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LATimes Discovers UCITA 7

Posted by michael from the software-money-talks dept.
A couple of people pointed us to this good article summarizing UCITA. Will it do any good? Probably not. But we remain hopeful.
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LATimes Discovers UCITA More

LATimes Discovers UCITA

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  • It does, however, prevent us from interacting with that software. And what CEO is going to put in his shareholder report "yeah, this year we took a $2.6M hit when we discarded all commercial word-processor software"? Besides, if enacted as recommended, only commercial software producers are proteced. Us non-commercial people are still liable, and probably won't get our language right if we do craft a sufficiently crafty license.
    --

  • hmm... (Score:1)

    by Zurk ( 37028 )
    mild article. it doesnt yell out - TAKE ACTION YOU DOLTS. more mainstream press coverage of this and the DMCA would be a lot more helpful (NYTimes and Wall Street Journal anyone?).
  • I haven't read the draft in a while but I have read it, which is more than I can say for the article's writer. What's missing from the article is that UCITA applies to hardware, which means that any software that doesn't pay royalties to the hardware producers is under threat.

    I.E., a hardware manufacturer can specify that Software products M,S,F, and T, and hardware products I,N,T and C are the only software products that can be run with hardware P (versions I, II, and III). Furthermore, the hardware can be designed to fail (or cause software to fail) if it detects "unauthorized" software on the machine.

  • Just because this particular evil may drive people to OSS does not make it an acceptable evil.

    Under the provisions of the UCITA, it is possible for me to advertise my produst, call it 'Webinfinite 2.0', as the greatest thing since FORTRAN. I can proceed to label copies of 'Stoned-B', complete with an installer that disables your virus scanner, as WI 2.0. Under the terms of my newly enforcable shrinkwrap licence, not only can I extort fees form you for the ability to uninstall it, I can prevent you from talking about it under penalty of fine.

    Or worse yet, I can give you a perfectly functional bit of UberSoft, and then remotly disable it later; I have chosen to change my pricing structure. What! Ddn't you read the licence? Yes, the one in 2 point mirror image! You don't own that software! Now pay up the $49.99 like a good sheep or we will forcefully remove said software. I'll warn you in advance though, we usually corrupt the partition table in the process, and according to the license that is within our right as owner of the software..

    So, Mr. Sheep, what was your credit card number again?
  • remember, this is the same site that ran that wonderful letter from Mr. Valenti of the MPAA. are you really surprised at the mildness?
  • After reading this article (the first I have ever read about this law), I was at first shocked, but then realized this has good implications for the Open Source movement.

    It not only will draw people to GPLed software, but software under the BSD License, Artisic License, LGPL and others as well. All of the licenses mentioned previously have no "We can take this software away from you if you do X" clause in them (to the best of my knowledge). I could care less what kind of restrictions Microsoft, Sun, HP and others could (or some might say "will") put on their operating systems and software. If individuals and companies want to purchase software with these horrid restrictions, let them. I ceritanly don't mind, it's their money being wasted, their risk of getting in trouble with the manufactuer (due to license violations) and their lawyers (or the individual) will have to work overtime to read through these licenses.

    I'll choose the license and software that's better, and in the end that's what it's all about: choice.

    For me, the choice is clear. Commercial software with a terrible and restrictive license or Open Source software with close to no restrictions? The conclusion isn't too hard to come to for me.
  • Right, but according to RMS (I haven't read the model act myself, but I assume that he is right), disclaimers will only be effective for commercial software with 'shrinkwrap licenses' (RMS's words). Free software authors could be sued if their software destroyed a machine.

    Read this [linuxtoday.com] for more.

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