Commissioners Pass UCITA Amendments
Amid Controversy
The group responsible for a controversial package of laws regulating software licensing known as the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) has approved a number of amendments that attempt to soften some of the act’s harsher components.
At its annual meeting August 1 in Tucson, Arizona, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) accepted modest changes that affect the ability of customers to criticize a software product and reverse-engineer a program to ensure that it works with other technologies.
American Library Association Legislative Counsel Miriam Nisbet attended the meeting and said that UCITA opponents made it clear to NCCUSL leadership that even with the new changes, the law remains fundamentally flawed. For example, commissioners approved an amendment that allows customers to donate software to public libraries or public elementary or secondary schools. However, the provision leaves out private schools and academic libraries and specifies that the program must reside within a computer.
A petition circulated and signed by some 40 commissioners urged a motion to downgrade the law from a uniform act to a model law, a step that would have eliminated NCCUSL’s active promotion of UCITA in state legislatures. Though postponed, the measure prompted NCCUSL President King Burnett to remark that if UCITA is not enacted by more states and ultimately fails to gain approval from the American Bar Association, “a different approach to the matter will have to be taken.”
To date, only two states, Virginia and Maryland, have approved laws modeled on UCITA.
Posted August 12, 2002.
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