Slashdot Mirror
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."
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
They're called "shrink wrap licenses" because you usually can't read them until you've paid for the product and opened the package. And they usually say that by simply opening the package you've already agreed to the license terms that you couldn't even read until after you opened the package -- and we'll just bet the store didn't let you do that before you paid for it.
End user license agreements are designed to protect the manufacturer and may take away a lot of your rights. They may prohibit you from reviewing their product, give the manufacturer the right to revoke your right to use a software package at any time, or even state that files you create using the product belong to the vendor, not to you.
In this age of growing software monopolies, draconian licensing agreements, and oppressive legislation like UTICA and DMCA, we try to turn the tables with the Lite Side's
(Continue to start of parent comment...)
</pointlesskarmawhoring>
This type of thing (what is mentioned in the article) would work, but only if a vast majority of consumers decided to join such a group. I say we find a way to protect the rights of everyone.
if you have any insightful comments to make be sure to post as AC so you dont get modded down for karma whoring
bite my glorious golden ass.
The "Like a book" license has appeared in other places too. As I remember, Poser has the same thing - though it's a bit longer. Personally, I like the concept. Under that license I can install a piece of software on several machines that I use at different locations (Home, laptop, possibly work) and be able to use it without violating any sort of EULA.
The concept of an End Vendors agreement is wonderful, but a little impractical. Though it -might- be plausable to have a hard copy version that you use when you buy something that states "If the EULA in this piece of software is untennable, you agree to refund my money on the prompt return of the software." That would effectively get around the "You can't read the EULA until you open it, but we won't take it back if you open it."
One can only hope, right?
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
13. If a "full install" of the software is performed, the installation media will NOT be required to run said software.
11. You must never install software on my computer that hijacks other software, causing it to display popups or to add affiliate ids to purchases I make.
12. You must never install software on my computer that connects to a remote server, unless the software first obtains my permission to do so, and explains what information will be sent to the remote server.
Practicality or enforceability is not yet the point, I think. It clearly is absurd, and should not be considered an enforceable contract... which reflects the absurdity of a click-through EULA.
It seems to me that a click-through EULA is rationally (but probably not legally) equivalent to or weaker than an EVLA delivered to the manufacturer by certified mail, or initialled by a software dealer's employee. It's a sweet idea for a protest at least.
Furthermore, when we purchase software under a EULA, we allow a company to dictate terms to us, often terms that are onerous or not obvious. We wouldn't accept these entanglements when buying a book, a house, a car, or groceries. Why should we accept them here? For that matter, why shouldn't we have more say in the contract negotiations than "Yes or No"?
We are citizens, after all, not just consumers.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
In several Western countries, you cannot legally sign away your basic rights. It doesn't matter what the vendors put in a contract, EULA or any other document, how much you pay for it or what you have to sign. Those rights are yours, and a court will ignore any documentation that doesn't respect that.
This is why you find disclaimers in things like EULAs that if one part is found not to hold, the rest still does, etc. It's also why big businesses like Microsoft are terrified of a serious test case that might establish a precedent that EULAs have no legal weight because of the way they are set up. The net effect is that they rely on threats of legal action to get what the EULA would seek to secure for them, because it's the best chance they've got in most places and they know it.
This is not to say that you should flagrantly ignore things you know to be in an EULA unless you want to play dice with the courts. But you're pretty safe in ignoring any unreasonable conditions, because it's about a 110% certainty that they won't be legally enforceable anyway.
No, I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, and Slashdot is not the place for serious legal discussion. But use your common sense: no court is going to uphold something as manifestly unreasonable as a contract you supposedly agree to before you even have chance to read it. In fact, some places even have laws to the effect that if you can't reasonably be expected to understand a contract, you can't legally have entered into it. Not sure EULAs would fall within that, but it would be an interesting case...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Labor unions rely on compulsion in most cases - if you work here, you must belong to the union. This works - no one can circumvent it. Who is going to force geeks to join this union though? So, it's a given it's all-volunteer as you have framed it.
Any volunteer action is by its nature flaky and prone to miscarry. All you have to do is join a fraternal organization (Elks, Moose, one of the veterans groups, etc) to see this. We're talking about disciplined, together people who hold down jobs and run businesses, and getting a Friday night dinner together is a fiasco. People don't show, people don't want to wash dishes, we ran out of ketchup, etc.
Look at all the abandoned Sourceforge projects for an illustration of how ineffective volunteer projects can be. Collective volunteer action is very inefficient and downright maddening in many cases. It is a given then that this has a be a real organization with expenses and a revenue stream, otherwise it just isn't going to happen.
In the abstract, your idea is great. Get every geek to join a group to enforce license restrictions to benefit the consumer. But what happens when the person(s) running the group becomes suspect to some of the group? (think ICANN here) Does the group fork? Probably some people drop out or no longer participate.
How effective is a pressure group without numbers behind it? The NRA wields power because they have the signatures of X million people behind them. (I forget how many...3 million?). We're talking membership dues here just to keep track of all the people to demonstrate your size and power. (they charge $25 a year for a basic membership I think)
How many people really care about this kind of stuff, enough to fork over $20 or whatever a year? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Is that enough to change Microsoft's mind? How about Pkware? How about Intuit?
I don't know the answers to many of these questions, but I have a feeling the answers to some of them are 'no' or 'not', as appropriate.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...to follow your (good) idea, you *already* have a legitimate purchaser of large amounts of software-it's those stores. They are your major force multiplier and our societies normal middleman and representative between you, the end user and the software vendors. They are MOST definetly involved, they make bundlkes of cash as well on selling that stuff. The stores get it wholesale, then retail it.. They start to get lots of complaints and demands for them to sign your acceptable use and full disclosure and acceptance of liability contract to counter the lame EULA nonsense, or *no sale*. THAT will get back to the vendors. Just like going in, hauling crippled cds up to the counter, then saying "no sale if these won't play in all my cdplayers".
It's normal activism, it's a boycott in advance, but they have to SEE that it might affect sales, you leave the store manager standing there with stock to put back on the shelf and a no-sale potential customer walking out the door. One, he'll think it's a crank, a few hundred in any one store, he WILL note this. In hundreds of stores? You just might see some changes, by pass that washington DC nonsense, take em on mano y mano with the cash. That's all they care about, the cash, so that's where you attack.
That way, you don't have to fib and pose as a big buyer, you let the real big buyers transfer complaints. It happens all the time. I can give you an example, where it WORKED,-compleely different but it happened-rosie O donnel and K mart. I know I was part of hundreds of thousands of complaints that went to Kmart over using her in advertising, both written complaints and in person store complaints, direct to the stores managers. told them _no, repeat_no sale until she goes, your choice mr kmart, take it or leave it".
It worked, but it took a lot of people doing it. But it worked. She got the boot, kmart saw dropped sales. they never admited that was the reason, but the timing proved otherwise.
The SAME thing can be done with crippled CDs, crippled players, or stupid software EULAS that force spyware on you and offer no warranty or guarantee, bork your computer, etc, etc, all the things we talk about that happen,and a huge reluctance or denial of any money back on software. It's ridiculous, it's really lame it's been allowed to get so embedded in the industry, it's the only product out there in a major multi billion dollar industry sold like that, with a full skate of liability to the profiteers of same. (that I can think of handily at least)
I understand the necessity when software was the province of only a few thousand people on the planet and was still in the highly experimental phase, but there's no reason to continue to extend that get out of jail free card to them any more, there just isn't. It's "matured" enough as an industry so that the next plateau can be achieved,which is normal liabilities. Closed, non free propietary software is frantically defended as "a product". Swell. Have it their way then. They insist, whine, demand that their IP be treated as a tangible product, swell, no problems, then let normal "product" rules and laws apply. One or the other,they can make up their minds, and the customers can help if they choose to by DEMANDING it happen.
DARE to demand and boycott until you get what you want and what is the right thing to do, "we the software buyers people" have tremendous clout, because the vendors make zero $ without us handing it over, and yes, it's really that simple.
Another example, just happened, a sort of victory, with quicken. They got so many complaints and threats to boycott and whatnot they changed. it CAN be done across the industry, just needs doing, and how hard is it to NOT buy something??? Costs ZERO to boycott!
Who knows you might get a refund. If enough people did this it would create some sort of legal precident that might be useful later.
Help fight continental drift.
A lot of people are still buffaloed by EULA's. Instead of blasting the issuer for stupidly wasting time and money paying lawyers to write rules that have no legal leg to stand on (something those lawyers know full well if they're not complete incompetents), they complain about the draconian restrictions and duties these rules impose. Complain about the existence first. Skipping straight to arguments against the content implicitly legitimizes the existence.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"