UCITA runs out of steam [LWN.net]

LWN first reported on UCC-2B, a proposal for a uniform law on software licensing (and other intellectual property issues), over five years ago. UCC-2B proposed to legitimize "shrink-wrap" licenses - even if the license is hidden within the box and unavailable to the customer until after the product is purchased. Some of the worst abuses of software licensing, such as prohibitions on the publication of benchmark results or "unauthorized" product reviews and bans on reverse engineering, would have, in theory, been legalized by UCC-2B.

Things got more interesting in 1999, when UCC-2B evolved into UCITA. At this point, the drafting committee added nice features like the (legal) ability to disable software remotely, non-transferability of licenses, and more. UCITA was eventually passed (in modified form) in two U.S. states, but appeared to stall otherwise. It was, after all, not a very good law.

In 2002, the UCITA folks tried again with a series of amendments to the law. Remote shutdowns were taken out, and the provisions allowing the prohibition of public criticism of the software were watered down slightly. But the new version also changed the terms on warranties, to the point that it would be impossible for a free software product to ship with a warranty disclaimer. UCITA remained a bad law.

Things took a turn for the worse (from the point of view of those backing UCITA) in early 2003, when the American Bar Association (the professional association for lawyers in the U.S.) refused to endorse UCITA. Versions of the law were introduced into several state legislatures, but made no real progress. UCITA, it seemed, wasn't going anywhere.

This week, it would appear that UCITA has hit the end of the road: the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has voted to shut down the UCITA committee. UCITA has ceased to be an active effort in the U.S.

There is a worthwhile lesson in this development: it is possible to defeat bad laws, at least some of the time. We should not forget another, hard-learned lesson, however: this sort of proposal tends to come back, over and over again. Consider the words of the NCCUSL president:

Clearly our efforts to find consensus and to bring all of the interested parties together has been extraordinary. Unfortunately in the real world, sometimes doing the right thing at the right time is not enough.

The clearest thing here is that the people behind UCITA have learned little from its defeat; UCITA is "the right thing at the right time." UCITA is gone for now, but it shall certainly be back.

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UCITA runs out of steam

Posted Aug 7, 2003 2:08 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

But will it still be valid in the two states where it has passed? (VA and MD IIRC) If so, is that still a real problem?

Of course, I never really saw as much bad in the UCITA as most here have. Anything which makes free software more attractive is probably a good thing. Restrictions on reverse engineering protocols are a problem, but only until the de-facto protocols are free/open. Also any needed reverse engineering could probably be done outside the USA.

But I'm probably missing something, so I'll go with the flow and be glad that it's apparently done for now.

20/20, in hindsight

Posted Aug 18, 2003 15:06 UTC (Mon) by guest1 (guest, #13780) [Link]

Funny how at the time there was so much: "the world is coming to an end, UCITA is now law" sort of fear-mongering going on in the FSF/OSS world. Funny how now in retrospect LWN can write articles of the tone taken in this one: "UCITA wasn't really a threat, didn't get anywhere, and even lawyers had a problem swallowing it".

Hopefully a year or so from now LWN will be writing similarly-toned articles with regards to SCO?