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? At one extreme, if users don't like the terms their only option might be to reject the software. At the other extreme, perhaps there should be a strict menu of what terms can be set, and software vendors must simply present a list of terms from this menu.

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

Bear in mind that the "coming thing" 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.


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 (such as refusal to play unlicensed files) are arguably actions not in the user's immediate interests, but are perhaps socially appropriate nonetheless.

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

Some early copy-protection schemes deleted user files if the software decided a licensed version wasn't running. Sometimes the mechanism falsely identified legitimate copies as fakes.

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

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).