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EULAs More Difficult to Read than Tax Forms
krugdm writes: "Mark Hochhauser has an article over at CNet where he talks about the readability of the legalese used in EULAs and what motivates people to just 'Click to Accept' without reading a word of the agreement. He actually did a readability study where he determined that most EULAs are more difficult to read than a 1040."
Isn't the new wording on the 1040 as follows?
1: How much did you make last year? _____
Instructions: Send amount listed on line 1 to IRS.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
OK, this is going to be said a -lot-, but hasn't this topic popped up before around here? [On another note, does it -really- surprise anyone? After all, there is -far- less motivation for the average software company to make EULAs readable than there is for the IRS to make its tax forms readable]
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Do I get extra points if I link to the Slashdot article that talked about this before?
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
This guy really misses the point. I don't have a problem with this theory if they're writing for other lawyers. But if they're writing for kids online, it makes no sense to have a 3,000-word policy written at a college-reading level.
The reality is, this stuff is written for other lawyers. Why? Because when there is a disagreement, lawyers and judges (higher up lawyers) will be making arguments/decisions pertaining to the confilict.
A EULA that says "Do you promise not to give this game to all your friends?" just won't do.
It's not the lawyers fault as much as it's the fault of, as the interviewer put it, the "litigious culture".
A modern day witchhunt.
Now, if the tax code (the laws themselves) were easier to understand than a standard EULA, then this would be news. :)
Method of processing duck feet
Don't even bother with the EULAs. Get a young person ( < 18 ) to install all your software for you. You don't agree to the EULA, and they can't be legally bound. Everybody wins!
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
The IRS wants you to understand the 1040 and to fill it out correctly. Most companies don't want or don't expect you to read the EULA, and it'll stay like that as long as we let them get away with writing outrageous EULAs which carry the force of law and require all sorts of insane concessions on the part of the user.
Yes. Anything that says "free," people want. But eventually people will realize there's not really such thing as "free" software. It comes with a price--in this case the annoyance of advertising, or possibly privacy violations.
Emphasis mine ...
What's this guys address so I can send him a distro of Linux?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Does clicking "OK" to an EULA actually mean anything legally? I can't see how it can be binding, because there's no record of a signature (not even a digital one). There's no recorded date, or identity of who clicked the mouse.
... and if it's not legally binding, then why should I bother to read it?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Anyhoo, back to the article --- I think the key to EULAs is, as Hochhauser said, trust. Of course no one reads those things. You assume that it's something along the lines of, "Don't install on more than one machine at a time. If something goes wrong, don't expect anything from us." and normally that's what you get.
When Kazaa or other companies violate that trust, word gets around and the market enforces it eventually. People here have to realize that however much they obsess over licenses and privacy, most users including sophisticated users think current practices are perfectly adequate.
What I get a kick out of with these Kazaa/Gator stories is how everyone suddenly forgets to pretend they're full-time Linux users... ;-)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
When is someone going to take these things before a Judge? There is no way that pressing a button, or tearing shrink wrap can hold the same legal standing as a signature before witnesses.
There is absolutely no way to prove who pressed the button is there? So how could this possibly be a legal "agreement?"
Fun for all the family!
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...
Funny you would mention this. I brought this issue to the attention of our legal dept and some of our core IT people who contacted Microsoft, and here's the response we got from the evil empire...
"Yes- Windows XP EULA does not prohibit end users from using third-party remote access applications. We are working on evaluating the Product Use rights to determine if further clarification on this issue is necessary on this issue. Our goal is to enable a customer to conduct a single interactive user session at a time from a remote device, whether the customer chooses to use the Microsoft Remote Desktop, Remote Access and NetMeeting technologies or third party remote access software."
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Should be about as valid as their license...
So they really only want one session at a time? I'm not saying I support this, but it makes more sense than 'MS hates VNC'.
I think what they're trying to do is get people to either buy the 25-license version of Windows XP, or have everybody run XP so they can talk to each other.
"Derp de derp."
I read this article before. They are comparing EULA's to form 1040-EZ.
For anybody who hasn't done US Taxes before, 1040-EZ is written to be SIMPLE. You have to fill out a different form if you want to do anything other than put in how much you earned and get a number back for how much you owe.
I filled out one of these in elementary school as part of a tax class. No offense, but if they are going to write an article saying that EULA's are hard to understand, then they should have picked a tax form that uses words bigger than 2 syllables.
Heck, just make it $50. That'd be small enough not to get it thrown out of court immediately as unreasonable. Then EULAs can really be tested.
Given the increasing globalization of the internet, it just hit me that all the EULAs and privacy policies I've seen are written in English. (Granted, I don't do much surfing on non-English pages.) This seems such an obvious loophole, but what if the EULA were written in a different language?
I'd assume there's a requirement that these agreements must be readable by the user... but some I've seen could as well have been written in a different language.
I wonder how long I'll need to wait for somebody to come out with an agreement written in one of these languages: Hacker, Bork! Bork! Bork!, Elmer Fudd, or Klingon ;^)
There are three separate issues in tax forms. One is that most of the public school teachers teaching math don't really understand it, so most Americans are pretty much innumerate. If your mind freezes up every time you see more than three addition or subtraction operations, there isn't much chance of you understanding any tax form no matter how simple.
Second, if you are numerate, the IRS forms are generally as clear as they can make it while following the laws that a bunch of damned lawyers in Congress wrote. But those laws are generally written to obscure the point rather than to clarify it -- your congressman doesn't want to make it too clear that he designed a particular deduction so that only one corporation in the whole US can use it...
Third, there are a lot of people who do understand the intent of the forms and tax laws, but want to know how much cheating they can get away with. The exact limits of things like legitimate business travel expenses are hard to define, but many people are way over any reasonable line. You know -- fly to Hawaii, have a five minute business discussion, stay a week, deduct it all as business expenses. If your question is, can I get busted for that -- I sure hope so!
I can see how Hochhauser makes his money as a consultant. Someone presents him with a document and he charges $300/hr for calculating this index and that index. He'll put together a nice folder and a printed statement laying out the different scores - all looking very impressive. His report will end with a recommendation that the authors use shorter words and shorter sentences. And he probably has a PR department ensuring that he gets mentioned in articles on CNET, TV and radio.
And that statement about there being no "free software" is a blatant lie too!
-- SIGFPE
To an extent, EULAs will probably always be long and complicated. A EULA has to make sure it closes every loophole since lawyers are trained to exploit contracts. Realizing this, it would be great if EULAs gave a preamble or summary. For example, the preamble of the GPL provides a great summary and explanation in layman's terms.
Speaking of repeating ...
The real problem is that if you install, for instance, Windows and Office, and patch them to current "safe" levels you will be asked to agree to about 20 different EULAs -- all slightly different. You have the original install, the patches (which can not be installed at the same time as any other patch), the upgrade of IE, etc. etc.
Now add in installing all the basic tools; zip, adobe reader, netscape (:-), java ide, etc.
By the time your machine is installed and usable you've "read and agreed" to about 100 different licenses, sometimes dozens from a single company.
Reading and understanding 100 contracts of this nature is a full days job for a trained lawyer! It's an impossible task for the average consumer/programmer.
It's time for clear laws that specify software liabilities (or lack thereof!) and prevent this kind of EULA overload that essentially forces you to either agree to everything or don't use the technology. I think we can all agree that not using the technology is not really a viable option for the bulk of people in today's society.
I mean, presenting 20-40 lengthy paragraphs in tiny little windows, writing half of it in all-caps which is well known to be harder to read. That's not really an effort to inform the prospective user. Touchy stuff is buried deep in that texts, like with the recent spyware that disables adaware. It's in there to cover their asses, but obviously it is expected that these click-through-agreements are ignored. It would be interesting to see some of these "agreements" tested in court.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The IRS has actually spent time and money trying to make the tax code (which is harder to read than the average EULA) easy to follow with the various forms they've created.
The average software shop doesn't care if their EULA is readable, and increasingly more companies like it that way. Providing a simplified explanation is not trivial, and has various legal landmines to navigate.
So any comparison is not very reasonable - they are intended for completely different purposes, and one will necessarily be more difficult to understand than the other.
-Adam
Take a real-world contract I just signed, for next year's housing at my school. Now, the way it works here is that you go into a room and pick the housing you want, then take a card over to a couple people with computers who will print out a contract for you to sign, and hand you a 6-page booklet of terms and conditions. Now, I happen to have looked through that booklet a while ago, so I knew there was a clause (clause X) I don't like:
So, I asked the guy if I could amend the booklet to strike that clause. Of course, I couldn't. So my only alternative would be to not sign the contract and then try and find an apartment in New York for $700/month.What did I gain from reading the contract? Absolutely nothing, just knowing that I'm screwed. I'm screwed whether I know it or not, so why shouldn't I just save my time and not read the contract? It was a nice day---I'd rather be outside than wading through a 6-page booklet of legal mumbo jumbo that I can't change.
"But the reason that I don't read EULAs (or most other things I sign) is that there's no point in wasting my time. I can't negotiate with the company if there's a term in the EULA I don't like. Either I accept the license, or I don't get the product or service they're offering."
Actually a better reason is you either click the button or you can't use the software you just paid for. The fact is you already purchased the right to use the software when you picked it up from Best Buy.
They can't add on additional caveats after you already purchased the software.
So the reason people click "I Agree" is because the EULA doesn't mean jack.. it's non enforcable since it takes place after-the-sale.
The 1040 is a personal income tax form, dumbass. Corporations don't have personal income, they just create personal income for others, like for instance, you.
This being another exception to the concept of corporations as legal "people"... Since otherwise they certainly would have "personal income", even if it were zero or negative.