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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.
"...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.
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.
Provided you live somewhere civilised, of course, like Europe for example.
Of course, like all legal matters, Slashdot readers have the authoritative opinion. NOT. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV. Usually.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
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..."
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
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'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.
I tried this 2 to 3 weeks ago. I bought a copy of MS Money from Staples, took it home, started the installation since there was no paper copy of the EULA till I got to the EULA, printed out the EULA, and took it back for a refund.
I fully expected to get the runaround. The store saying they don't give refunds while MS tells me to take it back to the store. To my surprise, I managed to talk the manager into giving me a refund. (That makes me 3 for 3 on obtaining refunds on opened software. The first two had nothing to do with EULA issues.)
The turning point was the printed EULA. The text on the box said "return for a refund" without specifing where or how to do the return. However, the EULA said "return to the place of purchase for a refund".
I had highlighted the "magic phrase" and pointed out that they were authorized resellers of MS software and asked why they weren't honoring the EULA. At that point, the manager made a copy of that page of the EULA and gave me a cash refund.
An interesting sidenote. Money actually installed all the software before showing the EULA. I had to finesse the question: "Did you install the software?" I answered: "I went as far as I had to until I was able to read the EULA".
I am convinced, although I have no proof, based on my conversations with managers when obtaining refunds on software, that MS not only knows, but requires, stores to have the "no refund" policy.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers