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Shrinkwrapped Books
NortWind writes "I just saw this in the InfoWorld paper, in the "The Gripe Line" by Ed Foster. It describes how a "...book arrived wrapped in plastic with a shrinkwrap license on the front". Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse..." I wrote an essay about this a year or two ago.
"...book arrived wrapped in plastic with a shrinkwrap license on the front"
That's how most mail-order porn mags arrive. It means the seller can accept returns that are still wrapped and be confident the pages aren't stained with jizz. Retailers of regular fiction don't suffer from this problem.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You mean Harlan Ellison has a new book out?
By opening this shrink-wrap you agree to the terms and conditions of the agreement.
To see the agreement, open the book to page 1.
For technical assistance call 724-987-1192, however, by calling this number you release us from any obligation of helping you.
Thank you and have a good day.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
If the license agreement was to be taken seriously, he either had to go to the trouble of trying to ship the book back or he had to become an Omnicare customer somehow.
I'd just trash it and forget it. It's illegal to send unsolicited items and then try to collect for it - just because they slap a boilerplate on something that arrives unsolicited in your mail you can still just treat it like any bulk business mail, crapcan it. All they are claiming ownership rights to is the contents. If you want to get in a moral quandrary over it, or become play the OmniCare game that's fine too.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Anything that is mailed unsolicited to a person belongs to that person. Period. The postal code is extremely clear on this point.
There used to be a lot of scams where companies would send products to people along with a bill, figuring that enough people would pay to make it worth it. For one thing, the company did not provide return postage, so any return would be at the customer's expense.
Each and every one of those doctors now owns the book that was sent to them. I suggest they throw away the shrinkwrap, and use them for doorstops.
There is no law that says that you have to read "every single page" of a book you buy. You just say: I skipped those pages (I had a headache or something) They're going to ask why you skipped them, and you'll say: "It looked boring" to which there is of course no reply, because that would be the go-awful truth.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Books for classes have been doing this for years. Some have shrinkwrap licenses, though most have software that generally gets unused in the class, but is just there to make resale of the book harder. It's starting a mini-cottage industry of small booksellers that don't care about the license and will buy and sell the used book no matter what, as opposed to the large campus store that needs to comply with the bookseller's corporate "licensing" terms.
Shrinkwrapped licenses for books are clearly a violation of the doctrine of first sale (you do not own the rights to distribute the content of a book, but you completely own your copy of the the physical book, and may distribute that any way you please).
Each new insult is also one more bit of evidence that fair use is threatened. If this goes on -- and if we keep writing Congress, etc., every time it happens -- at some point, maybe things will be so visibly out of hand that there'll be serious public pressure to swing the pendulum back.
It won't happen by itself, but I cling to a shred of hope, no matter how thin. (Giving into despair doesn't help; think of hope as a modified Pascal's Wager.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
The book came unsolicited in the mail. The only rights the person who sent it may have are what is afforded by standard copyright. The physical object, the book, belongs to the recipient to use in a fair manner consistant with the local copyright laws no matter what the meaningless piece of paper says. They cannot give themselves the right to take the book away at a later date. The stuff about not being able to share the information with anybody is crap too.
Basically this is an article about a publisher being stupid and wasting paper; probably not nearly as much paper as the company that publishes "Internet Explorer for Dummies," so if you want to harrass somebody, you'd be better off harassing them.
Another one bites the ./ dust:
wget is a wonderful thing:
The Gripe Line
Ed Foster
Open with caution
I SUPPOSE IT was inevitable. With sneakwrap terms showing up in everything from charity Web sites to pornographic spam, it was just a matter of time. Books with shrinkwrap license agreements have arrived.
The first report of this phenomena to The Gripe Line came a few months ago when a reader who is a physician received an unsolicited tome in the mail entitled Geriatric Pharmaceutical Care Guidelines, 2002 Edition, from Omnicare. "This book arrived wrapped in plastic with a shrinkwrap license on the front," the doctor wrote. "It plainly says that by breaking the seal you agree to the terms of the license and if you don't agree you should return the book unopened. Is this what software licensing has led us to? This license says the book remains the property of Omnicare. Will they come up with a way to remotely disable the book if someone else reads it?"
The doctor obligingly faxed me a copy of the license, and I saw that it was indeed a sneakwrap agreement worthy of Microsoft or VeriSign. "In the event that you do not agree with any terms of this agreement you should promptly return the material unopened to your local Omnicare pharmacy," it read in bold letters near the top.
The license was nontransferable and would "terminate immediately if the Licensee or his or her employer ceased to be an Omnicare customer." And although the Omnicare "Guidelines are intended only to provide guidance as to which pharmaceutical products Omnicare believes to be most effective" the "licensee" was nonetheless prohibited from disclosing any of the information in the book to third parties.
It struck me that this license put the doctor in an awkward position. As far as he knew, neither he nor any of the other doctors in his office (most of whom had received their own copies the book) were Omnicare customers, and he did not know where his "local Omnicare pharmacy" might be. Even if he wanted to keep the book, as a non-Omnicare customer the license prohibited him from doing so. And since Omnicare claimed to retain ownership of his copy, he couldn't destroy it either. If the license agreement was to be taken seriously, he either had to go to the trouble of trying to ship the book back or he had to become an Omnicare customer somehow.
The doctor wondered if Omnicare was trying to make him feel obligated to them. "Sometimes my less-than-favorite charities send me greeting cards or stickers or a writing instrument in the mail," the doctor noted. "They are hoping to provoke enough sense of obligation in me to extract a contribution, but legally I am not required to acknowledge, or pay for, or return, or refrain from using what they send. So what is my obligation when sent an unsolicited book? Am I legally required not to use it or to return it if I don't agree with the sender's intended use?"
So just what was Omnicare's purpose in putting a classic shrinkwrap agreement (it was even printed in small, poorly-contrasted type) on a book that was clearly intended to promote use of the company's pharmaceutical products? I hoped Omnicare officials might have a simple explanation, but if they did, they decided not to share it with me. After two months of going back and forth with their public relations staff, I did not even get an answer on the basic question of what a noncustomer was supposed to do with the book.
While I was waiting in vain for answers from Omnicare, though, I heard from another reader with a shrinkwrapped book. Interestingly enough, he was also a doctor, but his book was a membership directory published by a medical society. I'm not going to identify the organization, partly because my deadline didn't allow them much time to respond to my questions and partly because their license was much less restrictive than Omnicare's. But their spokesperson was also unable to offer any explanations for why they felt it necessary to attach a license agreement to that book.
As I thought about it, however, it occurred to me that it doesn't really matter why we're suddenly seeing these books in the medical field with shrinkwrap licenses. Perhaps the publishers have good reasons for using them, perhaps they don't. But if someone wants to slap some legalese of dubious merit on the front of a book, why shouldn't they? Software publishers have been doing it for years, after all, so it only seems fair that publishers of other forms of intellectual property should have the same right to try to put restrictions on how customers use their products.
And, if there's no real justification for prohibiting book publishers from doing what software publishers do, how can we draw the line even at products containing intellectual property? Perhaps lamps will soon come with fine print legalese on the inside of the lampshade banning them from being resold at yard sales without the manufacturer's permission. And tearing that tag off your mattress really will bring the police pounding on your door.
Last week we talked about how we've already lost some of the basic rights we used to enjoy under traditional interpretations of copyright law. Loaning a book to a friend is not yet one of them, but who knows how much longer we'll be able to say that. Today we might still reasonably expect that any sane judge would just laugh if someone tried to get him or her to enforce a license such as Omnicare's limited-use license agreement. We must remember though that there are very powerful forces in this country working to give all sneakwrap agreements the full force of a binding contract. Next week we'll pay them another visit.
Have you received any sneakwrap agreements on books or other products? Write to Ed Foster, InfoWorld's reader advocate. You can reach him at gripe@infoworld.com.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The license was nontransferable and would "terminate immediately if the Licensee or his or her employer ceased to be an Omnicare customer." And although the Omnicare "Guidelines are intended only to provide guidance as to which pharmaceutical products Omnicare believes to be most effective" the "licensee" was nonetheless prohibited from disclosing any of the information in the book to third parties.
Wouldn't the Doctor's patients be considered "Third Parties" in this scenario?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
The really insideous part of this is that, in order to protect strictly financial interests, copyright barrons like Disney and Microsoft and the politicians they (let's be honest) bribe with large campaign contributions have pushed us to a place where information and knowledge can be proprietary and restricted in a way that hasn't been feasible since the invention of the printing press.
To protect profits from Britney's new crappy CD, these companies have harkened in a world where information can be (at least in theory) totally controlled. Naturally, the fact that this is completely hostile to the basic presumptions of democracy is completely peripheral -- next we'll have printing of bills restricted, politicians suing to keep the gaffes in their public releases supressed under the auspices of the DMCA and an even more uninformed public.
Hopefully, this sort of thing will spur some sort of public outrage at it progresses, pushing the pendulum back the other way -- it'll happen eventually. The question is how far things will have to go before Joe and Jane Sixpack start to give a shit.
In the mean time, might I suggest a contribution to the ACLU or EFF? Remember that the RIAA, MPAA and other four-letter-orgs-'o-evil have to spend to overcome common sense, where those of us on the "right" side don't, so your $25 contribution means a lot.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Books that comes with a license are NOT new. It's not at all unusual to receive books of documentation when one signs a non-disclosure agremeent (NDA). That's not the unusual part.
There are two new aspects to this idea. I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps the more legal minded can answer these.
First, can I attach a shrinkwap license to anything? It seems well accepted for software. But what about apples? Can I enforce a shrinkwrap agreement that says you won't sell the apple to somebody else?
Second, are you bound by a shrink wrap license one receives unsolicited through the mail? One is *not* bound to return anything or even acknowledge merchandise that one receives unsolicitied through the mail.
It is perfectly legal for somebody to send you something with the suggestion that you return money in exchange. In fact, that's protected by the First Amendment, which is why it's so hard to make some companies to take you off their mailing list.
But if they try to collect money from you in exchange for the goods (or demand you send it back at your expense) by claiming that a contract exists, that's unenforceable. There were some abusive practices in the 60s, and now this practice is explicitly named unenforceable.
Of course, back then I think the problem was charities counting on guilt as much as anything else. Now it's outright scam artists sending unsolicited toner, fax supplies, etc., with overpriced POs. A tightly run company will have a single vendor and can tell them to shove off, but many companies will automatically pay low-value POs for office supplies.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/merch. htm
http://www.eff.org
http://aclu.org/
Just kicking an issue around a message board never solved anything. If you feel strongly about it, dollars really do speak louder than words -- you really don't need to donate a lot of money.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Every month I would send a new invoice for the elapsed period, less payments, plus any late payment fees and interest.
When the total amount owed exceeded the local small-claims limit, I would confiscate the licensors' property for auction and file suit to recover the debt.
Mark the book "Refused - return to sender", and put it back in the mail box. The USPS will return the book to the sender and charge them for doing so, thus costing the sender more money. Plus, they now have all these books to get rid of.
www.eFax.com are spammers
One day, I get a bill in the mail, saying I owed them for the subscription, and that if I didn't pay they'd forward it to Collections.
I wrote back, informing them that
<voice font="Jim Nabors">Sur-Prize Sur-Prize Sur-Prize!</voice> I got a mail back from them saying "Uhhh, we checked our records, and we can find no evidence you ever signed up for this. Our collections is purely internal, and never would have shown up on your report. We're sorry, please don't kill us!". I figure it was the old "send them crap and bill them" scam, and when they found out that I wasn't going to play, they backpedaled faster than BillG on Palladium being DRM....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Of course, damn near everyone I know at work also gets spam e-mail to buy toner supplies for our d getting them two months after being hired. (Yeah, like the most recent hire automatically has purchasing control. *plonk*)
There was a phone scam something like that maybe 20 years ago - back when the long-distance rate wars were just starting.
Company on the west coast named itself "The Supply Room". In the morning (when night rates were still in effect on the west coast) they'd war-dial the office phones of businesses in the Eastern time zone. If they got a human (no doubt groggy in the morning) they'd say something like:
"This is 'The Supply Room'. Do you need any supplies? Xerox paper? Toner? Pens?"
If the poor sap at his desk said yes they'd ship some stuff to his office, and a large bill to the company's accounts-payable. (I hear they recorded the call as proof that the stuff had been "ordered", too.)
(I got one of those calls when consulting at an auto company's process automation department. Told 'em they were talking to the wrong person. Found out what they were when the company sent warnings around a few days later.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And yet it's the small businesses that employ and drive our economy much more than the big businesses. Yet small businesses don't get much more say than individuals.