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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'."
So if you break your jig, or it gets stolen, you can phone up and ask for a replacement.
I once snapped a software CD and I got a new one. Can't be much different.
Except it isn't your jig, now is it? It's their jig that you just broke and you'll probably have to buy them a new one.
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?
Money for nothing, pix for free
I worked as a cabinet maker to put myself through college. Now I am a software engineer. Sadly, I totally get this... I do not think it is an attempt to be funny, I think they may be serious.
This is a very unusual situation -- a jig making jig. I've worked with dovetail jigs before, and they are complicated enough. I would think the reproduction and resale of the jigjig would be protected by patent.
Protection of the items made with the jig (jigs) is strange. It is similar to charging a royalty for the use of a simple dovetail jig. That is, if one licenses use of the ACME dovetail jig, they must pay royalties of x$ for each corner of each drawer made with the jig and sold commercially. Of course any cabinet maker would then simply make their own jig. One only buys a jig because it is convenient. Even if an item is patented, one may make a copy of that thing for ones own use.
The real issue is commercial viability. Microsoft licenses me to use Excel. GNU licenses me to use gnumeric. I also have some spreadsheet like widgets that I wrote. In general, because of licensing, I will use my own jig, I will not use either Excel or gnumeric -- the terms of both are bad for me. It is similar for the shopowner. A single shop needs a bunch of dovetail jigs. They can buy a bunch of jigs, make a bunch of jigs, or license the jig-jig and make a bunch of jigs. Or they can look at the jig-jig and make their own. There is only one question - "which solution is most cost effective?"
I think this company will find that there is a big difference between coding Autocad or Microsoft Excel from scratch and making a jigjig. A huge difference in basic old fashioned man-hours.
> If you cannot afford a good enough lawyer to make a convincing argument that the EULA should
> not be valid, you will lose an enormous amount of money. In the event that you do hire a good
> enough lawyer, you will only lose a large amount of money.
This is an unfortunately common misconception.
I have been sued twice in my life by people with far more money than I have. In one case, I defended myself - against their real "went to law school" attorneys - and won. In the second case, I hired an attorney, won, and they were forced to pay all my legal expenses.
Both times, the other parties tried to pull the "we're going to play the 500lb gorilla, and sue you into oblivion" routine. I think that they were expecting me to run screaming or something. I didn't. They lost.
Bring it on, lawyer-boy.
The common trait of both of these lawsuits? I was right. And, despite the cynicism that a lot of people seem to have about the American legal system, the person who's right will prevail in a vast majority of cases.
If someone threatens to sue you, and you're right, let them. Go in, make your case, and you'll probably prevail. A judge will know that you aren't an attorney, and generally cut you a fair amount of slack.
This seems to be more of a gray area than, say, a car, and yet not quite like the "content" of a CD or DVD.
It's a device meant to produce jigs, apparently. So it's a tool designed for creating items. Now, the way I look at it, these absolutely stupid licensing restrictions have a solution, much like the stupid licensing of compilers way back when. Some of you older folks out there might remember a time when you'd buy a C compiler (for example). You'd have to give the company that wrote the compiler royalties on every product sold that was created with that compiler. It's true. Screw open source, man.
Then along came GCC. Sure, you needed the commercial compiler to compile GCC, so that version of GCC you created was restricted (legally). Then we point out the stupidity of the licensing scheme - recompile GCC with the GCC you just created, and the new GCC is not restricted. Most software companies then saw the stupidity of this kind of licensing and licensed their products with a new kind of less restrictive license. Now I can't think of any, offhand, that don't simply allow you to compile and sell your program.
Having dabbled in wood working myself (although not having made any dovedail joints), it seems to me if you have a jig to make dovedail joints you can use it to make another restriction free jig. Use the original jig to make a jig, then use the new jig to make a jig, and viola, no stupid restrictions.
It may not be as simple as recompiling GCC (because the jig creates a dovetail creating jig, not another jig that creates a dovetail creating jig), but if I was annoyed, that's what I'd do.
Really, though, it just points out the stupidity of this kind of licensing. I find it hard to believe there aren't any other jigs with less stupid restrictions.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Is it illegal to plant next to your neighbor? No.
Is it illegal to spray your plants with Roundup? No.
Do plants fuck? Yes.
If Monsanto wanted to protect their IP, they should not have permitted their genes to pollute Mr. Schmeisser's field. If they could not prevent that pollution, they can hardly blame Mr. Schmeisser for attempting to make the best of their negligence.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is due to the fact that as the consumer you hold the right to waive any implied warranties, including those contained in the First Sale Doctrine.
This is beside the point. It has nothing to do specifically with software, which is NOT exempt from first sale doctrine, at all.
So when you click on "I Agree" in that EULA, you are agreeing to that expressed warranty
Actually, no. The only thing that says "clicking 'I agree' means you agree" is the EULA itself. So, if you don't agree, you can happily click "I agree" without, in fact, agreeing.
as long as it's spelled out in the contract, and you used the item therefore agreeing to the terms, it can be upheld in court.
And if you don't agree, you're free to use the software anyway.
What's interesting is that regardless of whether the end user agrees or not, such a contract (presented after the sale) is invariably illegal, and wouldn't hold up in court, because it's an attempt to change the terms of another contract that has already been executed (purchasing the software is a contract, and the EULA is attempting to modify the contract after it's been executed, which is illegal.)
In order to be upheld in court, an EULA would have to be presented to the purchaser before they buy it, not afterwards (at which point, it doesn't matter whether the user clicks "I agree" or not.)
I've been looking to buy one of these soon, as it turns out.
TemplateMaster isn't a jig in the usual sense. It's a jig to make jigs. The problem with most jigs of this type (dovetailing, etc.) is that you tend to make a lot of passes with a powerful tool (a router) and sooner or later you'll screw up and route the shit out of your jig. When your jig costs $600, you're gonna be pretty pissed.
TemplateMaster lets you build jigs out of cheap materials and then use *those* until they wear out or you screw up. Then build a new one. The likelihood you'll ruin your TemplateMaster is much less since you really don't use it that often.
The problem is that you can use the TemplateMaster to make jigs out of substantial materials like aluminum that are viable for resale. Now, that's generally not a big issue - there are lots of products like that in the world - but if you make a product for production, you charge a hell of a lot of money for it since you know it'll have a limited market. This is designed for consumers and is actually very inexpensive even compared to other consumer jigs.
The mfgr is in a catch-22. He's made a product for consumers, but if it's picked up for production usage, it can seriously undermine his business.
Personally, I think he's going the wrong way with this. He *should* be making his own jigs from the TemplateMaster and selling those (in addition to the TemplateMaster), and use existing laws to block other manufacturers from making and selling identical products. Even if they don't sell, their existance should protect him, and who knows, maybe they will sell...