Comp 317/417: Ethics & Law in Computer Science

Paper 4: Software

Due: Friday, May 4, submitted by email or blackboard

Write on ONE of the two topics below:

Consumer software licenses

What limits, if any, should be placed on consumer software licenses? Click or shrinkwrap licenses are the norm for consumer software. What limits, if any, should be placed on the license terms? One extreme (proposed by UCITA) is that if users don't like the terms then their only option is to reject the software. At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps there would be a completely standardized agreement, and software vendors would not have much choice.

Things to consider are data-collection policies, backup rights, liability for failure, restrictions on how the software is used, restrictions on machines it can be run on, liability for defects, restrictions on resale, restrictions on publishing software flaws or benchmarks, backdoors, and whether the vendor can disable the software remotely.

Regarding the last item above, bear in mind that the "coming thing", at least in some contexts, is likely to be web-delivered applications one can "rent" for a specified term. Some of your licensing rules would apply naturally to this new environment as well, but some (eg prohibitions on remote disabling) could be bypassed by requiring users to download a new "use key" for each rental period in order to allow continued use.

For click-licenses for online services (eg eBay), you might choose to consider what common terms-of-service agreements should be enforceable. For example, should eBay be able to disclaim all liability for purchasing problems? Should myspace be able to avoid liability for underage accounts? For stalkers? For failure to remove defamatory postings? (However, you may stick with traditional software licenses if you prefer.)


Software trust

What responsibility does a software vendor have to produce trustworthy software, in the sense that the software does not do anything against the user's interests? Such negative things might include license termination, automatic file deletion, backdoors, refusal to operate, or collection of personal information.

Digital-rights-management software often faces a conflict here: some of these actions (such as refusal to play unlicensed files) are arguably not in the user's immediate interests, but are perhaps socially appropriate nonetheless, and can sometimes be argued to be in the user's long-term interests.

Note that some "freeware" is supported by complex conflicts of interest; the most benign form is probably embedded advertising.

The Sony music-copy-protection scheme caused computer problems for many users, who installed the software unknowingly. That scheme clearly betrayed user trust.

Microsoft stamps the identity of the creating machine on MS Word documents. This has been used to identify the source of documents in criminal cases, though this apparently was not the original intent.

Richard Stallman has written about (against) the Microsoft Trusted Computing platform, in Can you trust your software; Stallman feels the answer is no (unless you use GNU/Linux). What you are asked to write about here is whether there are circumstances in which the answer might be "yes". You can find none, thus agreeing with Stallman, or perhaps you can identify some rules or expectations or norms that would support such trust.

Certainly even technical users of Microsoft's Palladium OS (not yet released) will have to place a great deal of trust in it; on the other hand, non-technical users of any OS already must trust it. Does Microsoft have an obligation to live up to that trust?

Obviously viruses and the like are not trustworthy or intended to be; focus on software that is offered for sale, or for download.

One thought is that software vendors have no responsiblilities except to abide by the terms of the license agreement; another is that software must act on the user's behalf at all times, as a sort of "fiduciary agent" (except not about money).