Re: INFO/NYT: Controversial Software Protection Law Passed in Virginia

On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Gregory Powell <greg.powell[_at_]mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 16, 2000, Madeleine Fix <madeleinefix[_at_]hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Who are the politicians -- senators, Washington offices, etc. that
> > should be contacted to fight this sort of legislation. It is miserable
> > for individuals, non-profits, cultural institutions, and educational
> > institutions that do not have the necessary funds to constantly upgrade
> > software. This sort of legislation must be fought if there is to be
> > free speech and expression in the digital realm.
>
> Check out <http://www.4cite.org/>. It's an organization created for
> the purpose of defeating UCITA. It also maintains a web page that
> tracks what UCITA is doing in the states.
>
> I'm unclear, however, about how UCITA negatively impacts underfunded
> persons' abilities to acquire software upgrades. To my knowledge,
> there is no copyright upgrade exemption (e.g., fair use, first sale,
> sec. 108) for a UCITA "license" to "contract" around. One problem you
> may have in mind is UCITA's apparent (blanket) presumptive validation
> of restrictions on alienation, such as a restriction prohibiting the
> donation of a software copy upgrade to a library. This problem however
> is not specific to software upgrades.
>
> On further reflection, it seems odd and incongruous that a library (or
> other non-profit) would complain about having to pay for an upgrade.
> A library's desire for a software upgrade is to render more efficient
> its practical operations, rather than to acquire an additional work of
> authorship to make publicly available. Assume Windows 2000 upgrade
> as a paradigm. Here the library wants a new machine, not a new work
> of authorship. Libraries have always had to pay for their desks and
> chairs. Of course, a library may be interested in a software "upgrade"
> that adds expressive content to a multi-media work, but this really
> constitutes a different sense of "upgrade" that needs a new word to
> avoid confusion. This may be one of UCITA's most formidible conceptual
> problems -- it tries to unify things that are too different (e.g.,
> intellectual property rights, personal property rights, rights over
> utilitarian products, rights over expressive non-utilitarian works of
> authorship -- apparently under the concept of "intangibles" (or the
> dual-concepts of "informational rights" and "information")). Seems to
> be workable for "goods" (to wit, UCC Article 2), but then maybe goods
> are, well, just goods.

I don't think that Ms Fix's concern is a desire for free software; it seems to me that she's worried about the provisions of UCITA that would allow software companies to sell software with an "expiration date," forcing her organization to buy updates that they don't want and can't afford.

I believe that this is what the software publishers truly desire from UCITA. If you look at the low adoption rate of Windows 98 in corporate settings, and other instances of "upgrades" that have low sales because they lack attractive features or are buggy, you'll see why this is important to the software companies.

A step in this direction is the increasing number of software packages that only work for a limited time unless you register them. This is not an anti-piracy measure, no matter what the software companies say. It's simply a method of forcing the user to give the software company marketable information.

UCITA is the final step in eliminating the purchase of software, and replacing it with rental, in my opinion (and I've read the text of the Virginia bill).

I don't steal software. I spend a lot of money for it, and want to be able to use whichever version of it that suits my needs, not be forced into "upgrades" that don't have features that I need, and don't work well. Does anyone think that the public would put up with this nonsense in any other product?

Colin Goff
Riley communications
North Branford, CT
<colgoff[_at_]worldnet.att.net> Received on Mon Mar 20 2000 - 13:47:06 GMT