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[RRE]campaign against abusive shrinkwrap licenses
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Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 02:19:14 -0400
From: Free Software Foundation
[The Free Software Project is posting this message to aid a campaign led by others (see below) against UCITA. For more information, please see the web sites below. Please repost this message as widely as possible, wherever it is appropriate.]
UCITA (formerly UCC article 2B) is a plan to change the law in the US, state by state, to give software publishers unprecedented power over software users, through "shrink wrap" licenses. Software owners would be able to prohibit you from doing reverse-engineering to figure out the protocol used by the program, prohibit you from telling the public about bugs you encounter, insist that you can only sue them in Paraguay, change the license terms post-facto, and enter your computer to shut off the software if they claim you have violated their one-sided license.
UCITA would also apply to other products that contain software or information--for example, digital watches, microwave ovens, and cars. Wave goodbye to consumer protection laws.
Fortunately, there is a strong campaign to oppose UCITA. Infoworld has organized a letter-writing petition campaign which you can join. See http://forums.infoworld.com/threads/get.cgi?115803.
The principal vote (in late July) will by a committee of the state representatives to the commission on uniform state laws, and there is also a campaign asking you to write to your own state's commissioner.
See http://www.badsoftware.com/ for advice on how to do this, and much more information about UCITA. Another resource page about UCITA is http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/UCITA/.
I hope each US citizen or resident reading this message will help oppose UCITA in one way or another. ```
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