Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: Time to bury proposed software law
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 20:14:33 -0400
X-Sender: jnoble () pop dgsys com Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 18:21:42 -0400 To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com From: John Noble <jnoble () dgsys com> Subject: Re: IP: Re: Time to bury proposed software law That's outrageous. I don't know who should be more insulted -- the professor accused of not knowing how to teach or the students accused of being unable to think. If UCITA isn't perfect, and it isn't, it's sure as hell an improvement on unpredictable case-by-case invention of rules in the discretion of a judge. If the legal and policy communities visited by Prof. Camp aren't debating the value of UCITA, it's because they all have the same stake in the debate, which is to say none at all except notions of an ideal deal. And if Prof. Polk has introduced his students to something other than the party line on UCITA, he is to be congratulated. Freedom of contract was the same issue that divided the market and academics 50 years ago over the U.C.C. The academics won the first round, adopting a uniform code in 1949 that went nowhere. Five years later, having recognized that subjective good faith and arbitrary judicial norms was anything but uniform, the market prevailed. "[T]he original intent of the drafters was that the Code was to include affirmative consumer protection, was to be mandatory instead of being subject to agreement, and was to have a strong regulatory component. Consumer protection does not represent a later development, but a taking up by individual states and Congress of the Code's consumer protection provisions after they were dropped. They were dropped because of a lack of political support or even interest." DOWNTOWN CODE: A HISTORY OF THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE 1949-1954, Allen R. Kamp, Buffalo Law Review, Winter 2001. John Noble
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- IP: Re: Time to bury proposed software law David Farber (May 25)