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Comment by dangrossman

3 years ago

Yes: the Uniform Commercial Code which is the standard contract that governs virtually all commercial transactions in the United States.

When you buy something at Wal-Mart, your sales contract is the UCC. When you order something online or by phone, and neither of you specify details of things like form of payment, warranties, shipping... those details are filled in by the UCC. And it's called "uniform" because all of the states have individually codified the same default contract into their state laws.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/table_ucc

This uniform contract is also where several warranties arise that people take as a given precisely because the UCC inserts them into every sale that doesn't disclaim them: the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a purpose. Those are your guarantees that when you buy something from someone, the goods will do the thing they're supposed to do and there's nothing significantly wrong with them. It's why you have a right to a refund/return when the thing you bought is broken, or doesn't do what it says it does.

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dangrossman

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walterbell  3 years ago

Thanks for the reminder. UCC recently introduced Article 12 which covers digital assets like CBDC and cryptocurrency via the category of CER (controllable electronic records). Article 12 says that custody/control of a private key plays a prominent role in seniority of claims against digital assets, including scenarios involving the purchase of possibly-stolen digital assets.

https://www.clearygottlieb.com//news-and-insights/publicatio...

> Article 12 – dealing directly with the acquisition and disposition of interests (including security interests) in “controllable electronic records,” which would include Bitcoin, Ether, and a variety of other digital assets. Under Article 12 and associated amendments to Article 9, a party may perfect a security interest in certain controllable electronic records by obtaining “control” of such records. In addition, Article 12 confers an attribute of negotiability on controllable electronic records – a good faith purchaser for value who obtains control (a “qualifying purchaser”) takes its interest free of conflicting property claims.

Danieru  3 years ago

This is also why releasing code without a license is dangerous. Without a license your code defaults to the UGC and thus you become liable for "fit for purpose". Instead even basic open source licenses must disclaim the default clauses if the UGC like warranty and fit for purpose.

  • musicale  3 years ago

    I'm not sure about software that is given away for free, but "fit for purpose" liability certainly sounds like a sensible idea for any software that is sold, whether or not it includes free or open source components.

    This makes even more sense as software becomes a key component of more products.

  • saagarjha  3 years ago

    If you don’t license your code then other people don’t default to getting the rights to use it.

    • labster  3 years ago

      WTFPL has an interesting niche that grants rights to use code for any purpose, but includes no disclaimers.

  • Ekaros  3 years ago

    At this point the whole thing feels perverse. Almost no software guarantees "fit for purpose". It really should be other way around at this point. The license would have to say it establishes warranty if it doesn't there is no such warranty or fit for purpose.

AnthonyMouse  3 years ago

This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.

  • User23  3 years ago

    > This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.

    The schoolhouse rock version of how a bill becomes law is basically pure fiction at this point. Certainly at the federal level I'm not sure a single so-called legislator is competent to draft a bill. Occasionally they will have their staff draft some showboat bill that will likely never even pass committee, but almost all the bills that become law are drafted by some interest group or other, who then hire lobbyists to find a "legislator" willing to rubber stamp it.

    It's surprising that it's not more of a well known fact that the USA isn't even remotely a real popularly representative democracy, given how completely obvious it is to all but the most casual observer. Princeton even published a study on the subject[1].

    [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...