Fellow Citizens, You are probably aware of the Year 2000 Problem, in which a simple but widespread software bug is threatening to disrupt computers around the world. You may not be aware that the Congress of the United States is working on laws to deprive you of your right to sue those companies who brought this problem on us and have refused to fix it. I want to tell you what you can do to protect your rights and stop this attempt at shielding irresponsible businesses from cleaning up the messes they made. The problem is a simple one, but far reaching in its effect - it has long been common practice among programmers to represent the year in a date as two digits; thus this year is "99". The problem is that next year will be represented as "00", and may be interpreted by many computers as "1900", or just may make computers cease to function. Dates are used so frequently in computers for business purposes, for operating machinery - including life-critical systems like airplanes and power plants - that it is expected a tremendous number of computer systems will fail. This problem is not a new one. I first learned of it in 1980 when I studied COBOL as a college student; two-year dates were built into the language. Programmers have been warning their managers about the problem for years, but the problem is expensive to fix. Many large databases have fixed-length fields for storing dates, and often the source code to business programs was lost or was unable to be rebuilt. But many executives "got religion" as Y2K approached and business systems began to fail. For example, inventory systems would warn that materials were expired because the expiration date was 00 or 01 - and thus thought that the materials were nearly 100 years old. Now the problem is well known, and many companies are working to fix it. But the problem cannot be completely fixed in time. There will be substantial disruptions and economic loss as a result, and there may even be loss of life when critical systems fail. The companies that fail to fix their systems, and provide the fixes to their customers in time, must be properly punished. The way you do that is to sue them in court. This is likely to be the single biggest issue in lawsuits in history. For that reason, many technology and information systems companies are heavily lobbying the House and Senate to forbid these lawsuits. The US Department of Justice opposes these laws because it will limit the ability of Federal, state and local governments to sue companies that sold them defective products or fail to provide critical services because of defective software. If you lose your savings because a business failed to act responsibility - if you lose your job, or someone close to you dies, don't you want to be able to sue? Please help stop these bills from becoming law. What you can do: -- Visit my Y2K Corporate Responsibility website at There you will find links to the House and Senate web pages that list your congressional representatives. Or find your legislators at: -- Write or call your representatives and ask them to oppose: H.R.775 - Year 2000 Readiness and Responsibility Act S.461 - Year 2000 Fairness and Responsibility Act H.R.192 - Year 2000 Consumer Protection Plan Act of 1999 Tell them also to oppose any new bills that may restrict anyone's right to sue for computer failures as a result of poor quality program. You can email them too, but please understand they're more likely to pay attention to a letter. Take the time to write one! Also please write to the President President Bill Clinton The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20006 -- Forward this letter to other American citizens -- Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers, and call in to Radio talk shows -- add a link to http://www.goingware.com/y2k from your own web pages. -- Support Campaign Finance Reform, so that our government will answer to the will of the people, not the interests of big business. Why am I doing this? I don't expect I'll sue anyone over Y2K. But I am a programmer, and I take a great deal of pride in my work. I know that if a problem is found in software that I write, and that problem could cause someone real trouble, it is my responsibility to fix those problems. While the problem is an old one, it has been largely ignored by the businesses responsible for fixing it until recently. For example, when I was an engineer at Apple Computer in 1994, I raised the issue on an internal discussion forum, asking what Apple was doing to ensure its financial and inventory systems were "Y2K compliant", and also that the banks and brokerages that handled the companies money and the employees retirement accounts were compliant. The only response I got was that "all those Y2K people are a bunch of nuts". Even this year, a friend of mine who programs machine controllers said "all my code has the Year 2000 Bug. I'm not going to be working there next year." Just because a big business was too lazy or shortsighted to correct its faults doesn't mean it should be allowed to escape its responsibility. If you don't defeat this bill, it could be _you_ that is told that you have no recourse by a federal judge. Please act quickly - the Senate bill has already passed out of committee. Yours, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare crawford@goingware.com