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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.
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.
Provided you live somewhere civilised, of course, like Europe for example.
So, you go through the EULAs and create a summary for the ones that don't permit republication, and post the summary instead. If you really want to be a bastard, make it really obvious who doesn't want the public to know what's in their EULAs.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As for the database itself. I can't stand to read the damn EULA's when I buy the software. Why would anybody want to go and read them off of a website? Yuk.
Perhaps because you don't want to download all the software just to discover that you can't accept the EULA terms?
Isn't this limited to the U.S.? Debian distributes cryptographic software from non-US servers. And OpenBSD is based here in Canada, where we don't have export restrictions on strong cryptography, so crypto is integrated into their OS.
Surely no one is trying to stop this practice? This would raise serious issues of international law. (I'm reminded of the Italian police shutting down a "blasphemous" site on a U.S. server, administered by an Italian in Italy.)
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
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
Ever heard of fair use? It's outlined in the copyright act explicitly exactly what people are allowed to copy and the conditions under which such copying is allowed.
Quoting EULA's, even if they are copyrighted, would be completely legal in the context of a compilation such as this, so long as suitable credit is given, as would be the case with any academic work. This sort of compilation is being put together in the interests of reseearch and education, so fair use applies.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Or, here's more useful information:
"What will legally allow ?" So then you can get a nice list of which pieces of, say, music playing software, will allow a certain right.
The speed of time is one second per second.
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.
Don't be a dumbass.
Veeck v. SBCCI refers to law passed by a legislature. As law, it must be public. For that reason, the higher court overturned the ruling. A contract is a different beast, being an agreement between two parties, and may be private. A contract is not a law. Copyright applies.
How about this... Perhaps you don't want to buy the software, take it home, open the box, find out you can't accept the EULA, and then discover on attempting to return it that you can't get your money back either? I think this concept is interesting because it opens up another front that software companies will need to compete on (at least for users who know enough to check the site first). After all, one of the most evil bits about EULAs in my opinion is that they don't let you see it until it's too late to decide whether or not to spend the money.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.