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Red Hat Asks for UCITA Reversal
OSS advocate writes "According to this NewsForge article, Red Hat has engaged the services of Carol Kunze (ucitaonline.com) to try to convince the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to take UCITA back. There's a list of email addresses in case you want to send the commish a letter yourself." Red Hat's letter is a good start.
How about reversing DMCA, shortening the span of software patents, reversing copyright lengthening, passing laws about *not* passing laws to enhance the *life* of businesses?
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
It seems to only apply where there is a *contract*, which isn't relevant to most OS Projects.
It might be bad for end-users if it makes the "we offer no warranty whatsoever but we take your first born child" EULAs valid, but it seems irrelevent to those of us who never use them.
Tell me how that's wrong...?
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Glad to know some senators cover their ears and ignore anyone whose education isn't up to their personal standards.
Too bad we can't go back and rewrite the Declaration of Independence to say "All men are created equal, as long as they know how to spell," then rewrite the First Amendement to the Constitution to say "The right to free speech shall not be infringed, as long as everything is spelled correctly."
Do you realize how unethical that is? It is a senators job to listen to all voters in their district, not just the ones with perfect spelling and grammar. Why don't you just throw out all the letters that express opinions contrary to your own while your at it?
If you don't have anything nice to say, shut up you stupid prick.
Absolutely true. I work as an assistant to a senator (hence the anon. post), and stuff like this just gets discarded before any "important" people even read it. Grammar and spelling count almost as much as the ideas presented in the letter.
This is an incredibly elitist attitude. In effect you and the Senater you work for are saying, spelling and grammar are more important than the idea being expressed or even the person who is expressing it. Just because someone does not express themselves well, does not invalidate them as a human being. Being a grammar troll on Slashdot is one thing, but a US Senator and his staff should be interested in what everyone has to say, regardless of how poorly it is expressed. If you really feel this way and the Senator you work for supports this, then both of you need to find a new line of work
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
It's a set of default laws regarding software development/distribution that apply where the parts have not agreed on anything. Plus a set of mandatory laws which can't be disagreed upon "to protect the user".
Does this mean that UCITA removes the responsibility from the shoulders of the luser in case something goes wrong?
Will it allow people to treat their computers like imported au pairs, with any results being the programmers responsibilty? What if someone deletes all their stuff with fdisk?
What if they use 'find / > /dev/hda'? Who's to blame?
I would assume that if the user is stupid and root at the same time, that's his/her/its problem, and no matter how many laws you have, idiots can only blame themselves for being idiots.
Of course, I'm not from the USA. In my country, Norway, lawyers can't even take percentages of the winnings to keep idiots from the nothing-to-loose suing. (And may I say, that's the best law since Thou shalt not kill)
If any of the above are the developers fault, can't you just put a notice on kernel.org/gnu.org that "You have entered restricted web space, please leave at once. Do not download anything." I'm sure you could somehow convince a jury that the luser 'hacked' kernel.org/gnu.org to gain access to data that wasn't intended for him/her/it in the first place (I mean, if it's illegal to use people's wide open SMB shares, surely the same applies to HTTP?)