New Coalition Formed to Fight UCITA

Andy Tai writes "According to this InfoWorld column, a coalition, AFFECT, has been formed to fight UCITA (the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act). UCITA was passed in Virginia and Maryland and is beginning to move through other state legislatures, and oppositions are needed to halt UCITA's passage. AFFECT is composed of a variety of organizations, including, from the ACM, EFF to several big companies outside the computer industry. They are calling for action and support in each state of the US. UCITA's background can be found here and how it can impact Free Software is described here."

Comments

This is where a Bush whitehouse will be helpful

[typical geek]

This organization protesting UCITA will probably be helped by having a Republican in the White House. For those of you who don't know much about American politics, the Republicans are the party that is for States Rights (this States Rights philosophy goes back a hundred years, even to the Civil War).

As long as this organization frame this as a states right issue, they should get help from the Bush administration. While Republicans are known as pro-business, I imagine the smary nerdiness of GAtes will probably annoy good old boy Dubya, and remind him of those geeks that made fun of him in school.

Re:This is where a Bush whitehouse will be helpful

[fhwang]

You're misinterpreting States Rights. It doesn't mean that people get more rights, thanks to the states. It usually means states have the right to take away their citizen's rights to a greater extent than the federal government.

We should probably be wary of this. My guess is that issue will come to a basic conservative-vs-liberal axis. And it's worth noting that centers of anti-corporate leftism tend to be concentrated on the coasts. If they can influence national politics through the federal government, that helps. But if it's left up to the states, things can get much nastier.

There is a lot of precedent for this. The States Rights philosophy was used by the South by over 100 hundred years to justify their shabby treatment of black folks -- from the Civil War (1860s) to the Civil Rights Act (1960s). The federal government had to drag the southern states, kicking and screaming, into recognizing that black people were human beings.

Today, state-level referendums are an often-used weapon in the conservative arsenal, used to push hardline culturally conservative agendas on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, prayer in school, abstinence education, and drug policy. There are a number of well-funded conservative organizations that have national-scale funding and use it to focus on a few states at a time. And since it doesn't happen on the national level, it doesn't receive as much scrutiny in the press.

Only NOW is there a group to fight it?

[sl3xd]

This is more of an observation than anything, but I thought there already was a group fighting UCITA. Espescially with all the 'Slashdot advocates' who are against UCITA.

Is it just me or is this evidence that us xBSD/GNU/Linux advocates need to start doing more real work and having more real involvement in IP laws than we have been?

Of the number of IP laws/issues that have been discussed on /., just how many of us have actually written a well-reasoned letter to our elected official(s)?

Do we write our thoughts and opinions to our government official(s), or do we just complain about it on ./?

There isn't really a difference in the amount of effort it takes to write to the elected officials in your locale, than it does to write to Slashdot.

Writing your representatives will get noticed, and may get results. Writing the entire argument to Slashdot won't do that.

But, on the upside, Slashdot can inspire us to write our officials. Do it!!!

This article may only deal with the United States, but that doesn't mean that there aren't IP issues elsewhere in the world. (Fight software patents in the E.U., etc.)