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May I Have Your EULA Please?

Posted by Cliff on from the draconian-branded-paper-scraps dept.

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.

4 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Prohibitions by ZaMoose · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Prohibitions by capt.Hij · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Don't a lot of EULA's have prohibitions against reprinting them in full in settings other than their original form?

      If you don't agree to the terms then you should be able to print the EULA! The question is whether or not you can copyright a legal document such as the EULA.

      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.

    2. Re:Prohibitions by FyRE666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I suppose it would be very useful if a front-end app were built to parse "layman's questions" about a EULA. IE, "does EULA #49493 prohibit me from XXXX?". The web app could then work its magic and answer the question quickly and hopefully in understandable terms!

      This is a great idea, much better to have a central resource than rely on heresay and FUD...

      --
      Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
  2. It's a Trick! (and some questions too) by Inexile2002 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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..."