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A Model End Vendor License Agreement
Teese writes "Low End Mac is presenting this article as a humor piece, but its vision of an End Vendor License Agreement seems to be pretty well thought out, and one that I wouldn't mind seeing in the real world."
I would so like that to be seen in the real world. I remember playing Nexus TK back in the day and the EULA was evil, basically said they could kill your account for no reason. Also, my yahoo junk account that I give out to websites when i sign up for stuff yesterday had zero bulk messages, today it had 62. I would kill to have this be real cause I dont want spam and I want to get back at evil compaines.
wtfsig?!11
See also the Software Vendor License Agreement.
it's not karma whoring if your an AC
This idea is not new. I've actually seen such proposals months if not few years back. More on this later on.
Overall, the linked EVLA is more user-oriented - it has demands that are annoying to some end users such as "don't make me click more than once", "don't ask me twice if I want to quit", "ask me to register only once", etc., etc.
Even though it does qualify as funny, it doesn't really address what should be in this kind of "agreement" and definitely doesn't address the terms and conditions that are imposed by most EULAs. These conditions include restrictions on types of use, reverse-engineering, vendors' rights to revoke license at any time, vendors' rights to invade users' homes, users' non-existent rights, etc., etc.
If you would like to look at a more serious document related towards this issue, look at Software Vendor License Agreement that I found before. That would seem more fair to me.
As a side not I think that the law in Sweden for states that there are basicly 3 ways to agree to a contract.
1) Handshake.
2) Signature, ink on paper or digital signature.
3) verbal agreement.
But clicking on a button is not any way to legaly enter a contract.
INAL.
>I know this sounds crazy, but what software di
>you get to install after you declined? I hit
>decline on some, and it refused to continue the
>install.
That is a sort of forced agreement situation, that is, you go to a store and buy something, then someone (which happens to be the one who manufactured what you bought, not the one selling it by the way) tries to force you into an agreement when you try to use something that you bought. Such agreements are not valid in most countries I would say (there are many other aspects of the process that doesn't make it valid contracts either by the way).
Someone might claim you did not in fact buy anything in the store to start with which of course is wrong, normal sale laws impies that that it is a sale and it was made in the shop. Nothing else was agreed upon or made into a contract at the point of purchase. A normal sale in other words. The fact that there is some sort of EULA that is forced upon you LATER is irrelevant since it does not hande or is part of your purchase.
Imagine if a a refrigirator manufacturer behaved in a similar fashin, You buy the refridgirator, take it home and the first time you open up the door, inside it covering the power on button you see a paper with a lengthy text. It claims that if you remove the paper and power it on (you have to remove the paper to power it on by the way), you agree to many things, such as not having bought the refridgirator at all, just a licensce to use it, there is no guarantees it works, they can at any time come home and check out all your other machines in your house, and so on, and so on. Of course that would not be OK.
And no, you don't NEED any special permission to use something just because it happens to have copyrights attached to it. YOu can use, read, run, whatever at will as long as you don't do any of the things explicit not allowed in copyright laws, which is mostly distribution, various forms of copying, public performance and so on, most having exceptions so that you can still do it in some cases (typically refered to as "fair use" I think, although it might be called something different in english, not sure.
So don't worry even if you DO click agree, especially since it in many cases in various countries does not even fullfill the requirements for how a contract/agreement is entered into.