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

Simple

[tobybuk]

Don't buy it if you don't like the conditions. Oh, and tell your friends not to as well.

Re:Simple

[Asic Eng]

The problem with shrinkwrap licenses is, that by the time you get the license you *have* already bought the thing. To change contract conditions after a sale was agreed is cheating. Why should you be bound by any private contract which you did not agree to?

Re:Simple

[the_brat_king]

I don't think even the voided warranty is correct. Ford, GM, and Chrysler DID try to put warranty clauses in stating that if you used aftermarket parts, your warranty would be voided. This was struck down, and made specifically illegal (with certain exceptions... ie. a Nitrous Oxide boost on your car WILL void the warranty -- but then, it's normally illegal on the street anyway). Car manufacterers have tried a number of these types of "warranty clauses" to make a person use/buy only dealer authorized parts/services, and every time, they've been stricken down specifically because you've bought the vehicle (even using Ford or GMAC financing). The most common one is fluid changes and routine vehicle maintenance.

Contract law is a very finicky field, if you've ever bought or sold products, services or other goods based upon a license/contract/deed, you've seen that the contract must lay out, in minute detail, all items to be transferred, all services to be rendered, and limitations on the same prior to the sale; this also must be done after clearly identifying ALL parties to the contract, and all parties must agree to be bound by the specific terms set forth. With Contracts there is always the requirement of knowledge of the content of the contract, and a specific agreement to the terms of the contract.

Unless you sign an agreement prior to purchase, there can be no lease/rental. A contract must be written and agreed to BY BOTH PARTIES prior to the exchange of goods (or services). If this "eula" is inside the tool's packaging, then it is not enforceable -- further, the company may be liable for civil penalties if they try to enforce the contract, because it would be a "bad faith" action. Use of the tool cannot imply agreement with the license, that agreement can only be made prior to purchase, because the first party to the agreement (seller) has already benefited from the transfer of goods, and sold the goods without any contract attached. To try to enforce THIS license after the purchase could be akin to bait and switch (advertising or selling a product as something that it is not), in this case, the baiting would be a "general sale of the tool," with the switch happening if the company were to try to change the sale to an unlimited term of lease with specific limitations, via ex post facto attachment of license to the product.

Most EULAs are a moot license, and therefore, unenforceable from the start, because the contract is not given, and agreed to, prior to a party to the sale receiving benefits, and without a waiver prior to sale of the right to purchase an unecumbered product.

Re:Don't you get protections with a licensed produ

[Phexro]

"But how does this affect insurance? If it's their stuff and you only license it, they should cover the costs for keeping the jig insured against theft, right?"

Right. And the bank I financed my car through should be responsible for my auto insurance.

License-mania is a phase. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Western Union used to lease their telegraph machines, AT&T leased it's phone equipment, IBM leased it's computers, and so on. It will change, because in the end, it's a business model that antagonizes customers.

Re:Look at the silly monkey

[digitalunity]

You were right the first time. They are extremely stupid. Listen up everyone, THIS IS ILLEGAL. With one caveat, if the company actually owns a patent for this device, than you must pay a royalty(with permission) to recreate one. However, it doesn't seem this is incredibly inventive or creative, so I don't think they'd qualify for a patent on this.

The 'First Sale Doctrine' means you can do whatever you want with something after you buy it. Strangely enough, software seems to be excluded(kind of. But I don't understand why). This is a right, no one can take it away from you(except yourself, by contract). I don't think, if challenged, their EULA would prevent anyone from exercising their right to sell something they've purchased.

Hell, without the First Sale Doctrine, the RIAA would have shut down used CD stores years ago.

I warned you not to get me started!

[TygerFish]

We are living in a genuinely historic time, the age of legal technology. Now that I've said that, I better do some really fancy footwork.

The law and the individual's rights and privileges under it are among the most ancient artifacts of civilization. It is also something which evolves as a society evolves with tending towards egalitarianism in properous western democracies (the heavenly light shines from above on America...), that is, laws that take away freedom of action or that provide one person or group with advantages over others tend to be struck down or superceded by laws that create balance and that protect rights.

In a sense, you could say that some of the most far-reaching and most beautiful laws are the solutions to arguments that arise from logical problems. For example, once we had slavery, the preamble to the constitution cannot have meaning in a country that practices slavery. The argument arose and it was solved by an amendment to the constitution which clarified the argument completely: if all men are created equal, no man can be another's property. Human rights trump property rights. Slavery is illegal and slave-owners are S.O.L with regard to their property rights pertaining to their slaves. That makes sense.

At least that is how it worked in the old days.

Now, in the post-industrial age of television and the megacorporation, lobbying money and a just a smidgen of public stupidity create an opportunity for organizations to create agreements which function as devices to generate a planned result in much the same way that the parts of a transistor radio work together to produce access to the airwaves.

Laws like the ones that make the EULA possible are a technology--not one for establishing socially useful principles, but for circumventing and mutating contract law so that instead of providing a level playing field between buyer and producer, the law provides for the end-user signing away all his rights to legal rememdies by buying a thing and using it.

EULAs do nothing to protect the consumer. Nothing whatsoever. They are the legal equivalent of a booby-trap: you open the box, you open the envelope, you install the software, click on the box and BANG! according to the law, you've agreed to conditions that would have to be insane to agree to under any other circumstances.

If you don't believe this, consider the enormous tire recall of the last year or two and imagine what things would be like if the tire companies involved had had a EULA at their disposal:

'by breaking or cutting the ribbon on these tires, you agree that their purpose is purely decorative and that they have no function and no warranty, explicit or implied for any use but decoration of your vehicle...'

You can't sign away your personal freedom. You can't read a document, sign it, and become an indentured servant with no rights, but you can sign a EULA and let a company do whatever it likes to you with its neglicence.

The EULA is a device to give software makers the ability to treat software buyers like cattle. It is a prime example of how people make laws when they don't give a damn about the society that rises from them.