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.

Comments

I'm still waiting for ANY response to this. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Senators,

I am not an electronics engineer (as per having a paper degree), however I
do engineer electronics that could be said to be equal to someone who has
such a degree. I am an inventor, a musician, a digital creator, an
electronics tinker'r whatever you would like to call it, the name really
doesn't matter as much as the intent. I take thoughts and create material
objects, it doesn't take a degree to do what I am saying. I would also
remind you I am a vetran of the United States Air Force as well as I am
currently a voter (libertarian.) Without creative folks such as myself
and others like Henry Ford, Thomas Jefferson, you wouldn't even have
electricity, lights, computers, and cars.

Statements like the following by the MPAA, "in order to help plug the hole,
watermark detectors would be required in all devices that perform analog to
digital conversions." are not very carefully thought out statements, they
worry me, as to exactly what is going on in my government and here is why.

At least four years ago, I was heavilly into building electronics, I was
engineering a device that converted from analog to digital and from digital
back to analog again. (It was basically a digital audio delay.) I started
with parts from old electronics that people had thrown out on the street. I
have spent many hours desoldering chips, and parts from electronics which
were discarded in this fashion.

I have a full personal library of technical manuals (several different
years) from Motorola, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Supertech, Zillog,
Intel, mosteck, National Semiconductor and MANY OTHERS. Basically I can
look up part numbers from nearly any chip and figure out how it works and
what I can use it for.

Durring the course of events I decided one day I wanted to build a digital
delay for my guitar. There were many D2A A2D chips to choose from, flash
converters, etc the list is endless. I won't bore you. To make a long
story short I decided to go with parts from Analog Devices for my A2D/D2A.

I ended up buying some parts from Analog Devices specifically part ADJ569JN,
and I used some memory that I had laying around from all the parts that I
collected. I had to build a counter circuit to make the ram work in each
memory segment for each sample. A fully blown electronics engineer I am
not however such an engineer can easilly verify what I say to be true. So,
basically the MPAA want's someone like me to add a watermark detector to
my digital audio delay. Well first off I do not care about digital
watermarking, that is not my problem, that was not part of my design, and
to be forced to learn how to engineer this into my design is...well insane.
And anyone who passes or suggests such laws is also...insane. So, before
you quickly dismiss me off as some wacko, I would suggest that those who
push such bills and legislation are the true wackos. Where I would rather
be more concerned about removing digital noise from the output (all digital
circuits have noise) and figuring out creative methods of how to modulate
the clock circuit for different sound effects, they *MPAA* would have me
spend my time working on how to put their watermark detector into my
circuit. Frankly with the lack of information (I had to buy books from
overseas to explain how to do digital to analog and analog to digital) that
is available in the United States I would warn those who would decide to
pass such legislation that a.) unless your ready to nuke our economy b.)
ready to make the purchase of electronics illegal. c.) have the brightest
engineers leave the United States d.) anger the public e.) ruin music
f.) ruin creativity by the future youth who take electronics classes in
schools g.) probably ruin your own political career then do not pass such
insane legislation. It is _not_ your place to make such decisions in my
opinion since you are _not_ qualified.

If your so smart to pass such legislation, answer me this. How many memory
segments will I need to use from my 8x8 ram to incorporate digital
watermarking into my Digital Audio Delay Device? Which pins does it need
to be connected to on the AD7569JN? What CHIP (which has the digital
watermarking in it) do I have to buy? How much does it cost? Who is the
maker of said chip? What is the part number on the chip? Is it compatable
with my circuit? Does this chip have any digital noise associated with it
which will bleed into my device? If so how do I supress such digital
noise? If your not ready to answer these questions, then your not ready to
pass this legislation.

I know that most senators and lawyers are not electronics (digital and analog)
experts so what qualifies them to pass law on a technology they do not fully
understand? Furthermore it comes to my attention that other bills like
the SSSCA which have had their name changed over and over, are insane,
poorly thought through, placing the burdon on the wrong folks to solve the
problem.

It also seems to me there are already laws against piracy, so no further
laws are needed. Another thing that upsets me is how these bills slip
through without even consulting the public, or letting someone like me
vote, in many cases government websites are broken and feedback forms
do not work, other times phones are busy, and nobody is around to answer
them, and some political candidates have NO EMAIL ADDRESS! this is
unacceptable. Forcing me to physically stand face to face in order to
get my point across is bad. Forcing me to make political contributions
for legislation is also bad.

Although I am no longer designing electronics at this current point in time
I may want to again. And I know that others like myself in the future will
become interested in Transmitters, Receivers, Digital and Analog
electronics, what in effect you are doing is pushing a new electronics
law (A very stupid law) into the natural laws of electronics. Especially
the young should be encouraged to get into electronics design early on in
their lives. It keeps them out of trouble and away from drugs and alchohol.

Another thing that frankly angers me is by passing the CBDTPA act you are
condemning me for using Linux, which is an operating system that does what
I want. You would be making the personal computer into some bastardised
piece of equipment that plays mickey mouse videos, when I do not even want
that on my computer at all. I use my computer to write code. In some
cases the code can do the exact same thing my earlier discussion on the
AD7569JN does. I do not want my resources being used by the media.
I want my resources being used for what I purchased them for. And that
is development. CBDTPA stifles development. It sacrifices the IT sector,
at the expense of the MPAA.

I do not pretend to have the money that the MPAA has. However is is
unfair to destroy education about electronics and dumb down america.

Which is, despite all, the BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!

I may not live long enough to get back into electronics design again, but
PLEASE DONT ruin the future because of a damned mouse.

Thank you for reading my comments.

Re:I'm still waiting for ANY response to this. . .

[JamesKPolk]

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."

Re:I'm still waiting for ANY response to this. . .

[NumberSyx]

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

UCITA?

[blincoln]

If, like me, you've never heard of UCITA and are looking to form your own opinion, a summary is available here:

http://www.ucitaonline.com/slhpwiu.html

More info on the UCITA

[MiTEG]

For those of you who (like me) have a limited knowledge about the UCITA, Infoworld as an excellent summary of what it is and the problems with it.

What it essentially seems to do is make EULA's legally binding and allows them to be undisclosed until after the sale is made. It doesn't seem so much anti-open source as it pro-commercial software.

Re:More info on the UCITA

[RickHunter]

You weren't around when this first came up a few years back, were you?

Let me summarize why its bad for Open Source, then. It specifies that an EULA can forcibly modify practically any aspect of contract or copyright law, and does not have to be disclosed until some arbitrary point until after the sale.

Okay, you think, all is well and good. Blatant power grab translates to more fear of closed-source software, which means more open source/free software in use. Right?

Well, the problem is that this also modifies the 'defaults' for software and what can modify those. Namely, I seem to remember that it instituted stricter liability for software. Which can only be overrided by a shrink-wrap EULA.

The GPL, BSD license, Apache License, MPL, APL, and X11 license, among numerous others, are not shrink-wrap EULAs. Totally different category of contract, in fact. Thus, there is no way for the developers of gcc to disclaim liability.

As linked by other posters, http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/ucita.html provides a very good explanation of why this law is Bad.

clarification

[Adrian Lopez]

I said UCITA is "bad for users of Free Software" when I really meant to say that it's bad for Free Software in general (the FSF has a good explanation of it).

Having said that, UCITA is indeed bad for users of Free Software. When Free Software authors are held liable for defects while software companies are allowed to disclaim liability (exactly the opposite of the way it should be!), both the developers and users of Free Software suffer. When proprietary vendors are allowed to create closed and legally inaccessible file formats, the developers and users of Free Software suffer greatly.

UCITA is an immense threat to anybody who is not a big corporation.

Tomorrow in the mail

[Trepidity]

Dear Red Hat,

We have received your letter dated 29 July 2002 requesting that we rescind the UCITA regulations. Rest assured that we have been completely unaware of the deleterious impact these regulations might have on open source software; had we known we would never have adopted them at all. The Commissioners apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, and will now move to reverse UCITA's adoption immediately. Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention, and please don't hesitate to contact us again if you have any further concerns.

Sincerely,
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws

But WHY is UCITA contrary to Open Source?

[JeffMings]

I have read the articles here and on several other sites, and I've read many Infoworld articles over the past few years on UCITA, and I _still_ don't see how it is damaging to Open Source. As pointed out earlier, this page seeks to address the concerns of Open Source advocates, and does a good job of such. I have understood the dangers of large proprietary corps like M$ being able to turn software off and abuse consumers in other ways, but I have not been able to find a single credible reference to how UCITA will hurt Linux developers or users. Can someone post a rational and clear explanation using traceable references to UCITA language that demonstrates the potential for harm? I'm certain that many others would also appreciate clarification.
Thanks

Re:Question about my own code

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, as I see it (and please correct me if i'm wrong) the UCITA would benifit me because my disclaimers would be legally enforcable. If the UCITA went away, then I would be stuck in a rather tricky situation where I could be held liable for all the stuff that my licence disclaims.

Actually, the UCITA contains more stringent laws on when you can disclaim a warranty, and the length to which you can do so. It does enforce EULAs (to an extent), but it also forces particular warranties onto all software, for which the distributor, publisher, and/or developer will be held responsible.

In other words, UCITA states that your disclaimers of warranty may not be legal at all, and that you may still be held responsible. Of course, the letter and most of the comments here haven't really pointed out that which is the most common issue for open source developers (since the GPL and most other open source/free licenses disclaim all warranties).