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anti-UCITA group - AFFECT



Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions (AFFECT)
http://www.affect.ucita.com/
"a broad-based national coalition of industry leaders, libraries and consumer organizations dedicated
to educating the public and policy makers about the dangers of UCITA, the Uniform Computer Information
Transactions Act"

UCITA has some serious implications for the management and preservation of digital materials.  I would
encourage anyone, particularly if there is currently legislative action on UCITA in your state, to
find out more about it and consider expressing your concerns with it to the appropriate entities.
Virginia and Maryland have already passed UCITA, by the way.

Some of the big concerns relate to practices such as interlibrary loan, ongoing access to electronic
publications such as journals and difficulties with preserving obsolete formats dues to the UCITA
provisions against reverse engineering.  There are numerous groups opposing UCITA, including library
associations such as:
- American Association of Law Libraries
- American Library Association
- Association of Research Libraries
- Medical Library Association
- Special Libraries Association

If you're interested in reading more about UCITA, you may want to check out:

- UCITA: Summary information (InfoWorld)
http://archive.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/features/990531ucita_home.htm
"to provide some background and resources for those who want to understand UCITA better and for those
who want to find a way to have their voice heard"

- UCITA Fact Sheet: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
http://www.cpsr.org/program/UCITA/ucita-fact.html

- Bad Software: A Consumer Protection Guide
http://www.badsoftware.com/

- Why We Must Fight UCITA, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ucita.html
Emphasizes the importance of individual developers and reverse engineering (a particular concern for
preservation).

- Text of UCITA itself
http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/citam99.htm

=========================================================
 Cal Lee
 University of Michigan
 School of Information
 Phone: 734-647-0505
 http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~calz/
 "How can I know what I think because I forgot what I said?"
                                         - Karl Weick, 1979

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