Posted August 11, 2003

UCITA Supporters Drop Efforts to Promote Software Law

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws called a halt August 1 in its efforts to enact a software-licensing bill that has met with stiff opposition from the American Library Association, the American Bar Association, and other groups. In announcing the decision at its annual meeting, Conference President K. King Burnett said, “Clearly we are experiencing directed intense and incessant politics and strong opposition, without the suggestion of concrete alternatives, from some consumer groups, insurance companies, and libraries, and the allies they have accumulated.”

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, drafted and approved by NCCUSL in 1999, has been enacted in only two states, Maryland and Virginia. After some modifications addressing consumer rights were made in 2002, commissioners hoped at least two other states would adopt it. Opponents insist the law remains fundamentally anti-consumer.

Four states—Vermont, Iowa, West Virginia, and North Carolina—have passed anti-UCITA “bomb-shelter” acts that protect their citizens from UCITA legislation enacted by other states.

ALA Legislative Counsel Miriam Nisbet said that the change in strategy “falls short of an official ‘downgrading’ of the act to a model law” and warned that other UCITA proponents, such as software companies, “are not at all bound by this decision and could still promote the act.”

Posted August 11, 2003.