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I’m no lawyer. We all know that, but some of you know that I like to talk law now and then (mostly in the attempt to gain more knowledge about it without dropping mega dollars on law school). One of my favorite law topics is intellectual property law. Cem Kaner is a well-known name when it comes to computers and law. He is an attorney, as well as a computer science professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. His name was one of the few big names that opposed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) early on. I’d explain more about what I know about UCITA, but that is a lengthy post I will reserve for another time. Recently, in his blog, Kaner wrote a Software Customer Bill of Rights. It is an interesting read, especially if you happen to have an interest in what happens with laws like UCITA. I will quickly summarize his Bill of Rights below, but you should view his blog to see the details he attaches to each one. Software Customer Bill of Rights

1. Let the customer see the contract before the sale.
2. Disclose known defects.
3. The product (or information service) must live up to the manufacturer’s and seller’s claims.
4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer.
5. A software vendor may not block customer from accessing his own data without court approval.
6. A software vendor may not prematurely terminate a license without court approval.
7. Mass-market customers may criticize products, publish benchmark study results, and make fair use of a product.
8. The user may reverse engineer the software.
9. Mass-market software should be transferrable.
10. When software is embedded in a product, the law governing the product should govern the software.

Now, you might think that you already have these rights. If you did, you would be wrong. The software lobby has tried vigorously to rewrite current laws so that you have as few of these rights as possible. For instance, Microsoft is one of the companies that has taken away your right to publish benchmarks and criticism of their software without prior written consent. Also, just about every clickwrap license tells you you can’t reverse engineer the software for any reason.