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UCITA Stalled At State Level
OscarGunther writes "Four states have passed anti-UCITA laws and Massachusetts may soon become the fifth. Meanwhile, only two states have adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which gives software vendors all the benefits and none of the burdens of the consequences of publishing their software. The details can be found at ComputerWorld and an opinion piece by Frank Hayes can be found here."
UCITA has become law
"Bomb-shelter" has become law
What is UCITA "bomb-shelter" legislation? UCITA "bomb-shelter" legislation is defensive legislation needed to protect a state's residents from being subject to unfair and overreaching provisions in UCITA even if the act has never passed in their state. As of 2002, West Virginia, Iowa and North Carolina have passed this kind of legislation. "Bomb-shelter" legislation narrowly protect software licensees from choice of law provisions that make UCITA the governing law of the contract or from choice of forum provisions that might select another state unrelated to either the vendor or the licensee as the forum for settling a legal dispute over the contract. One proposed version (New York) stipulates that only the laws of the licensee's state (i.e. the state with the "bomb-shelter" law) will apply in determining whether the license's terms are enforceable.
See AFFECT's "bomb-shelter" section:
States to WATCH
This state is one to watch closely because some UCITA activity has been reported. This could mean that important pre-legislative activity has begun.
Things you can do:
Contact your state library association to find out how you can help them. Educate yourself about UCITA's effect on libraries by visiting the Impact section.
No legislative activity reported
Things you can do:
Contact your state library association to find out how you can help.
Educate yourself about UCITA's effect on libraries.
Review the ALA Washington Office Online UCITA Tutorial.
Keep your eyes open for workshops in your area at ALA mid-winter and annual conferences.
Request a workshop if you don't see one listed in upcoming conferences.
I worked for a company where a software company (I won't name, but lets just say it bundles installer software that can apparently be used to install your product anywhere ;) ) did this to us. They disabled our liscence...saying we only had a one machine liscence to use the product, and the install builder software had called back to the company supplying two different IP addresses...and thus, had been registered on two different computers.
I found this kind of suspect, because I knew for _sure_ it was only on our build system and that the originals were under lock and key and couldn't have been taken home...so I asked our build engineer to ring them back and ask what the two IP addresses were, so that we could isolate where it had been installed. The first address we were given was the address of the build machine...the second address...you guessed it...127.0.0.1.
We then had to explain to the guy that was handling our compaint why this didn't constitute a licence breach. Now, the serious side...you really want to give someone like this the power to pull the plug on your development system and kill your builds for however many days it takes to get through to someone with a brain? (by the way...the build box was linux...so you're not safe just by staying off windoze)
Agreed. I wish articles critical of UCITA would stress this point more. Once you accept that software companies have a right to unilaterally change the terms of a sale that has already occurred, the battle is lost. We don't need new laws defining what EULA terms are and aren't acceptable. We need to apply basic contract law to EULAs and get them ruled 100% unenforceable. This is a complete no-brainer to me (no consideration=no contract, end of story), but I see people here even trying to argue on the software vendors' terms, which is hopeless.