UCITA There is a bill in the Arizona Legislature that will, if adopted into law, seriously harm the citizens of Arizona. HB2041 was introduced by: State Senator Chris Cummiskey Assistant Senate Floor Leader State Senator, District 25 - Central Phoenix (Current) ccummisk@azleg.state.az.us State Senator Ramon Valadez Legislative District 10 - Tucson rvaladez@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Jim Carruthers Republican -- District 5 - Yuma, Parker, Quartzsite, Wellton, San Luis jcarruth@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Debra Brimhall Republican -- District 4 - Winslow, Holbrook, Snowflake, St. Johns, Taylor, Springerville, Eagar, Showlow, Payson, Miami, Globe, Superior, Hayden, Pima, Florence, Casa Grande dbrimhal@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Mark Anderson Republican -- District 29 - western Mesa manderso@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Dean Cooley Republican -- District 21 - Mesa dcooley@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Jeff Hatch-Miller Republican -- District 26 - Phoenix jhatch@azleg.state.az.us State Representative Wes Marsh Republican -- District 28 - Phoenix wmarsh@azleg.state.az.us These and indeed all the members of the Arizona Legislature need to be informed about the consequenses of this proposed legislation. I propose that we submit the following information to ALL Arizona legislators. -------------- The purpose of this communication is to inform you about our concerns regarding HB 2041 - UCITA. This bill, while superficially appearing beneficial, deserves your serious consideration. There are many provisions of this proposed legislation that will seriously harm your constituents, the citizens of Arizona. Please take the time to consider our objections. UCITA (originally titled UCC 2B) was designed and promoted by the proprietary software industry. UCITA is a contract law statute that would apply to computer software, multimedia products, computer data and databases, online information, and other such products. It was designed to create a uniform commercial contract law for these products and calls itself "a cyberspace commercial statute." It covers contracts that are generally known as "shrink-wrap licenses". Many individuals and organizations are opposing UCITA because it has the potential to be very harmful to consumers, especially consumers of computer products (which we all are today). Among those opposed to UCITA are the Consumers Union, the Association of Research Libraries, a large number of state attorneys general, and an organization to which I belong, the Phoenix Linux User Group. We, as Americans, generally believe that big companies ought to be held to a strict standard of liability to their customers because it will keep them honest. UCITA will do the opposite. UCITA says that by default a software developer or distributor is completely liable for flaws in a program. But it also allows a shrink-wrap license to override the default. Sophisticated software companies that make proprietary software will use shrink-wrap licenses to avoid liability entirely. UCITA has another consequence. It gives proprietary software developers the power to prohibit reverse engineering. This would make it easy for them to establish secret file formats and protocols, which there would be no lawful way for anyone to figure out. The current technological sophistication that people enjoy today and the unprecidented access to information that we all have via the Internet is built on a foundation of open standards and open protocols. These standards, and their supporting protocols, were designed, developed, enhanced, and adopted by the computing community at large in an open, visible way. Were UCITA in effect while these standards and protocols were being discussed, the Internet would be a vastly different creature. It would have been created and now be controlled and manipulated by the proprietary software companies who would have had the ability and the power to stipulate secret standards and protocols and prohibit the computing community from discovering those standards and protocols under penalty of law. UCITA does not apply only to software. It applies to any sort of computer-readable information. Even if you use only free software, you are likely to read articles on your computer, access data bases, etc. UCITA will allow the publishers to impose the most outrageous restrictions on you. They could change the license retroactively at any time, and force you to delete the material if you don't accept the change. They could even prohibit you from describing what you see as flaws in the material. UCITA will also validate software licenses that excuse software vendors from responsibility for "buggy" software. It will even allow vendors to prevent users and reviewers from publicly discussing a product. Both the ruling by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington and Microsoft's demand to Slashdot.org to remove Internet postings about one of its products are evidence of a disturbing erosion of customer protections in state contract law. The Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled that "not our fault" language contained in a shrink wrap license for software was valid, even if the customer never read the disclaimer and the software company knew about the defect before the product was sold. In the Washington case, a construction company made a $1.95 million error in a bid it submitted to build a medical center because of a defect in the software. The construction firm discovered the error only after the bid had been accepted. The construction company sued the software developer and distributor to recover the $1.95 million and the court ruled that a liability waiver in the shrink-wrap license provided complete protection to the software company. UCITA would make the Washington Supreme Court's ruling law in every state that adopts the legislation. According to Skip Lockwood, director of 4CITE (For a Competitive Information Technology Economy), "UCITA takes away software firms' incentive to pre-test their software in order to distribute bug-free programs. Software companies can ship programs with known defects, secure in the knowledge that UCITA will shield them from liability." In another case, Microsoft has demanded that Slashdot.org remove postings on its web site about a Microsoft security product. Microsoft contends that when the users downloaded the product from the Microsoft site, they clicked on a confidentiality agreement. Therefore, users are unable to publicly comment on the software. UCITA would render this click-on confidentiality agreement (and many other onerous provisions) completely enforceable. "UCITA will allow software vendors to bind thousands, if not millions, of people to secrecy. Consumers and competitors will not be able to comment on or criticize the vendor's products" according to Lockwood. Opponents argue that UCITA gives software manufacturers and information services an unfair advantage and leaves consumers with very little recourse when they find themselves with bad software. The opponents include 26 State Attorneys General Association for Computing Machinery Free Software Foundation Consumers Union 4CITE, a broad-based coalition of end-users and developers of computer and information technology Society for Information Management IEEE Newspaper Association ofAmerica Motion Picture Association of America Association of Research Libraries and many others Thank you for your time. Jim Bliss comes from within, ignorance from without