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Bar Association Likely to Oppose UCITA
GroundBounce writes: "Computerworld is reporting that the American Bar Association is likely to vote to oppose UCITA unless it is significantly altered in a pro-consumer manner. This would provide a significant amount of clout to UCITA opponents attempting to get UCITA defeated in state legislatures that are considering it. It's nice to see that more than just a handful of lawyers see the problems with this legislation."
My inner cynic tells me the main reason why the American Bar Association wants to fight UCITA because of the strict limits of legal liability a vendor has for crappy software (read: almost none). No legal liability, no large legal fees for the trial lawyers.
;)
If they can blow UCITA to hell, I won't complain about their motives
Lawyers? Bad.
Lawyers opposing UCITA? Room spinning... balance gone... confusion rising...
"If vendors are made legally responsible for the reliability/security/usability of their products, the potential for class action suits is immense."
From the perspective of a software purchaser and implementer, that would be TERRIBLE. Why just think - software vendors might have to stop innovating and concentrate on product quality and meeting the standard of warrenty of merchentability. Just like every other producer of goods in the Western world. How awful!! What demanding standards you consumers have - expecting software to actually _work_. Wah waah waaaah.
sPh
Yeah well, you also don't hear about all the settlements. If you really want a good feel for how much medical malpractice cases _really_ cost, look at the going rates for malpractice insurance. In Philadelphia, it _averages_ in excess of 100k in many fields of medicine. Yes, that's for just ONE physician.
Sure, if the doctor or the hospital is negligent then the doctor and/or hospital should pay. However, be aware that accidents DO happen, many are simply unavoidable. Many of these awards are awarded when there is virtually nothing the doctor or the hospital could reasonably do to prevent them from occurring in the future. As long as this is true, the practice of arbitrarily awarding punitive damages is simply ridiculous. Besides just being unfair to the medical profession, it really HURTS everyone (other than the crooked ambulance chasers and such). Many doctors in Philadelphia, for instance, have been unable to generate the volume to cover the malpractice insurance premiums, forcing them to retire or move out of the city.
The current system is really screwed up. While I will not claim that doctors and hospitals do not make mistakes, these are the exceptions to the rule. The current tort system (if you could call it that) with its unpredictable juries, often poorly educated judges, "professional witnesses", arbitrary awarding of punitive damages, and other things does very little to actually discourage real negligence. Meanwhile it effectively taxes everyone. Because it's so unpredictable, costly (in terms of lawyer fees), and time consuming, the insurers, hospitals, and doctors have no choice but to settle the vast majority of the time. It is a system that is ripe for fraud.
Do you not find those adds on TV just a little ridiculous? "Have you been injured?...." Translation: "Can you concieve of any injury or trauma, no matter how little it has effected you (or whether or not it really happened), that we can play the malpractice lotto with?"
blah
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
> Its adoption is another step toward reversing the earlier equation: now, consumers shall exist to serve business, which shall answer to them only when and as it suits its own interests.
That's why I voted Green in the last election.
I'm not really Green in any deep-dyed sense (though I do recognize that we are quickly converting all our natural resources to garbage in an [almost] closed system, and should give a bit of thought for the future).
But the reason I voted Green was because of the party's ties to consumer interests. Our legislators are going to keep signing off on lobbyist-written legislation until the day some election gives them a scare that they might lose their jobs if they keep on doing it.
(Score -1, Rousing the Rabble) -
I saw the current trend blossoming way back in the '80s, and I still say now what I said then: unbridled corporate power will reduce us to serfdom as surely as the institution of a feudal government would.
It is irony of the finest water that governments sucking up to corporations is now stirring up a new middle-class leftist movement, hardly a decade after the collapse of Soviet communism left many traditional leftist movements without any support.
(Score -1, Nostradamic Pretensions) -
I am beginning to suspect that the next World War will be a Global Civil War, corporate interests vs public interests. The governments of the industrialized nations will generally take the corporatist side, but the governments of many less wealthy nations will nationalize their industries and take the consumerist side, if only to keep from being swallowed up by corporations that are more powerful on the world stage than they are.
Ah, well, there's lots of static on my crystal ball, so maybe things aren't headed in such a dire direction. It should at least be good for the plot of a SF novel, though....
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The article says the Insurance Section is leading this charge. I wonder whether the Computer Law Section has taken a position, and if so, whether there is some confusion in the craft?
In short, I'm not sure that a position espoused by one section led by an Insurance lawyer is "likely" to be adopted by the ABA, particularly when there are other sections with clear jurisdiction over the subject matter. (I have no idea what the CLS is doing on this point, but given my experience, they are probably mostly the same people who were working the NCCUSL on UCITA in the first place).
Time will tell. I'm just a little surprised the article didn't even notice the issue.
There is also a long tradition in America - inherited from England - of people with lesser power making and enforcing the rule of law and reason on a rational basis. Not always, not in every case, but enough to make a difference. Sometimes. Which is better than many places can claim.
The UICTA is really, really bad law, and even the scum-sucking lawyers can see that it's a headache, and likely to lose in the end because it goes against the general principles of consumer-commercial interactions. Even ambulance-chasing types can see that there's more business in holding software manufacturers subject to the same liabilities as the rest of the known universe than in giving them a blank check to fuck everyone at anytime.
This is a major blow. Maybe, one day, it might even be enough to make a convicted monopolist focus on fixing flaws instead of new ways to screw competitors with dirty tricks, using the consumer as cannon fodder. I saw an article on Tivo in the WSJ that ended up trashing Microsoft because they just pissed off yet another customer with their consumer-screwing practices. When columnists in the WSJ are spending 25% of their column space trashing you in an unrelated story, you've probably overspent your monopoly power.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
You are neglicting the fact that it is not possible to read the EULA without first buying the package, opening the package, and reading the EULA. And, every software retail store I have seen has a no-refund policy if the software package has been opened. The software manufactorers will tell you to take it back to the store even though the manufactorers know the store's refund policy. Seems to border on fraud to me.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
No. UCITA makes "click-wrap" valid contracts. It does not make "Shrink-wrap" valid contracts.
Under the original version of UCITA, the customer had a Right-to-Return on any software that he did not agree with the license. However, it was a right that could be waived. When Maryland passed it, it said that the consumer could not waive this right. However, I haven't seen any changes to the posted stores refund policy yet.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
I would like to add a historical note to this that may, or may not be relevant.
When the Hearst collective and their various lackeys were railroading through anti-Marijuana legislation so many years ago, the only person who came up to speak against it was a representative of the American Medical Association, who pointed out the many medical uses of Marijuana, and the lack of any serious side effects.
Congress chose not to listen to him, and passed the legislation anyway. And the next two or three generations of doctors grew up believing that marijuana was the devil's weed.
the point being:
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I'm normally not given to eeeevil conspiracy theories, but the ABA is not a pro-consumer group. It's a pro-lawyer group. If a law is too one sided, either on the consumer side OR the corporate side, then that's a recipe for fewer lawsuits. What the ABA wants is for laws to be maximized to have the most ambiguity possible, so that lawyers have to go into court to get rulings.
Some of the time, this actually works to keep things balanced, but it often also is a bad thing. Like, the current Patient Bill of Rights going through Congress where the Trial Lawyers via the Democrats are trying to push up the "medical lottery" limits (aka HMO lawsuit limits). [Not that I don't think patients shouldn't be able to sue medical practitioners, by the way, but...]
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Why wouldn't there be a slashdot like
system for bills and all the politians that
put forward that bill. That way there can be quick
statistical analysis of who should really be
replaced, so that they really represent people
who elected them not the corporations who fitted
election campaingn bill, for sake of who they
do write legislations.
I mean just hire for each state a dept of 10 ppl
each so they will place the information on to
computer database, that would probably be web accessible.
Everything will be translated into simple talk
but each person in govenrment that has ability
to change laws will have identification.
As pattern analysis can be done and procorporate
anti-people rights heads can be snapped.
just 2c
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
It's interesting to compare this turgid model law with the proactive consumer legislation of more than three decades ago. Then, in the wake of groundbreaking work such as Nader's, we agreed as a society that the consumer must be served, protected, and ultimately given the power of redress when bilked, injured, or otherwise harmed by business. We seemed to understand the premise of the old warning, caveat emptor.
Today, we are inclined otherwise: UCITA, along with movements to limit tort liability, is a philosophical realignment so profound it makes one tremulous about the eagerness to forfeit personal dignity for the benefit of mega-wealthy companies. Its adoption is another step toward reversing the earlier equation: now, consumers shall exist to serve business, which shall answer to them only when and as it suits its own interests. Our new motto, venditor emptor, says that the proper order of things is Microsoft first, you second. Sign here, suckers.
We need to ask ourselves how we've lost something essential, which, for want of a better word, let's call spine. And let us see whether, if we still have what it takes as a free people, we can get it back.
For those unfamiliar with the ABA, not all attorneys are members of the ABA. In fact, most attorneys generally do not belong to the ABA because of the organization's political views. For instance, the ABA opposes the death penalty.
Understanding ABA membership does not include a majority of the attorneys in US and state bars, in which membership is mandatory, do, then it would have been much more significant if each state bar took a position on the subject. However, such action would be extremely unlikely.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"