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May I Have Your EULA Please?
LionsFate asks: "Just like the subject says. I want End User Licence Agreements (EULAs). I'm starting a database of as many EULAs as I can get. I want to know the first EULA that said we can't reverse engineer their software. I want to know the first that said they can watch our activities. I want to know how the NES agreement differs from the GameCube. Did Nintendo lighten, or tighten restrictions? I'm looking to generate a time-line of EULAs and how they have changed. What permissions we have been given, and taken away over that period. What rights did we have in Windows 3.1, compared to Windows XP? How has the MPAA and RIAA changed our 'legal rights' on software as a result of their effort? Watched Napster or other P2P software and seen the changes in their EULAs? I'm starting my EULA database at here and I need as many EULAs as I can get to populate the database. If you can, please email me any/all that you can. I'm hoping within a few weeks to have the site online." Ask Slashdot last tackled the topic of EULAs in this piece. It would be interesting to grab a nice sample of EULAs across the last 2 decades to see what has changed, if anything.
Don't a lot of EULA's have prohibitions against reprinting them in full in settings other than their original form?
Are you a bit worried about the legal ramifications of such a database?
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I have a Pants End User License Agreement. It says you, taco can get in them any time you like.
"...You agree not to post this EULA in a EULA database..."
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The eu has just put up a huge (70,000 pages)
site about europian rights
here's the link relating to unfair contracts in the uk
basicly it says you can ignore any shit or non plain language in the contracts, anything thats in contrntion lends to the side of the consumer.
all good stuff
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Read your EULAs first. I've seen some (though I don't remember where) that forbid the publishing of the EULA.
C.M.Burns
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
"Can I have your EULA?"
Sure! Here it is:
By agreeing to this End User License Agreement (EULA), you hereby agree not to agree to it.
Hrm.
All Your EULA are belong to us.
EULAs maybe copyrighted material after all.
Shouldn't there be a database of this already, I mean that there is a big need for this just make sure that it is used for information and not illegal uses and it should be fine. It is just a historical research is it not?
in a few months, EULA's will contain a provision that prohibits the posting of EULAs!
I hate to even think about the potential C&D that would come from unauthorized distrobution of EULAs. Would the responsible (or should that be reprehensible) parties be so embarassed by these documents they would pursue people who share them with others? How about publishing them on a website?
If you really have time, you might want to try to make an English translation of the EULAs so you're not breaking the copyright on them.
B1g upz! Myth 0wnz!
I'll have to see if I can dig it up.. It was more of a non-warranty statement, and was from an actual company. It basically gave you the right to do whatever you wanted with the software but copy it and re-sell it, but gave no warranties whatsoever. A computer science teacher (68K assembly language class) gave us copies of this..
This is illegal. A EULA is covered under copyright. And stealing IP from lawyers is just asking for trouble.
One point to watch for would be the first EULA that prohibits publishing performance benchmarks. This is now fairly common for high-end software, and is one of the more evil provisions out there.
Provided you live somewhere civilised, of course, like Europe for example.
Sumbitted the following:
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Dungeon Siege
Mechwarrior4
Quicktime6 for Windows
SimCoaster
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Careful with this project. While it sounds useful, bear in mind that some EULA's may effectively make themselves undistributable to those who don't acquire them by purchasing the product with which they deal.
Also, this may qualify as "aggregation of information with the purpose or potential to circumvent copyright devices," rendering the entire project illegal under the damned DMCA.
IANAL, of course, but can any lawyers out there comment on this?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
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No text.
What a fucking waste of time..
1)By accepting the existence of the internet on your computer, you may not publish any information concerning the contents of EULAs.
Regards,
Your Corporate Masters
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Has anybody counted up how many pages of EULAs you are obligated to read in order to install Windows XP with full updates? I think I'll put a running total on my webpage.
$ cd eulas/ . ../
$ ls -1 | wc -l
412
$ du -h
513M
$ cd
$ tar -czf eulas.tar.gz eulas/
$ ls -lh eulas.tar.gz
2MB eulas.tar.gz
A few of them state you cannot disclose the contents of the EULA, but i suppose if you didnt agree to it in the first place, that doesnt apply?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- One thing that i've been wishing someone would implement for years is a database of which applications either "phone home" over the internet or save 'identifying information' in files created by the application; and in both cases exactly what data is transmitted, when, or why.
This could be as simple as an everything-style message board where phone-home reports start out as "this program is doing some wierd network traffic to someplace and i don't know why"; move on to people either confirming or disproving the original poster's claim; and end with either a reverse-engineered explanation of what the data being sent is, or someone contacting the company and extracting an explanation.I keep hearing about people running ZoneAlarm and discovering that certain programs are trying without prompting to connect with reg servers every 30 minutes. I heard about Diablo 2 sending big hunks of your registry to Blizzard if you mistype the CD key. I have heard on slashdot that WinXP, when being booted up for the first time, without telling you, even before having network settings set up, tries to find a way to contact an NTP server within Microsoft; I don't know if this is true. If i used windows i would not mind if MS had each new install of WinXP send a couple "hi, over here" packets to MS, but i would definitely want to know about it, and definitely be bothered that my only way of finding out about these things was through rumors and hearsay. At the least, it bothers me i don't know what programs on my computer (say, Photoshop) are behaving in this fashion. Some kind of central authority on the subject would rock.
-- Super ugly ultraman.
ALL current EULA's include this. Usually all in uppercase stating that there is no warranty that the software will work or be of any use to you whatsoever.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
But seriously.... I hope the database has a line for entering the date and the exact product. EULAs change over time, even for the same product, and it'd be interesting to discover changes.
Oh, wait a minute. End User License Agreement... and you're collecting them?
:)
You really need a girlfriend, man!
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My first "machine language monitor" for my vic-20 circa 1982 had a no reverse engeering warning. I believe the cart was called hesmon by human engineered software.
:)
So the first 6502 assembly program I wrote was to copy the rom contents into ram. Then I disassembled it
What about EULAs, that state that you can't reveal existance and/or clauses that exist with EULA?
=)
Many of the comments refer to EULA's prohibiting you from copying them. As you can clearly read the EULA without agreeing to it, the EULA itself cannot encumber you with respect to this. Copyright law would be the controlling issue, and I suspect Fair Use would allow you to keep track a DB of them for Consumer Protection reasons. Hey, look at Consumer Reports and how they reprint a number of product-related literature for similar reasons.
I've got the same agreement on everything I use!! The GPL is certainly my favorite. Anybody know the quote from an old singer who said he just wanted to write but anybody can sing it anyway they like? Amen to freedom.
It wasn't the fact that it didn't warrant the software, it was the way it did it. It read like a stand-up comic routine.
In short, for a hobbiest programmer who doesn't want to release his code under an "open" licence, what can they do if EULA's cannot be legally enforced? If this means, that they're going to be held liable if the program breaks then you're getting to the point when you could get in legal hot water.
Secondly, I hate sounding dense but can someone give me a PROPER description of the legality of these EULA's with both purchased products and downloaded items. I've heard so much stuff at the moment about whether or not EULA's are legally enforcable (with different rulings in different countries) that I'm not sure what the hell is going on.
If you have to start your post with IANAL (or similar) then please don't bother replying! It would be nice to have some solid facts instead of comment or guesswork!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
There should be a checklist of rights taken away by a EULA, and then have a client that will check software you're installing. So before you do your shopping, you can check the database with certain checkboxes, and choose from the list of returns. Or maybe do it on a point system (like SpamAssassin for EULAs). If a large enough userbase was formed that sales hurt enough by having an overly restrictive EULA, then it might be able to persuade some companies to change their EULA to something more reasonable. You might even be able to get past any copyright issues about publishing the EULA if you don't publish the text of it, just the checklist.
you had a rating system and a flexible reporting module, such that, for example, one could track the restriction level of Microsoft OS licences across the years or distribution channels, and such...
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Where did they all come from?
I'm suprised no one believes in fair use. I think this is a great albeit extremely boring (to read) idea. I assume you want this for education or non-infringing use. You may have trouble if you take it commercial (ie see a real lawyer). You will be threatened a lot, but if you have the guts, connections, time, and money please go for it. Hell if it gets big enough you can liscence it to West or Lexis.
Has anyone heard of form books? Check out your lease/mortgage/NDA it probably came from one. If you can't say something intelligent keep your fool mouth shut.
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You don't need to read all the EULA's either. Just write a script(PERL comes to mind) that sifts through all the EULA's for text phrases, and dump the results into an appropriate format. Then the results can be put into graphs and the like for easy comparison.
This is an awsome idea. And would make pretty good ammo for first ammendment arguments against EULA's, and how they take away user/citizen freedoms.
P3P told me (email) that they had been working on a standard way to represent the rights that a program is granted when you download and run it... a computer readable EULA just concerned with privacy.
If the EULAs are copyrighted, I don't think it would be too hard to start a database of EULA "elements", specific items within EULAs. (We have the right to install brilliant on your soon-to-be-borg system, etc.) Then all you would have in the database is the list of "elements" that a EULA contained.
Besides, you'd want to do this anyhow, to track when various elements first appeared! True, the building of the EULA elements would be pretty stepp at first, but I'm guessing that after parsing out 10 EULAs, you'd have grabbed and identified most of the common points anyhow. Then you could do fun things like "Elements 5.x, 6.x are standard across all Microsoft Office products after 2001..."
IMHO: You'd want to build it in a parsed format anyhow, regardless of copyright concerns, or it won't be any fun.
All OS softwares should license as easy as this:
You can do whatever you want with this software, including making money and making yourself filthy rich. However, if you modify and improve this software, you must make your modification available to anyone who requests it, including the source code of your modification, and without imposing any extra conditions.
And if you are caught distributing this software, you'll receive a pad on the back for doing the good job.
Ah well, just a simpler version of this
Essentially, Texas (and many other states) passed a building code "by reference." What this means is that they wrote a law saying, "Construction Company Consortium Foo has published a building code called Bar. It is now the law. Ask them for a copy." Builders are now requiored to follow a law they are not legally allowed to view, except by buying it from the industry association that wrote it.
Nope, no sig
I'm pretty sure I once clicked through a EULA where I promised my first born son and regular virgin sacrifices...
The legality of certain portions of the eula are dubious at best. Not to mention that once something like this finally went to court, this sort of compilation of EULAs would be part of the discovery process!
You gotta love lawyers. Especially when one of 'em is your wife.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
http://www.osdn.com/terms.shtml
I wonder what stipulations all those French and Spanish paragraphs at the end are making? I wonder what I'm agreeing to?
Knock knock knock "Policia! Abierto de puerta! Ungdulay!(sp)"Hold on a sec' There is someone at the door. brb.
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Lawyers should consider the use of a seperate EULA, covering the EULA. Formally and informally it should be known as the EULA-EULA.
Any reference to the EULA-EULA provision which is self-covering should be called the EULA-LOOP in honour of the Hula Hoop.
Tell ya what: gimme an account on yer FTP server and I'll upload them to you - you can do the work :)
ps: How many gigs ya got free?
db
Cig:
ôô
Someone out there wants to market a random EULA generator and they're using /. to make up the data!
Seriously, an EULA DB sounds like an excellent idea, but I have an implementation question. Have you considered marking them up in XML (a huge task, I'm sure) so that they can be searched for certain provisions? Reasoning here being that without good internal markup, you pretty much need to read through the whole EULA to compare it to another. Being able to search through the archive for different examples of specific clauses, specific allowances or provisions would be much more useful than simple searches for IE v.4 vs v.5
Good luck though, this is an excellent idea, and I like the idea of seeing included in a software reviews lines like: "...and the EULA scores a 3.4 of 5 on the standardized EULA Draconian scale..."
What is this? A competition to build the most boring database in the world?
hehe
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
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We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
- a)
You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
- b)
You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
- c)
If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
- a)
Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
- b)
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
- c)
Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Most tech journalists fail to understand this -- evidenced by the ever-popular "New EULA Disclaims Implied Warranty of Merchantability!" articles.
Most EULAs do not contain new, inventive or clever language. After all, they're essentially standard form contracts -- otherwise known as boilerplate -- meaning that one choice of forum/ anti-reverse engineering clause looks pretty much like another.
I spent around a year (while at the Consumer Project on Technology) sifting through EULAs and contract related law, such as UCITA. Occaisionally, I would find an odd clause that appeared particularly draconian. I archived a few of those here.
The EULA clauses I found most fascinating were the ones that: 1. purported to limit benchmarks/criticism of a software title (McAfee), 2. Specified favorable choice of law/forum jurisdictions, 3. attempted to squelch parodies of a software publisher's title (Microsoft).
(yeah, I was the guy that submitted the previous, EULA harvesting Slashdot article). If you want any help dealing w/ EULAs, drop me a line.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
I think it is pretty enforcable, they are copyrighten, hence they just send you the typical piracy letter (piracy of their copyrighten text).
Many cannot be. Not because of terms or copyright, but that the EULA usually is not installed with the software and thus is not retrievable without reinstallation. How many programs have you downloaded, installed, and thrown away the installer?
Some companies are extremely protective of their EULAs, even outside of computer licensing. For example, Alltel (though maybe then they were Aliant) would not permit me to retain a copy of the EULA for ADSL service to which I had to agree. Not even a photocopy post-signature.
ICQ ® End User License Agreement
ICQ ® version 2002a:
January 1, 2002
********
IMPORTANT NOTICE
ICQ 2002a supports hosting your Contact List on the ICQ servers. If you are upgrading from an ICQ version earlier than ICQ 2001b, ICQ will automatically upload and save your Contact List to the ICQ servers. This feature enables you to access your Contact List from any computer or wireless device which supports such an option.
Please note that the ICQ service is not for use by children under 13 years of age. If it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.
Also please note that the ICQ service and software, as with most Internet applications, is vulnerable to various security issues and hence should be considered unsecured. By using the ICQ service and software and the Internet in general, you may be subject to various risks, including among others:
* Exposure to objectionable material and/or parties, including without limitation, contaminated files.
* Unauthorized invasion of your privacy during, or as a result of, your use or another's use of the system.
* Spoofing, eavesdropping, sniffing, spamming, breaking passwords, harassment, fraud, forgery, "imposturing", electronic trespassing, tampering, hacking, nuking, system contamination including without limitation use of viruses, worms and Trojan horses causing unauthorized, damaging or harmful access and/or retrieval of information and data on your computer and other forms of activity that may even be considered unlawful.
* Unauthorized exposure of information and material you listed or sent, on or through the ICQ system to other users, the general public or any other specific entities for which the information and material was not intended by you.
If you do not wish to be subjected to these risks, you are advised not to use the ICQ service and software. Furthermore, please do not use the ICQ service and software for "Mission Critical" or "Content Sensitive" applications and purposes. For the purpose of this section "Mission Critical" applications and purposes shall mean applications and use that may result in damage; "Content Sensitive" shall mean any information or data you do not wish to be freely accessible and generally available to Internet users.
Please note that in each and every Internet application, the IP address of the sender is an integral part of the TCP/IP standard protocol of the Internet, and can be extracted by any party to the communication session using certain software and/or hardware. Also note that the IP privacy feature, designed to allow an ICQ user to reduce the exposure of his/her IP address on ICQ, is provided to you as a convenience only and does not guarantee a complete non-exposure of your IP address.
For the ICQ software's terms of service please review the following License Agreement, the ICQ Privacy Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy, Usage Notices, Tools Notices and any other terms of service document available on or through http://www.icq.com/legal/. Always check for the latest terms of service available on or through http://www.icq.com/legal/.
European Union ICQ users understand and consent to the processing of personal information in the United States.
******************
This software is being licensed to you by ICQ Inc. in A TIME LIMITED FREE BETA VERSION ONLY ("Software") and is provided on an "AS IS" basis, for your private personal use only. Please note that the ICQ Services and Information, as defined below, are NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE. If it comes to ICQ Inc.'s attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ Inc. will cancel that user's account.
This agreement and the ICQ terms of service documents available on or through http://www.icq.com/legal/, including the ICQ Privacy Policy, the ICQ Acceptable Use Policy, the ICQ Usage Notices and any other applicable terms of service document available therein (together with this agreement referred to herein as "ICQ Terms of Service") shall apply to any use of any version of this Software and the ICQ Services and Information, as defined below. It is clarified that the applicable ICQ Terms of Service documents shall also apply to any use of any application, software or program created or made available by ICQ Inc. and to any use or distribution of any plugin for ICQ and any software application that relies on, is supported by, influences the functionality and user experience of, or utilizes, to any extent, directly or indirectly, for its operation, the ICQ Software, the ICQ network, system, Web site, servers, various directories and listings, various message and news boards, tools, information and databases or any part thereof (together with applications created or made available by ICQ Inc. referred to herein as "ICQ Applications"). In case of contradiction between a provision of the terms of use document dedicated solely to such ICQ Applications and any provision in this agreement or in any of the ICQ Terms of Service documents available on or through http://www.icq.com/legal/, the provision of the specific term of use document shall prevail, unless the provision in this agreement or in any of the ICQ Terms of Service documents reflects narrower responsibility on behalf of ICQ Inc. than the appropriate provision in the specific term of use document. Any reference made in this agreement to ICQ Inc. shall be deemed to have been made to ICQ Inc., its subsidiaries, successors, assignees, affiliates as well as any company that controls ICQ Inc., directly or indirectly, and any other subsidiary of that controlling company.
You agree not to (1) extract information from the ICQ Services and Information as defined below, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the ICQ software, the ICQ communications protocol or any information available on, derived or extracted from the ICQ Services and Information as defined below, or any part thereof; (2) connect, use, attempt to connect or use in any way the ICQ Services and Information, as defined below, for any commercial purpose and any other purpose that is not for your private personal use in good faith and as explicitly offered on the ICQ Web site. Additionally, you may not use this Software on more than one computer.
By accepting the terms of this license agreement you agree that ICQ Inc. is permitted to limit, deny, create different priorities to different users, update or cancel some or all of the functionality of this Software at any time, without prior notice. As part of this Software, ICQ Inc. is granting you limited access to the ICQ network, system, Web site, servers, ICQ Applications, various directories and listings, various message and news boards, tools, , information and databases, Commercial Activities related thereto or any part thereof (together with the ICQ software or any part thereof collectively referred to herein as the "ICQ Services and Information").The ICQ Services and Information or any part thereof, may also be accessible by other software applications and may be published on the ICQ Web site, its servers, including various ICQ directories and listings. ICQ Inc. makes no warranties or guarantees as to the availability or reliability of the ICQ Services and Information to you or to any other user. The Software, the ICQ Services and Information functionality or any part thereof including without limitation, the access to the ICQ Services and Information granted to you or to any other user and/or the availability and functionality of any ICQ feature and function, including without limitation ICQ Applications developed by ICQ Inc. or by third parties, may be changed, updated, limited or terminated at any time, temporarily or permanently, without prior notice, for any reason or no reason by ICQ Inc. in its sole discretion ("Changes of Functionality"). ICQ Inc. may elect to, but is not obligated to, introduce or grant different grades of service and listings policies, different levels of access or no access at all and different priorities to different users or to different functions, or to users of different versions of the Software and the ICQ Services and Information, or introduce new features in this or in future versions of the Software and the ICQ Services and Information that may cause functionality change, limitation or termination of the functionality of features in earlier versions still in use, including functionality changes in privacy and security features ("Grant of Different Services"), at any time without prior notice, at its sole discretion. You agree to bear the risks of and hold ICQ Inc. harmless for any and all effects that the Changes of Functionality and Grant of Different Services may have on your ability to use the Software and the ICQ Services and Information, in whole or in part, for communicating with third parties or their ability to communicate with you. ICQ Inc. may elect in its sole discretion to condition the continuation of access to the ICQ Services and Information, on your accepting software improvements, corrections, adaptations, conversions to more recent Software versions or any other changes to the ICQ Software, the ICQ Services and Information, the ICQ numbers or to a revised or new ICQ Terms of Service. ICQ Inc. may at any time cancel, change, hold, de-list, introduce different options and features to different users or refrain from publishing ICQ numbers or any other details of the users listed on the various ICQ directories and listings.
By using the Software, the ICQ Services and Information or any part thereof, you agree to and acknowledge the following: 1) The details you elected to post on the various ICQ directories, during the registration procedure or thereafter, including during use of the ICQ Services and Information, are generally available and freely accessible to Internet users and the public, unless explicitly stated otherwise; Any later addition to such details or any amendment thereto may not be immediately visible to all users (e.g. users who already have your account on their contact list will be required to press "Retrieve" in order to view the new or revised details or information you have entered); 2) Unless explicitly stated otherwise the information entered or posted, through the Software, through the Web or through the ICQ Services and Information, including without limitation, on the ICQ White Pages and other directories, during registration or thereafter, on the various ICQ message and news boards, the ICQ ActiveLists, as well as status indication and other user's parameters that can be found using the Software or the Web ("Public Information"), may be available to the public. Public Information shall not include information meant to be sent through the ICQ network to a specific ICQ User's Software, unless subsequently provided to ICQ Inc.; 3) Settings, technical and other information from your computer, such as your operating system, ICQ and browser versions, connectivity, various communication parameters and other information related to the operation and interaction of the ICQ Software and any other ICQ Application ("Parameters") may be collected by ICQ, Inc., subject to the provisions herein. Parameters are collected solely in order to provide you with, or access to, the ICQ Services and Information, subject to the provisions herein. 4) ICQ Inc. gathers information and usage patterns (including without limitation by using "cookies") related to your use of the Software, and the ICQ Services and Information ("Usage Patterns") - to better understand how our users, as a group, use the ICQ Services and Information and the various features thereof, as well as to help us fit offerings to you as an individual and to conduct market research; 5) Various data may be used for commercial purposes, including without limitation, for advertising, targeted advertising, marketing, co-registration to other services, promotional or any other activity ("Commercial Activities"), subject to the provisions herein; 6) ICQ Inc. may use, for Commercial Activities: (a) the Parameters, Public Information and Usage Patterns or any part thereof, combined or separately (the "Data"); (b) the Data or any part thereof, combined with publicly available information, or information provided by third parties; provided that if any information other than Public Information is being used by ICQ Inc. or disclosed to third parties for use by them in Commercial Activities, it will be done without user names, or if names are part of the disclosed information, (i) you have consented to such disclosing of your name or (ii) in the first time you are approached by ICQ Inc. or the third parties, you will be given the opportunity to request not to be further approached by them; 7) Notwithstanding anything herein, ICQ Inc. may offer you access to different services that are provided by a third party ("Partner") separately or together with ICQ Inc. ("Co-Branded Service"). Any information you choose to provide on any Co-Branded Service's Page or any other information derived from your usage of the Partner's services, may be used or disclosed by both ICQ Inc. and the Partner subject to their respective privacy policies. A Co-Branded Service Page is a page or form, which bears both ICQ and Partner's names, branding, graphics or anything else that may indicate that the page or the Co-Branded Service are offered by ICQ Inc. and provided by the Partner, separately or together with ICQ Inc.. Please make sure to read both Partner's and ICQ's privacy policies before entering or providing information to a Co-Branded Service Page. 8) You shall not use or rely on the ICQ Software, the various ICQ directories and listings, ICQ Web site, the ICQ Services and Information or any other program, information or service whatsoever related thereto for "Mission Critical" or "Content Sensitive" applications and use. For the purpose of this agreement "Mission Critical" applications and use shall mean applications and use that may result in damage; "Content Sensitive" shall mean any information or data you do not wish to be freely accessible and generally available to Internet users.
Unless produced by ICQ Inc., the information you access or receive by using the ICQ Software, the ICQ Services and Information, the various ICQ directories and listings, or information sent to you by other users, is provided, by the users, and entered or posted by them, and is not reviewed, controlled, examined, verified or endorsed by ICQ Inc. in any way. By using the ICQ Software, and the ICQ Services and Information you agree to 1) Determine whether the information complies with your needs; 2) Ensure that you have adequate legal rights to store, reproduce or otherwise make use of information in the manner used by you; 3) Comply with any legal obligations, including but not limited to, obligations imposed by copyright, trade secrets, defamation, decency, privacy, security and export laws and any other applicable laws.
ICQ Inc. is not responsible for any information, including without limitation, online and offline messages and other forms of interpersonal communications available on or through the ICQ Services and Information, users' personal data, user posted Web site material, users' ICQ White Pages postings, submitted on or through the Software and the ICQ Services and Information or residing on the ICQ servers. ICQ Inc. may erase, remove, delete, delay, jam or alter such information without prior notice, for functional or any other reason.
The ICQ Services and Information contain features that may link you or provide you with certain reference and functionality to third parties' Web sites, directories, servers, networks, systems, information and databases, applications, software, programs, products or services ("Services"). These features are provided by ICQ Inc. only as a convenience. The Services are not reviewed, controlled or examined by ICQ Inc. in any way and ICQ Inc. is not responsible for the content of any such Services, or any link contained therein. The offering of these features does not imply endorsement of the Services by ICQ Inc. You are solely responsible for complying with the appropriate terms of services of these Services you chose to access using these features, as well as with any other obligation under copyright, trade secrets, defamation, decency, privacy, security and export laws and any other applicable laws. Any information you choose to provide on any third parties' Services or any other information derived from your usage of any third parties' Services, may be used or disclosed by both ICQ Inc. and the third parties subject to their respective privacy policies. In no event shall ICQ Inc. be liable to anyone for any damage arising from or occasioned by the creation or use of the third parties' Services or the information or material accessed through these Services. ICQ Inc. reserves the exclusive right and sole discretion to add, change, decline disable or remove, without notice, any feature, access or link to any of the Services from the ICQ Services and Information and/or to introduce different features, access or links to different users. In addition, ICQ Inc. does not endorse any service or product that may be offered by any third party that is advertising through the ICQ Services and Information.
The ICQ Services and Information contain functionalities and services that allow sending, delivering or receiving information between ICQ users and between ICQ users and non-ICQ users, which may be relayed or carried through public, Partners', third parties' or other networks, systems, servers, Web sites or applications (e.g. telephone and cellular networks, email servers etc.) ("Third Parties' Network"). The Third Parties' Networks are not controlled by ICQ Inc. in any way and ICQ Inc. shall not be responsible for the performance, availability, functionality, quality or reliability of any of the Third Parties' Networks or the information sent, delivered, relayed, carried or received through the Third Parties' Networks. Notwithstanding anything herein, ICQ Inc. does not warrant or guarantee that the information sent, relayed, carried or delivered through these Third Parties' Networks will reach its destination or its correct address or recipient or that the details of the recipient or sender are correct or accurate.
ICQ Inc. does not want to receive any confidential, secret or proprietary information and material from you through the ICQ Web site, ICQ Inc.'s mail and e-mail addresses, the ICQ Services and Information or in any other way. ANY INFORMATION OR MATERIAL SUBMITTED OR SENT TO ICQ INC., EXCLUDING PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN A USER AND OTHER USERS THAT ARE NOT SUBSEQUENTLY MADE AVAILABLE TO ICQ INC. WILL BE DEEMED NOT TO BE CONFIDENTIAL OR SECRET. By submitting or sending documents, information or other material ("Material") to ICQ Inc. or by posting information entered on the various ICQ directories and tools and messages on the ICQ message boards you (1) warrant that you have no rights of any kind to the Material; that to the best of your knowledge no other party has any rights to the Material; (2) grant ICQ Inc. an unrestricted, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, transmit and distribute the Material in all media, and you further agree that ICQ Inc. is free to use any ideas, know-how, concepts, techniques or other materials you send us for any purpose.
THE ICQ SERVICES AND INFORMATION AND THE VARIOUS ICQ DIRECTORIES, LISTINGS AND DATABASES INFORMATION IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS, AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.
ICQ INC. MAKES NO AND HEREBY SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THOSE OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON INFRINGEMENT AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE ICQ SOFTWARE, THE ICQ SERVICES AND INFORMATION, THE ICQ NETWORK SERVERS' SOFTWARE OR ANY KIND OF INFORMATION SENT, DELIVERED OR RECEIVED BY USERS ON OR THROUGH THE ICQ SOFTWARE, SERVERS' SOFTWARE, THE WEB SITE, THE ICQ SERVICES AND INFORMATION OR THE VARIOUS ICQ DIRECTORIES AND LISTINGS, UNLESS SUCH WARRANTIES ARE LEGALLY INCAPABLE OF EXCLUSION. ICQ INC. DOES NOT WARRANT, GUARANTEE OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE ICQ SOFTWARE, THE ICQ SERVICES AND INFORMATION, THE SERVICE AND THE ACCESS TO THE SERVERS, OR THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE VARIOUS ICQ DIRECTORIES, LISTINGS AND DATABASES IN TERMS OF THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, QUALITY, VALIDITY, STABILITY, COMPLETENESS, CURRENTNESS, OR OTHERWISE OF THEIR CONTENTS OR PRODUCTS, UNLESS SUCH WARRANTIES ARE LEGALLY INCAPABLE OF EXCLUSION. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE RESULTS AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE, THE ICQ SERVICES AND INFORMATION AND ACCESS TO THE SERVERS OR THE VARIOUS ICQ DIRECTORIES AND LISTINGS DATA, IS ASSUMED BY YOU.
ICQ Inc. does not warrant or guarantee that the ICQ Services and Information and the functions or services performed by ICQ Inc. will be uninterrupted or error-free or that defects in the Software and the ICQ Services and Information will be corrected. ICQ Inc. does not warrant or guarantee that all Software versions shall be provided with similar grades and level of service, features, functionality and the ability to use, the Software or the ICQ Services and information. ICQ Inc. does not warrant or guarantee 1) that any program or information will be free of infection by viruses, worms, Trojan horses or anything else manifesting contaminating or destructive properties; 2) that the information available on or through the ICQ Services and Information will not contain adult-oriented material, or material which some individuals may deem objectionable; or 3) that the functions or services performed by ICQ Inc. will be uninterrupted or error-free or that defects in the Software and the ICQ Services and Information will be corrected. You are solely responsible to isolate software and information, execute anti-contamination software and otherwise take steps to ensure that software or information, if contaminated or infected, will not damage your information or system.
You acknowledge that you are aware of security and privacy limitations including but not restricted to (1) the limitation of security, privacy and authentication measures and features in the ICQ Services and Information; (2) that data and information on the ICQ Services and Information may be subject to eavesdropping, sniffing, spoofing, forgery, spamming, "imposturing", tampering, breaking passwords, harassment, fraud, electronic trespassing, hacking, nuking, system contamination including without limitation, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, causing unauthorized, damaging or harmful access and/or retrieval of information and data on your computer or other security or privacy hazards or may not reach its destination or reach an erroneous address or recipient; (3) that the security and privacy features available on the ICQ Services and Information, including the IP privacy feature designed to allow an ICQ user to reduce the exposure of his/her IP address on ICQ, are provided to you as a convenience only and may not operate according to their description or may not operate at all; (4) that by activating the "ICQ Web Front" feature and/or the ICQ ActiveList server software, you may provide third parties with certain limited remote access to certain files on your computer. Activating these features increases the risk that third parties will be able to tamper with your computer.
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Could you post a link to the source of that information?
I guess getting wedd to a attorney is not that bad, that is if it was a bad relationship to begin with and you don't want to see the (other) in the first place. Just rep the rewards of having a mad loot.
Was just wondering if you have any qualms about people supplying EULA from pirated products? I have many older programs and access to many more, but does it matter that I did not pay for them? (Hence I'm posting AC) If not count me in.
It looks like evrything was of untill 1990, when TVT put in the public performance clause.
then in 1992 the lending clause made it's nasty way in there.
1989 tvt (UK):
"unauthorized duplication is a violarion of applicable laws."
1990 tvt (UK):
nothing except the standard copyright 1990!
1990 tvt (Australia):
"unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, leasing and copying of this disk is prohibitred"
1992 tvt (uk):
"unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance broadcasting of this disk prohibitred"
1994 tvt (uk):
"unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibitred"
source:
a few CD's of my cd rack.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I don't know about anyone else, but if you don't capture the EULA text when it shows up on install, I wonder if you can get to them. Do very many products even have a way to view them after the fact?
I just checked my copy of MS Outlook XP and it's actually not to bad (go to Help, then in the contents tab, look for EULA) Yet, when I looked for one on Internet Explorer 5.5, I can't find any mention of the EULA or a license in the help system.
Seems to me the software companies don't go out of their way to call your attention to it once you hurry up and click "ACCEPT" just to get the darn thing installed.
The Digital Sorceress
Hey, fine print was invented for a reason, to screw the EU over.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
One item that I find of particular interest is the EULAs which specifically forbid the end user to do a) performance testing on the software or b) publish any results of a performance test unless the vendor is given prior notification. The vendor reasoning is that there are too many variables in any performance test so any result is skewed. But these types of experiments are important especially when the vendor is make a claim about how great their performance is, and whether certain software will do the job in a given scenario.
I will gather every EULA I can and send it in.
Great idea!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Texas (and many other states) passed a building code "by reference." What this means is that they wrote a law saying, "Construction Company Consortium Foo has published a building code called Bar. It is now the law. Ask them for a copy." Builders are now requiored to follow a law they are not legally allowed to view, except by buying it from the industry association that wrote it.
There's a challenge to the building code copyright, on the basis that the intent of the model code was for it to be written into law, so writing it into the law is fair use and then copies of the law are then not copyrighted (though the model code, with the identical words, still is).
Of course if that loophole for the building code pans out it won't apply to ELUAs. They were never passed into law by a legislature, so their copyrights (if any) are rock-solid.
They're a CONTRACT. As such they're the work product of one or more lawyers, probably a work-for-hire so the client owns the copyright. Contracts are allowed to be secret. Making a few extra copies of one you have signed or are considering might be fair use. But putting the full text of one in a database and publishing the database almost certainly isn't.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would guess that the rundowns of answers should read something like this:
I want to know the first EULA that said we can't reverse engineer their software: I would wager it was one of the first pieces of software when copyright became a concern. Probably one of the first flavors of MAC OS or Windows.
first that said they can watch our activities: Which came first? Gator or WinXP? Maybe a version of IE or Media Player before these?
I want to know how the NES agreement differs from the GameCube: Did the NES even have an agreement? Have fun and enjoy? I can't remember ever having one, of course the box/manuals/instructions went away a long time ago. Did Nintendo lighten, or tighten restrictions? Now, with the potential to rip Gamecube games, I would guess that the Gamecube has much tighter restrictions.
What permissions we have been given, and taken away over that period. What rights did we have in Windows 3.1, compared to Windows XP?: I'd guess that we've been given many additional permissions. Windows 3.1, IIRC, didn't really have much in the EULA regarding the Internet. I don't think it was a huge factor at the onset.
I will try my best to find some of these older EULAs. I'm pretty sure I've got WIN 3.1 sitting around somewhere. I can fire it up and see where it leads.
Really though, as time goes by, I think companies want to protect their product as much as possible. They're more and more concerned with "piracy" (--I'm not raping and pillaging, so how is it piracy?) and the like, which is just another reason to change how users can use their systems. There are certain ways where this doesn't affect the majority, ie the reverse engineering clauses, but when you start to deal with things like privacy invasions, that affects almost all users, excluding those not on the net or with decent firewalls.
MS and Mac have been concerned with things like this from practically their beginnings. Palladium is MS's next step in restricting consumer rights, dictating what you can and cannot put on your own computer.
Just my $.02. I'd write more, but my day is done, and I'm going home from work now. Later.
. . . but there's a clause in the EULA that prohibits that.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Aren't EULA's copyright?
Just wait till the BSA lawyers show up.
The Fifth Circuit recently overruled that panel opinion, holding that people could not be barred by copyright from reading or copying "the law". See here for more.
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
I could see that logic being applied to a negotiated contract; Company X may not want Company Y to know what Company Z's terms are. But EULA's are boiler plate and distributed to anyone who buys the software. They're not exactly secret, and I could be considering accepting the EULA for almost any software product at anytime.
Urm, maybe coming from a state that was one of the first on the UCITA bandwagon has me a little over-cautious, but aren't EULA's copyright? Does this count as fair use? I'm really not trying to be funny or troll, etc. -- I'm genuinely curious.
If you really have time, you might want to try to make an English translation of the EULAs so you're not breaking the copyright on them.
The original Copyright covers translations, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...but my EULA does not allow me to make nor transmit copies of itself.
I can see it now, the day after a major software package is released, the site slows to a crawl as everyone scrambles to check out the EULA so they're not left out of the chat around the water cooler!
~Philly
I have zero respect for any law.
I only respect people.
For example, on a traffic red light, I if there is no person trying to cross the street, and no car coming on the crossing, I just go ahead (if there is no cam watching me).
Don't ask if you can do something, you'll receive a NO.
Just do it and see if anyone will try to stop you.
We are $BIG_CORP. You're just an individual. Bend over like the bitch that you are because we have enough money and lawyers to crush any opposition you might present. Have a nice day, and enjoy your limited rights to use $BIG_CORP products.
I can't vouch for Europe. But it looks like reverse engineering is explicitly protected in making originals of copyrighted works and in finding out trade secrets in the US. Check the US Copyright Office and the International Trade Data Sytem.
Collecting and redistributing EULAs be in fact a violation of the terms of the EULA in the first place? Oh the irony...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
What sort of thought has been given to the "dynamic EULA" that comes about through the successive installation of various security updates, patches, etc. that come down the pipe so frequently these days? Would you be able to watch your fair use rights get wrung out like a wet towel as you progress from the "release" version of WMPXP through the various "fixes" to whatever form it will take in the future? That's something I'd like to see... especially since the advent of "Automatic Updating" as a feature of XP; most people don't ever encounter the EULA's for the updates that their PCs are installing for them...
..hardly anyone actually *reads* EULAs. I know I tend to just click accept/I agree/yes/whatever. And I know plenty of people who do the same, simply because we'd spend a week trying to decipher the damned things if we actually read them.
:p
I'm wondering if it can be proven that so many people do this that the concept of EULAs can be invalidated? Especially since with many EULAs, you only see them once, and can't see them again?
Hmm. Would probably take a good amount of capital and some slick lawyers to get something like that proven. Still, it'd be a great service to humanity.
"This disclaimer is not intended to limit the liability of the Commission in contravention of any requirements laid down in applicable national law nor to exclude its liability for matters which may not be excluded under that law."
The disclamer is unusually clear!!! and states the goals
an ELUA would have to say
"our goal is to screw you for as much money as possible" to match that one.
An oldie but goody...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yo diría que no...
but even sadder when their people are too stupid to write the laws in the first place
I think this project is slightly reminiscent of work done at the Maximegalon Instititue for Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Suprisingly Obvious. Let me save you a little work.
Here, in a nutshell, is the heart of every EULA.
All your base are belong to us.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I think this is a fine idea. I can see many a pleasant evening writing scripts to extract all sorts of correlations. I'd love to see this on the web, and downloadable in one big chunk.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
All your base are belong to us!
http://kered.org
One more advantage of this site is that it will allow you to read the EULA of a piece of software you are considering without having to download, buy, or un-shrinkwrap it.
You'll get tons of them from people sharing their C: drives to the while world from Windows boxes.
Using the "Find" utility on this NT box yields EULA's for Acrobat, MS Messenger, MS Chat, NetMeeting NT, Microsoft Internet, Winzip, MS Office, and Internet Explorer.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I believe that by default virtually anything that you "create" including things like an EULA are copyrighted, unless that right is specifically waived.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I've thought about this myself. What I wanted to do was "color code" each phrase/sentence in the EULA, and come up with some "EULA-description markup language" for it. There would be a different color for each of these categories:
Redundant text (pink or gray maybe) - anything that repeats copyright law, i.e., "you may not distribute copies"
Dubious text (red) - anything that attempts to limit your rights further than copyright law, i.e., "you may not use this product to disparage microsoft" .. I call it dubious because this is the stuff that shouldn't be binding unless you've signed a contract.
Descriptive text (blue) - anything that describes the behavior of the product or the company, i.e., "if multiple versions of this product are detected, we will drop a bomb on your grandmother's house", or "this product will delete the competitor's product upon installation". This isn't really "license"-related, but describes the product.
Rights-granting text (green) - anything that says you have permission from the copyright holder to do things you're not otherwise allowed to do, i.e., "you may distribute copies verbatim if you include this copyright notice"
Filler text (light green) - this is junk that you should ignore completely, such as any "summaries" (if the license is binding, it's the LICENSE that's binding, not any summary they may have written for your benefit). This also includes the stuff in the GPL about "freedom", which is nice to know, but not necessary.
Imagine having each license color-coded like this, you could even view thumbnails of the licenses to see which one was best, showing the different blocks of color at a glance. For instance, the GPL would probably be all "Filler" and "Rights-granting" and you could visually see that it indeed is more "consumer-friendly" (lots of green) than the average microsoft license (lots of red).
Also note, any license that says "the terms of this license are subject to change" should be treated specially (for instance, all BRIGHT RED), since, for all intents and purposes, it may change *completely* at any time, and could conceivably be 100% Dubious and should be treated as such.
I'd love to see something like this combined with a database of licenses.
All your funny are belong to a year and a half ago!
Someone set up us the dead horse!
You have no chance to be funny make your time!
Karma: Non-Heinous
Such a database could be exempt from US copyright laws if it was operated outside the US. Most European companies, for example, will not allow an EULA to dictate anything (much less anything about its own copyright status).
sm
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Last month I was cleaning house, and tossed at least 100 old manuals for computer games. Dating back at least 10 years.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
IANAL, but if someone were to discover the first EULA used in a piece of commercial software (that still bore some relevance to current EULAs), bought it from the original owner and decided to defend its patent on the EULA, couldn't this company then claim royalties from all other software companies for using EULAs that were "substantially identical"?
;-)
Better still, don't demand royalties, just prohibit anyone from using anything substantially identical to piss them all off
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
New revised and shortened EULAs of the future:
Section 1:
You opened the package. We 0wnz y0ur 4ss, 4nd y0 M4mm4's 2.
Section 2:
See Section 1
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
In case there is any doubt about where things are going, here is the Ultimate EULA:
You agree that I can do anything I like, and that you have no power whatsoever.
You agree to say only good things about me.
(I once knew a 3-year-old who said things like this.)
You can't do it; an English translation of the EULA would clearly be a circumvention device. Illegal under the DMCA of course.
Unless they've changed something with the GameCube that I don't know about (I don't have one yet), there are no licensing agreements for the end-users of Nintendo hardware or Nintendo-licensed software. There's a warning in the back of instruction manuals of recent games against copying, but that's all it is: a warning. Heck, we're talking about a company that has historically relied on nothing more than physical incompatibilities bewteen regional consoles (number of pins in NES vs. Famicom, plastic tabs in cartridge slots of SNES, N64, etc.) to separate their markets.
If you want to talk about SDK user and/or game liscencing and such, I can almost guarantee you that those licenses have mellowed dramatically over the years (from "Thou Shalt Not Release Games on non-Nintendo Systems for 4 Years" through a number of lawsuits to "Hey, we're just glad you're coding for our console").
According to folklore in the database world,
Oracle was the first to have the restriction
for publishing performance data.
This is documented in here
You live on the edge. But maybe you should. . .
Come to New Orleans sometime. When everyone is around, everyone runs the light. The cops won't stop you because they're too busy
1. Being corrupted
2. Getting hummers from crack hookers off of Annunciation.
3. Beating up some hippie down on Frenchman
4. Eating a gravy po-boy off of St. Claude
But whatever the cops may be up to, everyone wrecks, crashes, decays.
I'm sorry, but did you not read the EULA for using/reading EULAs?
Better have a good lawyer! They are coming for you.
--------------
I sig, therefore I was.
Y(ou)ANAL
I mean the license for the DVD consumer. The contract between MPAA and you.
There must be one. You see, under DMCA, you are violating the law every time you play a CSS-protected DVD, unless you have authorization to bypass the technological device that restricts access. If you have authorization, then bypassing wasn't circumvention. If you don't have authorization, then bypassing was circumvention.
And there is only one possible way that you can have this authorization: if you got it from them, somehow.
You either you got permission from them, and playing the DVD is legal, or you didn't, or you're a DMCA criminal.
Since MPAA attacked DeCSS, we can infer that this authorization is conditional; it doesn't just come with buying the DVD. They don't just say, "Anyone who buys our DVD may watch it." We know it's not that simple. But what the actual conditions are, or any other aspects of this deal is, remain highly mysterious. It might be that people with dark skin are not allowed to watch DVD. Or it may just have descriptions of the type of equipment that you're allowed to play it on, or something like that. Who knows?
The only way to know, is to see the text of the license that states under what conditions the end user is authorized to bypass the access control.
Whatever this license is, it's an interesting one, like the GPL, in that it actually grants you a power that you would otherwise not have (permission to watch the DVD, which would otherwise by prohibited by DMCA), in exchange for taking away other rights. Just as you can't redistribute a GPL program (a power you ordinarily wouldn't have) without either violating copyright law or agreeing to the GPL's terms, you can't watch a DVD without either violating the DMCA law or agreeing to the mystery license.
I think the license must remain secret, because if it were disclosed, it would be blatant evidence of product-tying and trigger Antitrust action. Of course, you shouldn't speak too loudly about the contract possibly having illegal terms in it, because if it's an illegal contract, then it's an invalid contract, and then you don't have authorization to watch DVDs. So if you want to watch the movie, shut your mouth.
To watch DVDs, we must be resigned to having agreed to a secret contract we'll never get to see the terms of. Does MPAA own your house? Are you sure?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
-------
"People who do not break things first will never learn to create anything." -Philippine Proverb
The only problem I can see is getting the exact dates the EULAs where made, as sometimes they are changed or for websites its sometimes unclear.
Good Luck!
For example, Alltel (though maybe then they were Aliant) would not permit me to retain a copy of the EULA for ADSL service to which I had to agree. Not even a photocopy post-signature.
I'm pretty sure that's not legal. If you've signed a contract, you should have a copy of the terms that you agreed to. That's just common sense. You should have asked a lawyer about that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I was just going through a minor program's EULA, and found a funny typo. You know how EULAs have a limited warranty that doesn't warrant anything beyond the physical media? The warranty doesn't ensure "merchantability or fitness for a specific task" or such.
This one doesn't cover "merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose...." So the warranty does not cover the ability of the MERCHANT to actually anything, or be fit to do anything. What a riot.
I want to know which EULA first said "by using this software you agree to...".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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Standard Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments
(POSIX), copyright C 1988 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc. In the event of any discrepancy between these versions
and the original IEEE Standard, the original IEEE Standard is the referee
document.
In the following statement, the phrase ``This material'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.
This material is reproduced with permission from American National
Standards Committee X3, on Information Processing Systems. Computer and
Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA), 311 First St., NW,
Suite 500, Washington, DC 20001-2178. The developmental work of
Programming Language C was completed by the X3J11 Technical Committee.
The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are
those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official
policies, either expressed or implied, of the Regents of the University
of California.
NOTE: The copyright of UC Berkeley's Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD")
source has been updated. The copyright addendum may be found at
ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Imp
included below.
July 22, 1999
To All Licensees, Distributors of Any Version of BSD:
As you know, certain of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") source
code files require that further distributions of products containing all or
portions of the software, acknowledge within their advertising materials
that such products contain software developed by UC Berkeley and its
contributors.
Specifically, the provision reads:
" * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors."
Effective immediately, licensees and distributors are no longer required to
include the acknowledgement within advertising materials. Accordingly, the
foregoing paragraph of those BSD Unix files containing it is hereby deleted
in its entirety.
William Hoskins
Director, Office of Technology Licensing
University of California, Berkeley
Because he's right.
You could apply a similar system to ordinary EULAs. If the license grants you new rights, use a picture of lady liberty. If the license restricts you more than copyright alone, use a picture of lady liberty in hand cuffs. If the license allows spying, use a picture of someone in the shower as seen through binoculars. If the license allows the copyright holder to change the terms, use a picture of the devil holding up the contract.
6,000 pages in 18 different languages/countries.
6,000 pages is about the average length of a Microsoft ELUA.
>Perhaps because you don't want to download all ;)
>the software just to discover that you can't
>accept the EULA terms?
Yeah, it must be a real bother downloading a lot of software and then finding you can't accept the EULA
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If someone gives me (at work) a machine that already has all software installed, hence I didn't read any EULAs, does it mean that I "agree" with them?
I'm a sysadmin and we use linux...I'm just curious.
I don't have the actual licenses, but I remember a serious controversy when Borland came out with several restrictions for their C++ compilers. You could not compile and distribute any programs that would compete with any Borland product. Precious.
3 c/9453c .htm
See this DDJ article about this:
http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1006/ddj945
I have some old EULAs from software that's been lying around for years ... the kind where you had to tear through a sticker to get to the diskettes. But I don't have the spare time to key them in for email. Would you like photocopies snail-mailed somewhere?
cbd.
all the EULA's that are copywritten? I bet there is at least one EULA that forbids copying of itself.
Just some food for thought. Start eating...
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Get a life
That's not the issue.
The issue is that the other party owns the right to copy the document, and to license that right to others in the way that, in their opinion, will maximize their return (or otherwise do things to advance their interests). It's THEIRS. They OWN it. YOU can only use it (beyond "fair use") if you BUY the right from them, and only to the extent that they voluntarily licensed you.
Now maybe you're a competitor writing your own ELUA who doesn't want to spend the money on lawyers to craft one for you, but instead intend to take advantage of the text THEY paid THEIR lawyers to write - and then to litigate and set precedent with. Or maybe such people will read the data base and do the same. Or maybe you'll publish articles holding it up for ridicule and copy the WHOLE THING as a sidebar. Doesn't matter. It's theirs. If they don't want you to do something with it that, in THEIR opinion, hurts them (or doesn't help them enough, or doesn't fit their business model), tough luck.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Has anyone noticed that several of the latest Microsoft EULA panels (Windows Updates specifically) don't offer any mechanism to copy, print, or other expand the EULA so it can easily be read, stored for later reference or reviewed by the legal staff?
Just how binding is an agreement that I can't store outside of the software. What if a vendor decides in an upgrade that I need a new EULA? Since I had no mechanism to store it, what's to prevent a switch during an online update?
Is this just an MS practice or have others started making it hard to read or store the EULA outside the application?
On another note, is Microsoft the only putting strange, seemingly unrelated, limitations in the EULA. For example, accepting their Windows 2000 Critical Updates user agreement, binds the user not to publish .NET benchmarks without prior written approval from Microsoft.
Stph
Please see the subject line.
^^^^^^^^^ That's text, dude! Right there!
he said it is not to create a place so we can all read those things we have ignored.
the intention is to mark the evolution of the EULA and see where certain key things started to pop in (like reverse engineering).
as for the legal side or compiling them, i don't know. i don't remember ever readin far enough into one to got to something like that. oops.
Most times the EULA is a license.txt file or you can find it in one of the other files.
:)
Check out cexx.org if you haven't already. They at one point had a movement to replace the EULA of any currently installing software with one of your own so that you would not have to read/agree to the restrictive vendor EULA. The site has some other great resources as well.
For all the legal good that it does me, I get my dog to click on the accept button when I am installing software on my computer
By reading this you agree not to copy, reproduce, or collect this agreement in any form. Please read to accept.
I have an idea for you.
Create a EulaDB site, similar to cddb.com, where you can look up an application and get the license agreement, plus a summary of what it means in plain english, plus whatever other information/commentary you might want to attach.
You could publish an API/xml format that applications could use to do automatic lookups by name, or even better, by checksum value. So once you've downloaded a new piece of software, you would generate a checksum/md5 from the setup.exe or rpm package or tarball etc for the piece of software you are installing and do a lookup on euladb.com. That way you could read the eula description before you even launched the installer for the first time.
Eventually you could make this into an installer-type front end. You run it before the install, it looks up the checksums and shows you the eula and associated commentary. If the eula is not in the database, the user can submit it by cutting & pasting the eula text, along with any commentary, when they install the software.
I don't remember NES games having an agreement.. Basically it said you may not copy this illegaly.
Bloodthirsty License Agreement
This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed
for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate
copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you
do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us
since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only
method of making anything out of all the hard work.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around
pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your
doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
"I only respect people"
and apparently traffic cameras...
Here.
The EULA is an astonishing last-ditch attempt by software publishers to fix the meaning and value of their product. In effect, it attempts to retain complete control over preferred reading of the software, while denying the consumer any rights of ownership9, control10 or appropriation11. In return for this, typically, a software publisher only promises that the product "will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying written materials" for a period of 90 days or so.
Da Blog
Sorry my EULA states I cannot give out the details of my EULA. I may have broken the law just talking about this. I'll have my lawyers check into this...
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
I'll try to find time this week to scan my hard drives for all 'license' and 'EULA' files. I have files dating waaay back to windoze 3.x when these things first started popping up. Question is, did they ever get "retired"???
This is a good idea, if done right it's a great idea. If it turns out to be "bitten off more than could be chewed" then perhaps it'll inspire someone else.
Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
Not unlike the GPL except for the don't distribute/copy bit!
Heh. One of the first things printed on the console by many early unices in the PDP-11 era was "RESTRICTED RIGHTS". This goes back a lot further than one thinks.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
>I just go ahead (if there is no cam watching me).
ah yes, a true anarchist....
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
merged with island records
then time warner
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Could you post a link to the source of that information?
Here is a link to Chapter 2 in the Danish law on copyright. Paragraph 36 and 37 are interesting. Obviously this is written in Danish, it would be interesting with links to similar laws in other European countries.
I'll try to explain to the best of my abilities what this law says:
Paragraph 36 says that if you have the right to use a program, you may also fix bugs, make backupcopies, and run the program to see how it works. Stk 4 says you cannot give up these rights by agreement.
Paragraph 37 says you may make copies and translations of a program if this is necesarry to get the information needed to achieve interoprability between software you develop and other software. Point 1 says it may be done by the licensee or people working for the licensee. Point 2 says it may only be done if the necesary information is not easily available in other ways. Point 3 says you may only translate parts necesarry to achieve the needed information. Stk 2 says the information may not be used for other pusposes than achieving interoprability. Stk 3 says the rights cannot be given up by agreement.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
bad.
watch out for copyright issues... :) heh
He can freely analyse a copyright work for academic study, an he not? It's not like the EULAs themselves are going to be republished... or are they?
[the product] is sold upon the condition that it shall not be re-sold to or by any unauthorized dealer or used for duplication, and that it shall not be sold, or offered for sale, by the original, or any subsequent purchaser (except by an authorized jobber or factor to an authorized retail dealer) for less than [price] in the united states, nor in other countries for less than the price given in the current [manufacturer] catalogues of the country in which it is sold. Upon any breach of said condition, the license to use and vend this [product], implied from such sale, immediately terminates.
That's off a 1900 Edison blue amberol cylinder record.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
(Note: I attempted to recreate the actual legibility of the modern EULA with colons, periods and spaces, but the lameness filter quickly identified it as "junk..." hmm...)
"It would be interesting to grab a nice sample of EULAs across the last 2 decades to see what has changed, if anything."
:)
Glad to see i'm not the only one who's never bothered to read one
Last I had heard about the case the litigant expressed doubt he could actually win, but was pursuing the case in the interest of raising public awareness. It's nice to see at least one court is still able to use common sense.
the EULAs for windows 2000 and office can be found (at least on my machine), in c:\WINNT\system32\eula.txt and c:\program files\Microsoft Office\Office\oemeula.txt respectivly
Now maybe you're a competitor writing your own ELUA[sic] who doesn't want to spend the money on lawyers to craft one for you, but instead intend to take advantage of the text THEY paid THEIR lawyers to write
If they wanted to do this, they could simply buy the competitor's software, and read the EULA. They don't need to get it from a database simply to be able to read it. If this company were then to copy the EULA, that would be wrong, much like copying a book in a library and publishing it as your own is wrong.ceci n'est pas une sig.
It's widely available. Here, for example. Other jurisdictionshave adopted it as a model.
I think it would be interesting to run a program on this database that identifies common phrases. Then you could create a map showing the relationships between the different EULAs. You could easily identify which companies are borrowing language from other companies. You could also show where certain concepts originated.
That's nice, but a EULA is not "the law", it's an agreement between parties.
I'll submit my Sega Saturn EULA!... Unless the other Saturn owner has already submitted?
OT bit: WTF can I find a decent Saturn emulator? If that machine and it's software aren't abandonware, I'll install XP!
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Your box will be assimilated! Resistance is futile!
Yours,
$BIG_CORP
Ph33r m3!!!
Anyone ever notice that some EULAs are presented in a non-resizable window about 3" wide and 2" high ??
/Dave
How am I supposed to read the equivalent of two 8.5"x11" sheets of typewritten text in that size of a window?
Madness. I think it's to persuade you into NOT reading the EULA, but agreeing anyways.
Personnally, when I see that kind of EULA window, I click in the text, hit CTRL-A (select all), CTRL-C, and then paste it into a blank Notepad document. Then it's much easier to read and resize.
On a related note, maybe the SlashCode programmers can increase the size of the window I'm typing in now. It's about the same size as the EULA window
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
Yes, for awhile at least. But when the US passes some sort of draconian IP legislation, the EU quickly scrambles to propose a similar document for passage. Very soon Europe will have it's own DMCA (if it hasn't passed already, I haven't been checking on the progress of it). This is why I find the occasional catcalls of "you silly Americans and your silly laws, I'm glad I live in Canada/Europe/etc where we aren't bothered by that" to be somewhat shortsighted. Bad IP laws spread. Sure, maybe China and Russia might not have them (yet), but things change.