:InfoWorld: UCITA could provide the license to kill those companies that support it
InfoWorld: UCITA could provide the license to kill those companies that support it Jun 14, 1999, 13 :59 UTC (10 Talkback[s]) (8391 reads) (Other stories by Nicholas Petreley)
"Last week's Page One article on the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) rather nicely summed up some of the
consequences of this piece of legislation. (See "Licensing time bomb.") UCITA would give vendors the right to repossess software by
disabling it remotely; make the terms of shrink-wrapped licenses more enforceable; prevent the transfer of licenses from one party to another
without vendor permission; allow vendors to disclaim warranties; and outlaw reverse-engineering."
"It's that last bit -- the criminalization of reverse-engineering -- that has some open-source software advocates in a bit of a panic. They believe
it would be nearly impossible to write things such as hardware drivers for open-source projects if one could not reverse-engineer existing
code with impunity."
