Fight Woodworking Piracy: Add EULA Restrictions

An anonymous reader writes "Ed Foster's Gripelog discusses EULA restriction on a new woodworking tool. A small woodworking tool manufacturer, Stots Corporation, includes a license agreement on its TemplateMaster jig tool. The tool is licensed, not sold, and customers cannot sell it or lend it to others. Nor can they sell or lend the jigs they make with it. "Shrinkwrap licenses are showing up everywhere," a reader recently wrote. "I just bought a jig for making dovetailing jigs -- this is woodworker talk if it's unfamiliar to you. The master jig contained a license that says I've licensed the master jig, not bought it. The license says I can't lend or sell the master, and furthermore I can't lend or sell the jigs I make with the master." The reader was referring to Stots Corporation of Harrods Creek, KY, and the user agreement for its TemplateMaster product. Sure enough, the Stots license says TemplateMaster may be used "in only one shop by the original purchaser only" and that "you may not allow individuals that did not purchase the original Product (to) use the Product or any templates produced using the Product..." A FAQ document on the Stots website explains that the license is necessary because "the purpose of the TemplateMaster is to clone itself. Therefore we are verifying your honesty that only you will use the tool and you will not be passing it around to others to use for free. It is exactly the same as the 'shrink wrap' agreement that comes with almost all computer software. Please help us fight 'tool piracy'."

Comments

Re:These seeds may not be planted

[vidarh]

Don't joke about that - go read up on what Monsanto think is reasonable use of their seeds... Monsanto is one of the largest seed manufacturers in the world, and one of their pet peeves is that farmers who collect seeds from their harvest are undermining their income stream. To the point where they are trying to restrict it with license agreements, patents and genetically modified crops that don't produce viable seeds...

Re:Can't do it.

[TA]

No, IBM did not. You rented the mainframe from them. Nobody at the time imagined that anyone would ever want to buy their own computer, so the first businesses were all built around the rent-a-mainframe concept.

Re:Monsanto

[bigkahunafish]

I am actually a seed producer here in the US. On Monsanto's Roundup-Ready Soybeans, we, as a producer, must pay royalties to get into RR's in the first place. Then prices are higher for them to the seed customer (around $20/50 lb.) due to about $10 in tech fees (about $7 goes to Monsanto per 50/lb.) which we send to them. Every customer must sign an agreement (essentially EULA) which establishes that they will not reclaim GMO seeds for planting, farmers must instead go through a seed company, like us, so they pay the royalties. For signing the agreement, every farmer gets a Monsanto #, which keeps track of purchases year to year. We, as a seed processing company (a small one at that), get audited by Monsanto every so often. They check our farm records, and make sure RR seed we sold to farmers was in fact sprayed with Round-up and not a generic brand. They will also take samples of our seed to determine its generation in its genetics, so they check that we are not pirating their seed. If we were, they threaten fines of over $500/acre of produced soybeans (which is enough to bankrupt most farms).

A bit screwy ?

[o'reor]

Now read this :

Percy Schmeiser's web site. Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan Canada whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Since he uses his own crops for seeds, and Monsanto's GM seeds are patented, Monsanto's position is that it doesn't matter whether Schmeiser knew or not that his canola field was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene and that he must pay their Technology Fee.

You are surrounded by lawyers. Resistance is futile.