Legal Issues

Question 1
There has been a concerted effort from the government in its strive to achieve equitable consumer protection through institution of rules and bodies to look after the concerns of both manufacturers and consumers in the information sector. There has been an effort by the government to promote favourable trade practises between different states in this country. First, the Commerce Clause gives the congress power in business regulation across states. Such power extends its mandate to communication through media and other major forms. This has had a lot of effect on the ability of government to control transactions in other sectors tat are dependent on communication. On April 1933, a presidential order was issued by Roosevelt forbidding the hoarding of gold coin and gold coin certificated.

This was followed by a passing of legislation by the senate suspending the gold standard which existed in the constitution. Through this Act, the gold system was replaced by the monetary system. This brought about the introduction of the Dollar Bill which was more acceptable in most of the states as means of exchange for goods and services between different states. By 1950s, similar efforts were applied in order to govern and bring uniformity over a wide range of transactions in trade borrowing, contracts involving members of one state or the other (Marsden, 2000). This was done by institution of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).  In the field of information, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) has drafted a law known as the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA) that is aimed at guiding transactions relating to software and related forms of computer information.

Question 2
By design, the Article 2 intended to facilitate the sale of tangible and movable goods at the time of identification to the contract for sale now and in future. On the other hand, the UCCITA intended to facilitate the licensing of the computer related information and property. In addition, intends to give the buyer of such material power over the normal intellectual property requirements (Lessig, 2005).

Question 3
By definition, selling refers to the act of passing the right of possession from one party (the seller) to the other (the buyer) in a transaction based on an agreement to pay for the exchange in form of a price which is commonly known as the offer price. On the other hand, licensing involves a legal agreement between two parties which grants one party authorization to implement a given right over a given item. In this sense, by selling, one passes the absolute rights of possession and use of a product to the buyer, where else in licensing one only allows the second party to use a product for a given charge and a certain period of time but does not lose the possession of the good to the user.

Question 4
After some period of existence, UCC was faced by criticism over its failure to meet the consumer concerns. These concerns were based on the controversy over the imbalance in the Article 2 especially its lack of fairness in the treatment to software users in the field relating to computer transactions. Measures to formulate changes in the Article 2 of the UCC were put into place. The Amendments made on the Article 2B of the UCC became the foundations of the UCCITA. However, it was faced by criticism of interfering with the copyright laws as contained in the copyright act. A closer scrutiny of the law found UCCITA liable to contravening sections of the constitution (Thierer, Crews, 2002). In respect to this, the drafters saw the necessity of proposing this Act in a separate form from the Uniform Commercial Code. Concisely, UCCITA intended to create a greater focus on the treatment of consumer rights.