0.9 Activism  (Page 6/11)

David Nimmer argued that the sellers of other kinds of intellectual products would likely follow the lead of the software companies. He predicted that American consumers would soon be able to buy poetry, art, novels, and feature films only from online retail content stores that used click-wrap licenses to disclaim all potential warranties.

Mcmanis amendment

In May of 1997, Professor Charles McManis offered a  motion  at a Drafting Committee meeting to amend the initial drafts of the proposed Article 2B -- the draft provision that would have made the licenses enforceable. The McManis Amendment addressed the preemption issue head on, by prohibiting any mass-market software license that limited the rights provided by the federal copyright statute. It was adopted by a slim majority.

The McManis Amendment was fiercely criticized by software companies. Their objections were aired at an important academic conference held at the University of California at Berkeley.

Uc berkeley ucc 2b conference/california law review symposia

The University of California at Berkeley's Center for Law and Technology hosted a conference in April 1998 to explore the implications and merits of proposed Article 2B. The conference was cosponsored by the ALI and brought together practitioners and law professors with differing views.

A diverse array of arguments were presented. The keynote speaker was Raymond Nimmer, the Reporter to the Drafting Committee, who articulated opposition to the McManis Amendment because he believed Article 2B was already "neutral" in its effects on federal copyright law. Many participants, however, disagreed. By the end, the dominant view seemed to be that (a) "click wrap" licenses did not give consumers the opportunity meaningfully to assent to or reject the terms of non-negotiable mass licenses and (b) the scope of federal preemption was sufficiently uncertain that federal courts would likely disagree, generating an undesirable patchwork of inconsistent laws across the country.

Effects of the conference/symposia

A series of academic papers by the conference attendees was published in 1999 in a California Law Review symposium volume dedicated to Article 2B. By that time, however, the ALI and the NCCUSL were sufficiently persuaded that Article 2B's interference with federal copyright law was a fatal flaw that they backed away from the proposed revision. The NCCUSL issued a declaration that any final version of Article 2B should contain a provision that allows courts to invalidate mass market software licenses that were "unconscionable," and the ALI deferred approval of the Article pending further consideration of its relationship to federal copyright law. Finally, in April 1999, the ALI-NCCUSL announced in a  press release  that the two groups would not issue Article 2B.

The NNCUSL later published its own recommendations to validate click-wrap licenses under a model law with a separate title: The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). However, only two of fifty state legislatures adopted the measure, and several states adopted provisions that sought to shield their own residents from its impact.