Kaner does a far better job than I of outlining the myriad issues involved here, so let me just add a few points to keep in mind when you read his piece. Note how many of the rights he's asking for -- that we should be able to criticize products, access our own data, transfer our rights in a product to someone else, expect manufacturers to tell us about known defects and to live up to their advertising, etc. - are probably protections you thought you already enjoyed. Indeed, ten years ago you surely did. Now, at least in cases involving software, there's a good chance a court would say you don't. And there are ominous signs that the sneakwrapping away of our rights is spreading to online transactions and the purchase of goods with an "embedded software" component. Ultimately, that doesn't leave much of anything out.

Of course, as my readers ought to know, you don't have to wind up in a courtroom to suffer from the increased likelihood that a court will enforce a sneakwrap license. Think of just a few of the real-world examples we've seen: Cisco and other manufacturers saying you have to pay to re-license software when you buy their used equipment from someone else, Microsoft and BEA preventing end users from publishing benchmark results of their products, privacy policies from Ticketmaster and others that leave you with no control of who gets your personal information, product activation and digital rights/restrictions management schemes that can keep you from using a product that you legitimately purchased, etc. Are our rights slipping away, or are they already gone?

By the way, there's good reason to take what Kaner has to say seriously. While a number of people deserve some credit for the fact that UCITA has been limited to two states, Kaner is the one who really started the fight. Before anyone else understood all that was at stake, he was generally the lone voice raised in opposition to what the UCITA drafting committee was doing. I am certain an even nastier version would now be the law in most states without all his work (done on his own dime, I might add) against its worst aspects.

As with UCITA, though, the customer side was inevitably overmatched in these court cases by the software industry's ability to lobby the process. "In my opinion, these decisions are the result of the efforts of a well funded and well prepared group of lawyers advocating for publisher rights, combined with a lack of coordination and support by the plaintiffs' bar," says Kaner. "We see cases in which critical decisions were shaped by well written, persuasive amicus briefs coming from publishers' advocates, with no responsive briefs coming from customer advocates."

As UCITA's proponents have always been fond of mischaracterizing the arguments of opponents, I think it's important to understand what Kaner is NOT saying in his Bill of Rights. A long-time veteran of the software industry himself (going back to the WordStar days at MicroPro), Kaner is not saying that software publishers can or should be held legally responsible for every bug. He is not saying that all terms in all license agreements should be unenforceable.

What Kaner is saying is that we as customers, of all types of products and services, need to have a few fundamental rights that can't be dismissed because of the fine print in an unread sneakwrap license. And he's provided what at the very least is an excellent start at defining what those rights are.

But what can we do with Kaner's proposals? After all, at a time when so many of our elected representatives advocate giving favored industries even more incredible powers to control our use of the products we buy, the judges who rendered these decisions over the last ten years could say they simply spotted the politically-correct trend early on.

But Kaner's been a lone voice crying in the wilderness before. Albeit belatedly, the voice of customers finally made itself heard on UCITA. I believe that, inevitably, our voice will be heard on the need for legislators and jurists to restore the rights of which sneakwrap law has deprived us. It's just a matter of enough of us realizing what's at stake.

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