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/
>
>###