, they won't. In the meanwhile, don't buy a product with a license you don't like -- that is YOUR choice. If you open the license and decide you don't like it, return it -- that is YOUR choice. Instead, use the OSS alternatives, and enjoy true freedom. If there isn't an OSS alternative, write it yourself.
On the other hand, consider the extent to which UCITA will strengthen the hand of those of us who are producing OSS software. While I am presently neither fan nor foe of UCITA (I also find it heavy handed in some ways), I think on balance it offers far more of use to the OSS community concerning enforceability of the interesting OSS license terms than it actually withholds from our use of non-OSS code. In practice, it doesn't really change much that the bad guys don't already do to us. On the other hand, it does give corporate lawyers further reason to counsel caution to their clients when asked how to sneak around, say, the GPL.
This is a good thing.
Okay, I'm not the first one to point out that UCITA certainly won't hurt open source. It doesn't effect, and can't effect our model of transactions where nothing is hidden. I would even argue that a shrink-wrapped packaging of open source software that tried to limit the rights of the purchaser in any of the ways that UCITA would allow would not be open source. It would undermine the reputation in the open source community of the company selling it.
This brings me to my first point, which is best summarized by the word reputation, although it is broader than that. There is an interesting book that explores the value of reputation in ongoing relationships, Order Without Law by Robert C. Ellickson. The author explored the interaction of farmers and ranchers in Shasta County in situations involving both open and closed range laws. He discovered that the law made no difference. They lived by an iron-clad rule: neighbors don't sue neighbors. These were people who expected to have ongoing relationships with each other for years to follow. They settled their disputes by other means.
David Friedman also explores this in his upcoming book Law's Order: An Economic Account . He cites examples of communities that manage to achieve remarkable efficiencies through arbitration outside the courts and reputation. His commentary on the interaction of economics and law sheds a great deal of light on both subjects. For anyone interested in a thoroughly considered libertarian perspective on them that is not based on natural rights, I recommend his books. His web site has the complete contents of a couple of them along with selected chapters of others and many articles.
So what does this have to do with UCITA? Yes, it will be possible for companies to create draconian license agreements. But there are limits set on how bad these can get and which conditions they can enforce. Companies that have created de facto standards will have more control than small upstarts. With market share comes the power to marginalize small customers and market segments. But the contents of the license agreements will become widely known. And they are part of the purchase price. Software that I can't resell used costs me more than the same software that I can get $10 for in a couple of years when I'm done with it.
The little upstarts can undercut the market leaders even more effectively if they have the option of selling under a less restrictive license that doesn't hit them in the bottom line. They can sell at closer to the premium price and be more permissive in the use of their software. This already happens without the additional restrictions that UCITA makes possible.
As for open source software, we have the most open license conditions short of public domain. If you don't want to live with the restrictions of the licenses on commercial software, you turn to open source. If the commercial licenses get more restrictive, that will make them less appealing. One of the fundamental concepts of economics is that people enter into transactions voluntarily because they expect to gain from them. The bottom line is that both parties to the sale must expect to be better off because of it. That sets an upper limit on the price and other conditions that the seller can set. And it sets a lower limit that the buyer can expect.
Another fundamental concept of economics is that most of the interesting activity happens at the margin. Pretty much every value in the study of economics has a corresponding marginal value. It is essentially the slope of the curve for that value at the current point the economy is at. In the case of the relationship of supply and demand, I am talking about the marginal demand. It answers the question of how much the demand will rise or fall with a small change in the price. As I pointed out, the price isn't just the number that appears on your receipt. It is the aggregate of the value of all of the terms. How many customers an overly restrictive license will drive away depends on two things. The first is the customers' evaluation of the cost of the terms. The second is the customers' demand curve. The terms of the license are under the control of the supplier. Everything else is in the hands of the customers or the competition.
UCITA is not a good thing. In fact, it may set conditions that violate the traditional idea of the conditions required to establish a valid contract. That is a legal issue I can't answer. But as I have pointed out, I think it may lack the teeth that some suppliers want and most detractors fear.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
WHAT?
Yes. That's right. This could be a "good thing".
Take your finger off of the -1, troll and listen for a minute. Than mark me down all you want. I'll say my piece even if it is against Slashdot doctrine.
The ability of these companies to write and enforce such bizarre procedures only makes it easier for us to choose software. In this age of the internet, where we know more about a product before it hits the store shelves than the manufacturer does, laws like these quickly become a moot point.
If a software is not a sale, but it is, instead, a license, then it's something I can't give away for Christmas. Good enough for me.
If I can't reverse engineer it, fine. Reverse engineering may be legal but you still have to go to court next week just to point that out. Meanwhile Apple steals a GUI from Xerox, has it stolen by Windows, and then yells at Stardock over a lookalike skin? Since when has the letter of the law even mattered? Etoy still doesn't have a web site and Nestle is still hawking baby formula. The world goes on.
Put more restrictions on software. I just won't buy it. I'll stick to Linux or whoever else writes a reasonable sales/license agreement and smile.
If software can be turned off from a remote location, it does not need to be installed. Companies who do this save me money, because I don't see the need to spend money to install a backdoor onto my PC.
Honestly, it makes my life simpler. I don't need to worry about who has a better deal, Amazon or eToys or Nestle, because I won't buy their products.
Why fight against stupidity? Do you really think that the companies we respect (such as Redhat) could keep our business if they did this? No. Obviously no. You may bring up things like DeCSS but be real, one of us will be watching Star Wars, Episode One this year and it's won't be on your DVD player. The big music producers who want copy protection aren't the label for my favorite bands. Most of my favorite bands have CD's with sticky labels.
In short. Let them have their laws. I am not their customer. Their laws do not affect me.
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No Zen is good zen
We're now installing Quark on the G3s that my school newspaper uses for production work. Each licensed copy of Quark comes with a "dongle", a little piece of plastic that goes between the keyboard and the Mac (sort of like an adaptor that doesn't actually adapt...)
.5-increment-upgrade licenses to buy, no cheap plastic pieces to break or lose. And it works better than commercial junk!!! And there is none of this crap like "Our tech. support line is a 900 number, but if your product is still under warranty, you'll be refunded the charge". Gee, thanks HP...my school DOESN'T ALLOW DIALING 900 numbers (hmm, I wonder why), even with a long-distance code. Thank heavens your printer hasn't broken yet.
I've seen us buy 3 different OS revisions of MacOS in the past year, for each of the computers. I consider this a travesty...especially considering the very slight changes made between levels (which basically affected our operation not at all, except that it was needed for bug fixes and to keep compatibility with software, like Adobe Photoshop, of which we've also bought more than one revision in a year).
If vendors can already charge you more money every few months for software that still doesn't do everything it's supposed to, imagine how bad things will be if they pass a law like this...then we'll have to pay every month.
With Debian, if I want to use something, I apt-get it or compile it. If I hate it, I delete it. If I like it, I can use it as much as I want, and get bug fixes whenever they come out (much better for security than if I had to wait 2 months for our Purchasing Dept. to clear it!!!). If I have some spare time and feel skilled enough, I can even try to fix any problems with it, or add new features that I would find useful. If I need help, I go to my local newsgroup and have a solution quickly. All of this is free. There are no
I understand that there is still a need for extremely complex software like Quark, and that free software does not yet fill this niche. However, we have already seen what software companies will do when given an inch...we can't afford to give them 2. At least, as a student organization, WE can't afford to.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Your rights, such as they are, are outlined in the license agreement that you accept. If you do not accept the license agreement, you have no right to use the software. If you use it anyway, you are a felon. This crime is far worse than rape or murder, because it strikes at the heart of the system of natural incentives which drives our free economy. Any "rights" that the vendor chooses to grant you are gifts, pure and simple, and you certainly have not earned them. The vendor has sunk millions of dollars of capital into developing the product. They have every right to expect a return on this investment, and the fact they are generously allowing you to use the software at all is more than you probably deserve. Your role in this culture is to pay them for the work performed by their employees, who are damned lucky to have jobs (and almost certainly don't appreciate it). Pay up and shut up.
These "rights" of the "consumer" are like the "rights" of women or animals; it's an absurdity on the face of it. Slashdot has no business wasting our time with this leftist garbage. It says up there "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Is that what this is? Decidedly not. Competent "nerds" (technical people) are by definition conservative Libertarians, for two reasons: First, they are productive individuals and the principle of rational self-interest proves that they will not support the socialists. Second, they are by definition intelligent and logical people (they work with logic all day, do they not?) and therefore they cannot be fooled by liberal myths and nonsense like so-called "heliocentric" cosmology, "evolution", or the redistribution of wealth (organized coercive parasitism). A leftist nerd is a contradiction in terms, and therefore cannot exist.
First off, a lot of people are worried about what we as Slashdot veterans can do, and naturally, they're worried that we don't have the numbers or the influence to do anything. I don't think we really need to be too worried. I am willing to bet that most major corporations are not going to want to buy software that opens up their security systems. As much as software is needed, no company wants another company to shut it down, and they'll step up their lobbying efforts.
Second, consumers will never be able to understand the idea that what they paid for is not theirs. When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it. Trying to convince them of any other way of seeing it will probably get you labeled as a Communist (not that Communism is bad; Americans just think it is).
A lot of the talk of licensing is real interesting given the nature of software developments these days. Both Microsoft (as evidenced in their press release today) and Sun advocate going to a server-centric system, where you wouldn't buy a huge office bundle, but would rather get something akin to a connection to a server that would then serve this program to you. In that case, you really are buying permission to use the product. Transactions do become about licenses. The consumer really does lose quite a bit of control over the software that he is using. Right now, MS can't cut off my access to Office 2000, but in the future they could (provided they are still around).
And finally, why stop at software? I mean, this could be used much the same way in hand-held devices. Rather than owning it, you lease it, and if you don't pay, they send a signal somehow and shut it down. I mean, that may actually be beneficial. Rather than paying $200 for a device, I pay like $2/mo. or something and when it stops being useful, I just stop paying and they shut it off. I don't own the now piece of junk and if someone else wants it, they can pick back up the fee. But I digress.
But like I said, I don't see this bill as making it past the rest of big business unnoticed. This bill just isn't friendly to the lowly consumer; it's also not friendly to the big corporate consumer, and they carry just as much weight as the software industry.
My feelings about UCITA are that it imposes such horrifying terms on customers that many businesses will turn to open source software to protect themselves.
Given a choice between having software that can be remotely turned off on any pretext a licensor might wish to cite, and having stable software which legally cannot be taken from them, which would a prudent business choose? One imagines the latter.
It will only take a few cases of this sort of behavior to convince businesses to either turn to open source software or build their own software in house. Either way, commercial closed source houses will lose out.
I can, however, imagine closed source vendors guaranteeing never to use the UCITA remedies available to them, as a part of their contract with customers. It may be the only way to keep customers if these laws take effect.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester