Lister Hill Letter
Newsletter of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at UAB

January/February 2001

UCITA TELECONFERENCE AT UAB

UAB participated in a nationwide satellite teleconference on the Uniform Computer Transactions Act (UCITA) on December 13th, held at the Community Health Services Building Center for Aging Conference Room.  Titled, "UCITA: A Guide to Understanding and Action," the teleconference was sponsored jointly by several library organizations and attempted to generate both light and heat about this legislative initiative to provide uniformity to state commercial laws involving the licensing of software and information.  UCITA began in 1999 as an amendment to the Uniform Commercial Code, but after multiple drafts and significant dissent among its drafters, the name was changed to UCITA and adopted by the National Commissioners of Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) before sending to the state legislatures for consideration.  It has been passed in two states and has been considered in 6 others to date, not yet in Alabama.  Librarians and information technology professionals are particularly concerned about this legislation because of its adverse impact in a number of areas.  These areas include:

Copyright - UCITA represents a shift from the established balance between intellectual property owner and user as defined in the copyright legislation and case law toward contract law.  Since copyright law includes a fair consideration of societal values, such as that of advancing knowledge among the citizens, in addition to economic values, this focus on the economic values inherent in contract law presents a real threat to the ability of higher education and other institutions to disseminate knowledge and information in accordance with their missions.

Operations - UCITA is likely to increase the cost and complexity of doing business, especially in regards to the time and resources devoted to contractual negotiations.  Also, some provisions in UCITA would allow software firms to waive liability for known defects in their software that they neglected to disclose to their customers, while other provisions would prohibit public criticism of software products.

Reverse engineering - IT professionals are concerned about the provisions of UCITA that would allow licensors to prohibit currently permissible uses of reverse engineering for research, teaching, debugging, security testing and other purposes.

The panelists for the teleconference, James Neal (Dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins), Rodney Petersen (Office of Information Technology, University of Maryland),  Sarah Wiant (Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee), and Catherine Wojewodzki (Reference Librarian, University of Delaware Library), expounded on these and other troublesome provisions of the legislation.  They also provided attendees with strategies to modify or oppose UCITA legislation in their own states.

Scott Plutchak, Director of Lister Hill Library, moderated the discussion for about 16 attendees following the teleconference.  Kay Hogan Smith, Lister Hill librarian, coordinated the event.

For more information about UCITA please contact Kay Hogan Smith at 934-2230 or .