IP: Re: Time to bury proposed software law

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> 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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