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The Courts Government Your Rights Online News

UCITA Committee Disbanded 16

Posted by michael from the three-cheers dept.
linuxwrangler writes "As noted in Ed Foster's InfoWorld Gripe Line blog, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws committee on Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA) has been disbanded. The UCITA proposal, a darling of the software industry, would have validated shrink-wrap and click-through licenses and legalized "self-help" or remote disabling of software by manufacturers. It's "developers are completely liable for defects...unless overridden by the shrink wrap license" provisions were of grave concern to open-source. The badly flawed proposed legislation was condemned by everyone from Librarians and InfoWorld editors to the American Bar Association, the Federal Trade Commission and Richard Stallman. Only two states (Virginia and Maryland) adopted it while twice that many passed Anti-UCITA laws. Although UCITA is not officially dead, at least it has been taken off life support which certainly qualifies as great news."
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UCITA Committee Disbanded More

UCITA Committee Disbanded

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  • Hmmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If your intent was to go from the least important people on this planet to the most

    The badly flawed proposed legislation was condemned by everyone from Librarians and InfoWorld editors to the American Bar Association, the Federal Trade Commission and Richard Stallman.

    I didn't know Stallman was legislated higher authority than FTC.
    • You have defined "important" as meaning legislated highly. That's your call. You must derive a very structured life from this belief :P

      --
    • "If your intent was to go from the least important people on this planet to the most"

      Maybe it's just in order of people or organisations whom most slashdotters care about.

  • Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lionel Hutts ( 65507 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:39PM (#6621881) Journal
    This really is great news -- though there were some parts of UCITA that were much less objectionable than those highlighted here, few should mourn the loss of this stinker.

    I wonder how the UCITA supporters in Virginia and Maryland will feel about their triumph. It reminds me of the story of the Wazoo land grab scandal of 200 years ago in Georgia, which inspired the Eleventh Amendment: some shifty types bribed a majority of the state legislature to just give away a huge amount of land to them, but, for whatever reason, one innocent legislator went along with the crowd and voted in favor of the scheme.

    • Wazoo land grab sounded interesting. So I did some research [google.com]. Looks like you were close. It was a Yazoo land fraud. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

      And, for the other curious people out there, the eleventh ammendment, as quoted from http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.amendmentxi.html [cornell.edu]:

      The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by

      • Dang it, I knew it sounded like "Yahoo!," but not quite.

        My sincerest apologies.

        The Eleventh Amendment really did need to be about that long, though, to unambiguously repeal the Constitution's grant of jurisdiction over states. For real wordiness, try the first sentence of (former) Internal Revenue Code sec. 341(e) [cornell.edu]'s first sentence:

        (e)Exceptions to application of section

        (1) Sales or exchanges of stock

        For purposes of subsection (a)(1), a corporation shall not be considered to be a collapsible corporatio

  • Why not front page? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:03PM (#6622718) Homepage
    Considering the scope and ramifications of UCITA-like bills that had been pushed through in other states, I find it odd that this didn't make front-page news. It's clearly great news, and something we can all breathe a little easier about hearing.

    Additionally, Slashdot didn't post anything about Senator Hollings announcing his retirement next year, which is also very good news for the /. community. Surely we can find room to insert this between the SCO stories, right?

  • what? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why did you put some link to a spam^H^H^H^Hblog, when there was an actual, real news source reporting it?

    get the fuck out, blog virus!

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