IP: A press release on ACM's UCITA letter

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Press Contacts:
> Anne Wilson, ACM
> 212-626-0505
> annewilson () acm org
>
> Christopher Morgan, ACM
> 617-262-2044
> morgan () acm org
>
> ACM SAYS THE SOFTWARE CONSUMER WOULD LOSE IMPORTANT RIGHTS IF THE UNIFORM
> COMPUTER TRANSACTIONS ACT (UCITA) BECOMES LAW
>
> UCITA could discourage the development of reliable software and restrict the
> consumer's right to pursue remedies for software problems, says ACM
>
> New York, July 15, 1999 -- The Association for Computing Machinery has voiced
> its support for the software consumer by opposing the proposed Uniform Computer
> Information Transactions Act (UCITA), to be considered for endorsement later
> this month by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
> The ACM noted that the software consumer would stand to lose important rights
> if the proposal becomes law. The ACM is the nation's oldest association of
> computing professionals, with over 80,000 members in industry, academia, and
> government.
>
> UCITA is a proposed licensing law that would, among other things, redefine the
> legal standards for software mass market licenses, including the shrinkwrap
> licenses familiar to computer software users. If endorsed by the Commissioners,
> the UCITA proposal would then be introduced into the individual state
> legislatures for voting.
>
> ACM President Barbara Simons said today, "We oppose the Uniform Computer
> Information Transactions Act, and are making our announcement now because the
> state Commissioners may decide to endorse UCITA within the next two weeks. The
> ACM has had a long-standing interest in ensuring the development of computer
> products and services that are well designed and that do not endanger public
> safety. Legal rules must not discourage the creation of reliable software or
> make it more difficult to detect and correct software problems."
>
> Cem Kaner, a Silicon-valley based attorney and software development consultant,
> added his voice to the ACM's anti-UCITA stance, saying, "If UCITA becomes law,
> software publishers would have no duty to check their products for viruses.
> Furthermore, vendors could avoid paying for damage caused by a virus, and
> software users would have a harder time returning a defective product." Kaner
> is a member of the ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee.
>
> Liability issues
>
> In a letter to the Commissioners, Simons noted that UCITA appears to put user
> interface errors in the same category as errors in a newspaper article, thus
> making it too easy for software publishers to avoid facing any legal
> consequences for defective software.  Pamela Samuelson, software legal expert
> and member of the ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee, agreed, saying "UCITA
> presumes that a software program's user interface -- the part visible to the
> user -- is technically not part of the program. That means warranty liability
> rules would not apply to the user interface. If this is the case, software
> developers will no longer be held to a high standard, and bad user interface
> designs will predominate."
>
> Threats to Reverse Engineering
>
> The ACM letter stresses that UCITA could also threaten normal engineering
> activities, especially reverse engineering, by allowing publishers to ban the
> technique through contractual use restrictions. Reverse engineering is a
> commonly used technique in the software industry and in academia. It involves
> studying a software program without having access to its source code so as to
> understand its operation. Computer software expert and ACM U.S. Public Policy
> Committee member Eugene Spafford warns "Reverse engineering is a time-honored,
> legal procedure that allows consumers and technologists to examine software for
> security defects, fix dangerous flaws, and develop interoperability with other
> software. UCITA would allow vendors to prohibit or severely restrict these
> activities, thus increasing the risks to the public from buggy software,
> computer viruses, and other all-too-common software problems."
>
> The full text of the ACM letter to the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws is
> available at http://www.acm.org/usacm/copyright/
>
> ###