Why UCITA is Bad News for Everyone

Dear Editors,

I wish to bring to your attention a threat that has gone almost unnoticed, but promises to create serious problems for members of the public. For over a decade, a national committee has been meeting behind closed doors fashioning a new set of laws covering software transactions. In July of 1999, the group, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), adopted a set of proposals, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA.) Traditionally, state legislatures have tended to put NCCUSL proposals into law with little or no modification. This course of action is decidedly beneficial with regards to portions of the same code not relating to software, the Uniform Commercial Code, as it tends to create a level playing field for business across America. The same cannot be said for UCITA, whose problems are both numerous and potentially grievous. The Act purports to standardize the rights of users and software producers in a fair and equitable manner. However, a quick review of the proposed law will show that those rights are heavily biased towards software producers, even giving them the right to retroactively enforce changes to user agreements that they chose to make. UCITA gives software producers the right to opt in and out of its provisions at will, placing consumers at the whim of companies like Microsoft, in effect codifying the current abysmal situation. Aside from creating a bad taste in the mouths of consumers, I foresee a number of even more deleterious effects if UCITA is adopted by Florida and the rest of America.

Perhaps the greatest risk from UCITA is the possible demise of America as the software powerhouse of the world. While Microsoft's legal problems and the phenomena of open source software have begun the push to the internationalization of the software industry, UCITA would be the straw that broke the camel's back. With less incentive to provide a quality product, the American software industry will become even more lax in its ways, knowing that it only needs to write well worded disclaimers to protect itself. Noted industry analyst Edward Yourdon states in his book, The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, "international competition will put American programmers out of work, just as Japanese competition put American automobile workers out of work in the 1970's." (Yourdon 1) This warning is echoed numerous times by others writing on the negative impact of canonizing the poor business practices of the software industry. Software producers, emboldened by UCITA, will be tempted to cut corners and produce ever worse quality software. The juggernaut known as Microsoft may have less to fear from the justice Department than it should from its own hubris. As the Romans came to know, world dominance is not forever and Microsoft may drag the rest of the American software industry down with it. Certainly UCITA will play a big role as this scenario unfolds.

A significant difficulty that UCITA will generate is the loss of the ability to reverse engineer software products. Reverse engineering is the process whereby a program is examined by programmers to determine what it will output, given a certain set of inputs. Software purchase for the purpose of reverse engineering is not only accepted practice, it is perfectly legal under current U.S. and international law. The justifications for reverse engineering are quite strong. These include interoperability between software vendors as well as hardware platforms, detection of security related problems and correction of software errors. The act would essentially allow software producers "carte blanche" in specifying terms of software "leases," including the provision that software cannot be legally reverse engineered. If software developers were allowed to kill legal reverse engineering of their products, they could go on to develop secret proprietary products that would be essentially non-interoperable and anti-competitive in nature. Not only that, but they could hide behind their so-called user agreements and fail to admit problems with their software. This would in turn have the effect of stifling competition in the software market.

Another important development that would occur if UCITA is adopted would be the impact of increasingly poorer quality software on business users. Over the past few decades, business has become increasingly more dependent on computer software to handle the transactions of business, facilitate the development of new products and perform nearly every critical function. In every way, software has become integral with the running of business worldwide, but especially so in America. So, just as the adoption of UCITA would bode poorly for the software industry, it would prove a grave concern for all of American business as well. As American software became less reliable, business would be forced to search for new solutions, most likely software produced overseas. This would in turn lead to a cycle of downturn in the U.S. software industry until an American made software system would become as common as an American made VCR.

Unfortunately, UCITA would also seriously erode the value of software to the consuming public. As in every competitive market, the greater the number of players, the better the situation will be for consumers. UCITA will destroy the incentive for innovative small companies to enter the software market by providing undue leverage for existing mega-organizations like Microsoft. It is no coincidence that UCITA is most strongly supported by companies like Microsoft, who has the greatest to gain, at least in the short term. Not only will consumers suffer from reduced competition, but more directly from shoddy software, shoddy service and companies who will now feel even more incentive to concentrate on the package rather than what's inside and profits rather than the people they pretend to serve.

Last but not least, UCITA would prove damaging to the profession of the American programmer. In an environment in which the value of good software engineering practice diminishes, excellence will no longer be a desirable quality for programmers in general. Instead, mediocrity will become the norm as software producers seek programmers who are able to produce quick results without regard to long term stability and inner quality in their work. Already, this dynamic is prevalent within the programming community. With UCITA, it can only get worse.

I have outlined a number of strong reasons why UCITA is an incredibly bad piece of legislation and why it needs to be opposed before it becomes law in Florida. While other states struggle with their adoption of the act, Florida can send a clear message to the rest of the country. Stand up for your rights before your state legislature takes them away. Let your state lawmakers know that you oppose this law. Don't let America become a victim of the greed of a few!