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Man Finds $1,000 Prize in EULA
bhtooefr writes "When Doug Heckman was installing a PC Pitstop program, he actually read the EULA. In it, he found a clause stating that he could get financial compensation if he e-mailed PC Pitstop. The result: a $1,000 check, and proof that people don't read EULAs (3,000 people before him didn't notice it). The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA."
One of our developers buried some easter eggs in a web-based game, and nobody has claimed them yet after several months.
:)
And the kicker is, players do talk about strange "bugs", even ask us to fix them, but none of them actually goes so far as to discover those eggs. Maybe they will now after reading this post
So I gather some of the 3000 users may have read the EULA but dismissed the possibility of real cash prize., just like not everybody entered suparmarket prize draw thinking that they won't be so lucky.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
where was that EULA link again?
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Don't know if it's worth 1,000.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
Now I need a magnifying glass to read al the fine print for my $$$.
That's not going to make people read EULAs...all that will make people do is say, "wow, I wish I had been that guy, what a break!"
And why don't I just go ahead and memorize every end user agreement, warranty information card, and instruction booklet just to be safe?
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
From now on, I'm at least doing Ctrl-F, 1,000
Mmmm. That's a tough one, but I'll have to pass on the $1,000.
Too many look like that Gator one - pages and pages of gobbledy-gook and mumbo jumbo which ultimately translate to all your base are belong to us.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm still waiting for my scale model replica Herbie The Love Bug that I was supposed to receive after mailing in 15 Cheerios box tops in 1974.
The only thing this proves is that the world should not have to be burdened with crap like EULA's.
You know what it said?
Congradulations, you now have a small shaft.
This is great, but EULAs are still way to long to read. Maybe if they made them like 2 paragraphs and included a summary above them, more people would read them.
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
... we, the slashdotting community, will not be receiving an award for burning down their server. :(
... what's his name and email again? i'm his cousin ... and stuff.
After discovering the nastiness of the kazaa family back in the day, i've been much more careful about reading the EULAs - plenty of "iffy" programs have not been installed on my Windows machines because of the trash found in so many EULAs that apparently no one reads anymore! (or did they ever?)
'cept our newly enriched friend
If you go too fast, you miss the money...
so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA
Because all spyware apps include a EULA with "THIS IS SPYWARE" in big bold letters? People don't read EULA's because they are legal fluff and mean nothing to the average reader. I personally would like to see a standard, simple format for EULA's like credit card companies do with rate disclosures. Otherwise most users have no idea what they have just agreed to.
Now companies can bury advertisements for other products and use creative writing that makes it sound like there could be reward by reading the EULA.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Nobody needs to read a GPL license more than once; why can't we have standard comercial agreements? What we need is a standard set of EULAs for different types of software with coded variations ("basic closed source EULA with XXX clause").
I'm reinstalling all the programs I own just so I can check their EULA's now.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
I read my Win2000 SP4 EULA and found out that I owe THEM $1000. Those jerks still haven't cashed my check, either.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
A lot of EULA's are difficult to understand, a lot of technical/computer language, and not to forget legal/lawyer stuff.
Knowing so many open source lovers (like myself) are here on slashdot, how many of you have read the GNU GPL?
I had trouble understanding it all, but English is not my primary language...
Dependency hell? =>
haha, now everyone will read their EULAs in the hope of finding a prize.. nice tactic guys.
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
I read EULAs too.
Nowadays I usually just skim really fast through them though, since many are so similar in structure.
I know they aren't enforceable, at least where I live. However, if I'm requested to use a product from Microsoft - yes, work dictates - I make sure to read every clause of the EULA, privacy policy, etc. If I find some crazy clause I can use it as a good legal argument for not using the program. And I don't want to be semi-legally bound to perform in a naked marriachi band outside Bill Gates' home. Even if it IS for charity.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Don't bother reading them. It's a tremendous waste of time and they're in a language only professionals can understand anyway.
The obvious solution to the EULA problem is to never agree to one, ever. If you use only Free Software you never have to agree to one because a free software licence is never a licence to use.
So this is the latest variant of the old fable (big boulder in the middle of the road, everyone walks around it, the chap who finally pushes it aside finds the treasure underneath). But really - nice as the story is, is it going to make any change to how people treat an EULA? I think not.
People will still not read an EULA because
(a) They know thay not every EULA has a $1000 check buried in it
(b) They still won't understand the real point to reading the EULA - which is understanding exactly what the software claims it will do on your computer.
Unless they get (b), there really is no reason to read an EULA.
me, and everyone in my team are just going to spend time reading EULAs all day long. Sounds like its more productive than research anyway.
I don't want to read
In Steve Mann's award winning paper he describes a technique he calls Ouijagree. The next time you are presented with an EULA, grab three nearby people (family members, fellow employees) and have them gentle place their fingers on the mouse. Add your own fingers and then call upon the spirits to agree to the EULA. Watch! as the mouse slowly glides from its current position, possibily spelling out the names of lost loved ones, as it approaches the I Agree button. Should it linger over the button too long, feel free to click yourself as the spirits have made their intention clear. Now it is not you who has agreed to that EULA, it's your long dead great grandfather, who came from beyond the grave to take away your legal responsibility.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Will he read the soul-selling EULA on the back of the $1000 check?
Well how come reading EULA would prevent users from getting invaded by spyware? Indeed having EULA is just making spyware legal in one sense. Of course no such a vendor, would put 'this will install spyware' in EULA of its program. There're hundreds of ways of telling you'll get the info from usage of computer and send them to somewhere.
Unless you check the codes/traces of an application, you can never be sure if it'll install a spyware or even a spyware itself.
0.033% is pretty low. I'm thinking it will go a bit higher if people start giving away money with their programs, even if "we don't care... we just want to use the damn thing!"
They're too busy reading the EULA of every software they install, and all this time I thought they just didn't care!
It would be 725 pages long to cover every possible scenario.
It would not be legally binding anywhere except maybe in USA. In Finland, at least, EULAs and other forms of shrink-wrap-licenses are ballast. They are not legally binding as they are not contracts.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Weatherbug from aim for example has no mention its spyware in the EULA. Is htat legal?
http://saveie6.com/
From TFA:
"The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA."
This is even assuming the 'this product includes spyware' statement is even there, encoded in a bunch of legalese. Companies that have spyware in their products are going to hide it as much as is legally possible, and even moreso if they think they can get away with it. This story indicates that they probably CAN get away with it.
Tag lost or not installed.
Sure, it cost them $1,000, but it's going to get their name in the press.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
Reading a EULA all the way thru ? that's like asking people to read a century(s) old document : It's in a language that uses words that you think you recognise, but, when "experts" are asked, mean something quite different ...
The problem is that a EULA is not *ment* to be understood by the "EU". If it was, it would not have been written by a language only advocates and the like *claim* they understand (but I'm, because of first-hand information, not all that sure about that either).
Even worse : EULA's legal in one country can be (largely) un-lawfull in another. But even when the (soft-)ware is adapted to the language of a country, the EULA remains the same : largely against the country's (the adaptation is done for) laws.
I ask you : is that to tell the "EU" what the can and cannot do, or is it just to put up a "you are not allowed to do anything" -smoke-screen ?
EULA...read? Somebody make a EULA search engine...or better yet, a Legalese-English translator for EULA's.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
'Nuff said.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
It's not the company's fault. It's a problem of our litigious legal climate that comapnies have to put in print what should be obvious. In a way, companies are doing us a favor by delineating our rights.
Now if only people would actually empower themselves by reading them. They're usually not that complicated.
have limits imposed on them such as a word length etc etc, im sure im not the only one who has encountered excessively large and watered down EULA's
EULA's suck. Why should this do anything to change my opinon?
PS. I wonder what would have happened if the corp refused to pay up?
You didn't read the article did you?
Im pretty sure EULAs are not legally binding under the UK Consumer Rights Act (namely the bit that talks about fair legal contracts drawn up buy both parties on equal footing, and also statutory rights) anyone know better?
Personally I think this is a case where the government needs to protect the ignorant and at the same time protect me, because if the idiot masses don't read EULAs and allow their consumer rights to be chipped away, then mine will also be lost.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This things should not be legally binding. Consumers should have a standard, mandated set of rights when purchasing software and other products. EULAs only exist for the benefit of companies that don't tend to give a shit about the interests of their customers (spyware as the perfect example, microsoft as another).
SAILING MISHAP
I'd just like to point out something about the claim in spyware EULA's which says that you are agreeing for them to capture "non-personally identifiable information" -- while it may be true that the captured web history and form input logs don't literally have your name in them, it's a simple matter for the customer of the spyware marketing service to match up a given capture log with your known identity on one of their web sites, by matching page sequences and/or time stamps, and then from that starting point they then can tell what you *individually* were looking at, searching for, and entering into web forms on every other site you visit, forever.
Imagine if you follow somebody around for months and watch every move they make -- you can learn anything needed to advance whatever agenda you have in mind.
has small print on the back stating that by endorsing that check, he agreed to switch his long distance carrier to Siberian Porn & Bell, he provided his bank account number to the entire country of Nigeria, and his testicles will be fed to contestants on Fear Factor.
Anyone think this might be a very slick publicity stunt? How many users (of course not /. folks) will want to check out this company's software now? Brand exposure in media and customer downloads... hmmm...
I'm not convinced that the people who include EULA's in their products even read them. There is clearly a lot of cutting and pasting that goes on. I find lots of bizarre threats about infringement and exclusivity attached to unsupported free products. One Eula had changed the warranty section to read: "by agreeing to this license, you are granted a warranty for a period of zero (0) days.", rather than just change the language to indicate that their was no warranty.
Best one I've seen so far: reading the EULA for a RPG dice rolling program, I find this:
Section 3.a.i: This software is a guitar utility. This is a learning tool.
A dice roller that teaches you to play the guitar? Now that's a feature!
It seems obvious to me that most software companies don't want you to read their EULA. They make it as difficult as possible to do so, by saving the best bits for last, by having large sections all in caps (likely a requirement for emphasis, but more difficult to read I find), and by having the EULA display windows as small as possible, so that excessive scrolling is necessary.
I have the GPL tattooed on my pasty white ass. My GNU/Mantoy reads it to me every time he comes over to satisfy me.
And the kicker is, players do talk about strange "bugs", even ask us to fix them, but none of them actually goes so far as to discover those eggs. Maybe they will now after reading this post :)
An easter egg is a fair amount different than a prize offering burried deep in an EULA. People generally will find easter eggs 1 of 3 ways:
1) by searching specifically for an easter egg because they think there is one there for some reason
2) completely by accident
3) after being told exactly how to find it by someone else who found it through methods 1, 2 or
Finding a prize in an EULA is a little easier since people really should be reading legal contracts before signing them with the next button. Not very many people are just going to randomly search for easter eggs in software, since that's just a waste of time, and equally few people will investigate bugs fully enough to find an easter egg by mistake.
The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA.
Is this sentence readable to anyone?
Please, proofread what you submit. Cause the slashdot "editors" sure aren't going to do it for you.
3000 people before me didn't notice. Cha-ching!
http://microsoft.com/exporting
a special consideration which may include financial will be awarded to a limited number of authorize licensee to read this section of the license agreement and contact PC Pitstop at consideration@pcpitstop.com. (FoxNote: it should be obvious we shouldn't bombard this email server) This offer can be withdrawn at any time.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
And btw, to answer your question - yes, I've read the GPL several times now and still don't get it completely. Whenever I notice a license like that (that I don't know fully) I try to search if anyone has written a short "what you can", "what you can't" article.
.com and everything else) is available...
That's a great idea for a website that has "plain language" translations of EULA's. Hmm, it appears eula.org is owned by a URL-squatter, but plainlanguageeula.org (and
Tag lost or not installed.
It's funny that you should say that. I wonder how many people have thought that up as well. My brother wanted to change things around a little, so he made dynamite [fist with thumb up like you are hitch-hiking] which, of course, beats everything.
testing out my trending skills
So please, read the freakin' license.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Since this has happened however, and now everyone is going to start reading EULA's, their will no longer be any worthwhile prizes buried in them... So, you can all go back to not reading EULAS's again...
Profit!
hard core geek-ware
The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs
This is not a goal I want to be moving towards.
I mean, I can go to home depot and buy a nail gun and a welding torch without having to read, parse, and agree to any complex and lengthy legal agreement. Why should I have to do this to buy and use software?
A few days ago I submitted a story about Blizzard not honoring their EULA in full. After much arguing with Blizzard's support staff, I have heard from them today:
The really funny part is that they have never asked for the old key, yet somehow they have disabled it. I can't check, because it never worked for me.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Who cares if he got money out of it? People win stuff in gambling bets and in casinos all the time. Now, someone who actually took the time to read an EULA -- that is newsworthy!
Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
i am 1337
/. -- 1 4m a 1337 h4x0r b3kUz 1 k4n $p33k t3h 1337 5p34k l1k3 n0b0d33Z B1zZN155.
n0, j00, 51r, 4r3 t3h s|_|(|. j00 ph41l3d 2 g37 fP, 4$$|-|phux0r. 1 4m t3h 0|/|3 wH0 15 1337 4r0uNd
why can't we have standard comercial agreements?
Right, and those are called laws. Most of an EULA is already codified in various laws, and everything else is asking you to give up your rights.
If I buy a telephone at WalMart I don't have to sign an EULA. If I buy a softphone at WalMart they expect me to agree to an EULA. What's the difference?
If I buy a car, it comes with software in it, but they don't expect me to sign an EULA.
As far as I can tell, an EULA is saying that Chewbacca lives on Endor.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The time I would've had to spend reading every single EULA, that manufacturers pretended I was agreeing to by installing their software, is worth far more than $1,000.
sic transit gloria mundi
Yeah, but if you IGNORE all the EULAs and DON'T register the apps, you have soon ripped off more than $1K's worth of software - it's a no-brainer really!
AT&ROFLMAO
...that spyware will bill itself as spyware? Or that they collect marketing data? Come on. Don't be so naive.
In order for a EULA to be enforceable, it must be 2 pages long
Fair payback by the software company would be to refuse to pay the $1000, since as a lot of people are always claiming 'the terms in EULAs are not enforcable.'
the namespace grows ever more crowded.
How about a web site where folks read EULA's for you ... And summarize them ... So before you click on OK to that 7 pages of printed text (packaged up in a 3x2 inch box ... You can read a summary ... and then read the expanded explanation for anything that tickles that "funny" bone ;)
Cheers,
--The Dude
Whenever I find what I believe is a piece of spyware on any machine I work on, I'll go and find the privacy policy and possibly see if I can "accidentally" install it or if I have to intentially install it. I also read the EULA if it comes up. No, I don't do this with every piece of spyware I run across, just whenever I come across a new one. Unfortunately, I haven't done that with this company. I guess I've been lucky to not have encountered any of their software. Or else I knew it was and just didn't research it. Dammit.
But why is the rum gone?
My chances of being the next guy to read a EULA and win $ is:9 99999 9 99 9 99 9 99
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
To 1
Gee... Where can I get me some more EULAs?
Soon the Triangle of Torvalds will be recovered, causing Mecha-Stallman to go on the rampage.
At that point only Ultura Gatesu and Megara Ballameru could save the day...
--
Hell, if someone is reading the UELA or NOT reading one they have, we developers have already won most of the battle. It's the people that dont, err... get a EULA to read in the first place that we really have to worry about!
;)
Forget the EULA, people just don't like to read - I can't count how many people order a music license on my site at the "retail" price when there's a big fat discount special right on the home page... but who's complaining.
-Mark -- Offering a price increase to all those that read this...
it took me a minute or 2 to understand that :)
/. my time will come and when it does, when the revolution happens, when the wind changes... ...you will all be sorry
alright well i wasn't teh 1337 h4xx0r this time...
But mark my words well
Bwahahahahaahahhahahah
It's just not practical to read every EULA all the way through. So much Legal mumbo jumbo and frankly I don't have time to read them necessarly. I mean, I don't read the manuel to all my appliances, or warranty all the way, or ingrediants to everything, etc. Here is what I propose:
Software comes with a set of "Nutrition Facts" regarding the software. It's something that's easy to summerize in terms of general requirements and the software has to state, in laymens terms, what the rules are. A simple 20 line bulleted list of "facts" should be required. Could our government (or any other) set up a set of rules software has to have posted with it? Could we set up a system such that a regular user can quickly glance over things that are not regular?
Sort of how the GPL is easy to sumerize basically. You could easily summerize the GPL, and I think I have seen it done, in 20 lines or less. Just a fact table or something. Can we generalize these things?
I mean, this idea is just a germ right now and off the cuft, but can you really expect someone to read every EULA? It's ridiculas and honestly software shouldn't be so complicated for a typical user.
Basically what I'm suggesting is a EULA for "the rest of us".
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Software companies, feel free to use in your own products. Released into the public domain.
----
YOUR_COMPANY_NAME_HERE ("Company") makes this copy of NAME_OF_YOUR_SOFTWARE_PRODUCT ("Software") available to you ("Licensee") under terms of this End User License Agreement ("EULA"). By installing software you agree to be bound by the terms contained herein.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
Company makes no guarantee of any kind, and waives all implied warranties including mercantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. Company shall not be held liable for any damage, personal injury, deaths, loss of profits, growth of additional organs, or any other injury or debt suffered by licensee due to any negligence, fraud, or other criminal or civil breach of contract or law committed by company. Licensee will hold company harmless under all circumstances in perpetuity.
PARTICIPATION IN GAINS
Company shall participate in the profits, advantages, or other benefits that the licensee experiences as a result of installing, using, or otherwise having anything to do with software no matter how remote or mundane. Company reserves the right to inspect the records of licensees business, premises, or person at any time for any reason to determine if it is entitled to a share of licensee's gains.
GRANTING OF ALL RIGHTS
Licensee gives software and company the right to do do anything it wants to your property or person for any reason. See limitation of liability and participation in gains for more information.
SEVERABILITY
Should a court of any kind find any part of this agreement unenforceable, the remainder of the agreement shall still have full force and effect.
IMMUNITY FROM LAW
No court shall have the power to enforce any of these provisions against the company, but shall have unlimited power to enforce any provision against the licensee. Licensee accepts the jurisdiction of any court.
RECOVERY OF FEES
Licensee must reimburse company for all enforcement fees incurred as a result of any action, in addition to paying a $100,000,000 penalty to the company, whether or not its action is justified.
GOOD FAITH AND DUE CONSIDERATION
Licensee declines any due consideration in accepting this EULA. Licensee accepts this agreement in good faith and verifies that they have read it and understood it in its entirety even if they just scrolled to the end and clicked OK without so much as glancing at it.
RESTRICTIONS ON REDISTRIBUTION
Licensee may not redistribute software in any way. Licensee may not format shift or space shift this software. Licensee waives all fair use rights, including the right to make a backup copy. Backup copies may be purchased from company for a (large) fee.
RESTRICTIONS ON USE
Licensee can only use the software for its intended purposes. We'll let you know what its intended purpose is when we catch you doing it and bring costly legal action against you.
Licensee must discontinue use of software and upgrade when company decides software has reached its end of life.
REVERSE ENGINEERING
Don't even think about it unless you've got really deep pockets so we can sue you for everything.
1. Read EULA
2. Profit !!!
Im waiting for the movie to come out.
Sounds like a great marketing idea.
1. Get a friend of yours to say they got $1000 from your software
2. Advertise the event on your website
3. Include a fair share of advertisements on page
4. Submit miracle story of how great EULA's are to slashdot
5. People flock to your website to see what it's all about
6. Profit
Even underpants gnomes can figure this one out. Until somebody does an indepth report on the story I'll consider it a ploy and move on.
...are Slashdot dupes part of some kind of reward scheme? Do we have to email someone if we find one?
Is this what you were looking for, my good man?
There's a person that had luck. Since most of the software I use is under GPL or BSD License I don't have to care about stuff like EULAs anyway, although I admit that I never really read them when I used Windows. I guess I'd be more carefull now because all of that Spyware cra*...
And yes I actually read the GPL, at least a German translation. I never read the BSD License though, but I know the Important parts.
I would also thin that the Idea of standardized EULas for different kinds of programs would be good, since that would in my opinion also support their existance from a legal perspective.
How is this informative? The GPL *is* an End User License Agreement. The "You can't sue me if I crash your machine" section comes to mind. The redistributing binaries requires redistributing source also comes to mind. There are usually almost identical clauses in a normal EULA (although they usually prohibit redistribution). And just like a EULA, you must agree to them to use the software (or am I allowed to sue and claim I *didn't* accept the agreement).
This doesnt prove that the other 3000 people didnt read it
Even Software Companies.
Your brand-new generic-EULA is so faithful that I can't even read the first paragraph.
Contratulations.
Please, can somebody explain me the funny part of this CEULA?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Is there a way to remove Eulas from programs (in Windows) when installing them?? So you don't actually agree to anything?
Lucky bastard. The only thing I get out of a EULA is a headache and an unfriendly reminder that I have to pay $150 for early cancellation of services.
The $1000 was just a last-ditch attempt to distract him from reading the really important part of the EULA.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The first thing I do when I receive a credit card or load application is to flip it over and read the mandatory disclosure table. 2 or 3 seconds and I know right away if I'm being offered a good deal or taken for a ride. Why should EULAs be any harder?
No one reads them and everyone (including the companies that include them with their products) knows that no one reads them.
Armchairgenius.com - Where everyone is a genius.
I don't know why people are complaining that there are too many open source software licenses. I typically only see a handful of them. And if the software says it's GPL'ed, I don't have to read the damn thing, because I read it already back in 1991. I know what it says.
But these commercial licenses - Jesus Christ they are long, they are complicated, they are in fine print, they are badly written, and they are all unique. It's like a fricking zork maze. Someone needs to figure out how much time it takes to read software licenses and add that to the "cost of ownership" that they report.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Has anyone tried to write a software to actually read EULAs and give the user some sort of brief summary of its contents?
x .php?board=1
I'm just curious.
Ismenio
------
Interested in chess computers?
Check:
http://users.boardnation.com/~chesscomputers/inde
Site: http://www.ismenio.com/chess_computers.html
More companies should move the GPL style of EULA. (As much as I like the free stuff I am referring to the versioning idea in this case.)
That way, instead of requiring a lawyer every time you install a piece of software or run Windows Update you could call your lawyer only periodically. "Hey Larry, Could you check out MS EULA 4.3 and see if any of the changes bother you?"
With EULAs all over the place there is no way you can keep up. Many of them are 20 pages or more and how can you read that when you just want to install the software and see if/how it works?
Coding Blog
Or is it propoganda?
Noone reads the EULA. Apparently, noone takes it seriously. We develop a story like this, and all of a sudden millions of people start reading EULAs in hopes of something in return. This practice is now a game and now that millions are participating we'll find that arguments against the EULA will become frivolous. After a while, reading the EULA will be 'DUH!'.
The people in control are very smart.
I just click 'continue'.
What? Your install programs don't say 'continue' on that page? Maybe you should invest in a hex editor.
Of course, I'm not nearly so cavalier with business oriented purchases...
"No one reads them and everyone (including the companies that include them with their products) knows that no one reads them."
They also know that their customers cannot be bound by EULAs unless they have expressly negotiated the agreement in return for specific compensation.
BUT, because the EULA is common practice, they must also attach them, since not doing so could be construed as indicative of a lack of due diligence, and used against the publisher.
I got something like this in the E-mail just the other day! It said all I had to do was reply with a list of all my contacts and I'd get $1,000 from Bill Gates. Stupid me, I deleted it.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
According to the band the reason for this clause was to assure that the contract had been read and understood and therefore, all technical specifications for stage conditions, power and so forth would be met.
Maybe the goal wasn't to prove that people don't read the EULA, but to get cheap ($1000) publicity...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
How many more people will purchase their software now that they've heard about this, just so they can be the first to claim the next $1000?
/. friendly spin on it.
I be this was really just some sort of publicity stunt to boost sales, and they're putting a
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
The lawyer quoted in the article, Parry Aftab, isn't she the infamous Aftab who (was said to have) harassed Katie Jones of Katie.com?
From the article "...if the agreement is incomprehensible, it may be unenforceable, according to Aftab."
Personally i wouldn't trust Ms. Aftab to sit the right way on a toilet. Let alone give sound legal advice.
Oh, and down with software patents and Linux rules n all that.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Most EULAs (especially Microsofts) are so open-ended, long, and filled with legal doublespeak that even if you read them thoroughly you still don't really know what you're agreeing to.
There should be a legally enforced industry-standard EULA such that all that is listed at install time are any non-standard exceptions to the standard, in plain non-ambiguous language. This makes what you're agreeing to short,sweet and clear.
I think that's the biggest belly laugh I've ever had on slashdot.
The New Software Purchase
1. Go to shop and enrich [bloated corporation name] by hundreds of hard-earned dollars.
2. Return home, open oversized box, remove numerous cardboard sleeves & other parts of trees that died in the cause of marketing and extract CD.
3. Run installer and get confronted with "Agree to this crap or Agree you have just blown hundreds of hard-earned dollars" (as retail store will refuse to accept return of opened software box).
Summary of Situation:
A EULA on screen is not worth the paper its written on, as it is coercive. It may not be as obvious as a 7-foot tall thug standing over you until you pay $50 for a beer in a seedy bar, but holding you to ransom with an "ok" button is still a form of duress.
Thus, any so-called "agreement" is not a freely-entered agreement at all, but consumer submission to what amounts to financial terrorism and corporate sophistry.
1 4m a 1337 h4x0r Apparently, Sir.
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
My buddies and I in college had an ongoing gag... anyone who got up and left the vicinity of their computer with a lab report/paper/presentation on the screen had the phrase "I poop too much" inserted somewhere at random.
Unfortunately, an otherwise excellent paper that I got back had a red pen circle around a certain phrase on the 9th page, with the comment "proofread" written next to it.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
One of our developers buried some easter eggs in a web-based game...
Would this web-based game be Half-Life 2 by chance? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I hate Steam.
The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA."
Of the things I want to do the LEAST in my life, reading EULAs ranks pretty high among things which do not cause physical pain or summering to my loved ones.
Fuck reading it. I am more likely to look a prog up on CNET. If it had a lot of thumbs-down, I read those and see what people complain about. People always complain about spyware if its there (and sometimes even if its not)
Doing a google or deja search for name of the program and spyware always brings up some discussion of that topic, which lets me know conclusively (well, as far as something can be conclusive on an internet thread) what the answer is.
Reading the actual EULA? If I am a billion dollar company about to bind something with my product, yea I'll read it. But for something I am installing at home, behind a firewall which will prevent it from phoning home, FUCK IT! Who cares what they wrote?
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
...but I read that EXACT same story in a magazine a few years ago. Almost verbatim in fact. But like I said, not actually accusing you of anything. I'm sure it's purely coincidental.
Back in '95 or so, free SSH clients were more or less non-existant. About all there was for the PC was F-Secure's SSH client, which they allowed people to download 30 day trial copies for. When my copy expired, I poked around in the EULA that came with it. I found that the EULA stated that the copy was valid for exactly 60 days. =)
;)
So I emailed them asking them for a copy with the correct number of days enabled. They wrote back, instead of making the programmers go to the effort of recompiling, how about just a free copy of the client? Which was exactly what I was hoping to get by asking for the extra 30 days.
To this day, I still use my free copy of F-Secure SSH.
-Bill Kerney
My eBay auctions used to contain a clearly stated link "see my about me page for terms and conditions." The page would contain sales terms and such, mostly no brainer stuff like buy what you bid for. There's also a discount offer.
Despite the instruction and link, only about 50% of the winning bidders ever asked for the discount.
I've since dropped the link, but the text and discount offer are still there. It's main purpose was to say that I don't take PayPal payments; that statement I moved to the auction listing itself in plain, simple English. "No PayPal."
Maybe a third of buyers still attempt to do PayPal payments.
-gko
This is going to be ugly. PC Pitstop will be the most popular software tomorrow after the company goes bankrupt from bandwidth fees.
Hmm... should I read every EULA for every piece of software I ever get in case I can win $1000? No way, not worth my time. I bet this guy doesn't buy that much software.
An EULA is of questionable enforcability. They seek to limit rights you'd normally have. We;; you can't just make statements that do that. Generally, for someone to give up rights of any kind, you have to enter into a contract and a contract involves an exchange and a signing. No, buying it doesn't count, because an EULA is ex post facto. In a real contract (like a mortgage) you have all the terms laid out beforehand, both parties discuss, and then sign a version they both agree to.
The GPL is different in that it seeksto give you rights you do not normally have. You don't normally have the right to distribute a copyrighted work, or to make and distribute derivitive works. So what the GPL does s say ok, I'll let you do these thigns with my copyrighted work, but only if you follow these conditions. This sort of thing is enforcable because you are under no obligation to agree ot the conditions, but then you don't have the additonal rights the GPL would grant you. You are still free to use the software, just not distribute it or make derivitive works.
Now the thing is commercial companies don't want to have to play the legal game with EULAs. They don't want a standard form one because it could and would be tested, and if it tried to limit people in ways not legal, but that they wanted, it would be rules unenforcable. They'd much rather have their own and be able to harass peopel on a case-by-case basis.
It is a piece of insignificant text with no legal bearing whatsoever...
Why waste my time reading a document that I did not sign and does not compel me?
(And no, using or clicking "I Agree" does not mean that you actually agree to be obliged by the license, as they try to frighten you to think)
I am not a lawyer but I think that a EULA, which gives anyone or a company the right to spy on my activity or lift information off my machine, should be not a legal and binding "contract".
Can I sign away my basic right to privacy without even knowing it?
There is no juriprudence on this?
..I bury easter eggs in my back yard... and by easter eggs.. I mean heads.
I remeber that The Register once had a story about a sweepstake for the Windows ME launch. It gave the winner the opportunity to visit the Microsoft Campus, get Windows ME and some goodies and participate in the traditional elbow-rubbing with the ME development team or something like that.
However in the contest rules, somewhere in that legal mumbojumbo, was a paragraph stating, that if the winner was from Canada, he or she had to solve a mathematical quiz to prove his/her intelligence prior to awarding the prize.
EULAs haven't even been legally enforced in a court-tested environment. It is very doubtful that it is even legal at all. All EULA statements assume rights that a copyright holder simply doesn't have (as opposed to the GPL which simply states that if you don't abide by the terms of the GPL, then normal copyright laws and precedence apply).
Because of the untested nature of the EULA, there are no court judgements to even compare against, hence the wide variety of legal speak over what goes into these. Heck, even shrink-wrap licenses have yet to be really enforced on a wide-spread basis of any kind. In every case where the EULA might even be involved, there were other statutory violations that were invoked where the EULA was never even an issue.
If you want to compare this to credit card, loan applications, or even a housing contract, enough of those have gone to court that a reasonably good attorney can review the case history and see what has been enforced and what has not. That still doesn't stop contracts with illegal provisions, but that is an issue you have to decide upon yourself before you sign.
I'd like to think that a second look with your Model One Eyeballs would show you about the minor grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors shot through your post. If not, just why are we bothering to pay you to teach? It appears that you would be better replaced by a bot.
If I submitted the stuff I sell for a living in the shape your post is in, my editors would probably hounce it for rewrite.
"Those who can, do, those who can't teach."
Tech Public Policy stuff
If I have to read the EULA, or am legally expected to have done so, I need to know the length of it before purchase.
If I'm buying a new mousemat and it has a 20 page EULA, I'll decline the purchase, as the reading time outweighs the value of the product.
This means all products need the full EULA text printed on the outside of the packaging.
EULAs are bullshit that keep lawyers in sports cars, one reason my games don't have them.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
The thing is that the content of the text is ignored partly because people are looking at what buttons to push to get past it to get the software they wanted at the pace that the expect computers to deliver it...
A computer screen a work or the home is exactly the WRONG place to ask if you've developped sober second thoughts about having shelled out money already.
You could write in there that they agree so sell their souls into perdition and nobody would notice.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It seems to me that even if you attempt to read the EULA of a lot of the spyware out there you can't tell that it's spyware.
It's not as if they say somewhere in the text "This is Spyware".
You can't reasonably expect every 10 year old, grandmother, or even your boss at work to actually understand any of the technical mumbo jumbo that Spyware/Adware uses to describe itself. Most people do not understand what spyware/adware is, that it may be bad or how it would be described in a EULA.
Good idea for your next software project: you take in EULA text, match paragraphs of text to macros in your database... so you get report like:
./clarify_eula -m 3.5
#
Allowing 3.5% paragraph mismatch
$STANDARD_COPYRIGHT_STUFF = 87%
$STANDARD_DCMA_JUNK = 7%
$STANDARD_MISC_LEGALESE_JUNK = 4%
Unamatched (98% umatched): "by finding and reporting a security hole in this software, you get 100 US$ rebate"
Unmatched (72% unmatched): "blah blah blah"
Finished.
RTFEULA
The computing industry has been slacking off on its acronyms. Special thanks to Pitstop for helping us out here.
<insert witty linux comment here>
no no no no no. STOP! Do the math!
Reading EULA's does _NOT_ pay.
At $7.50/hour (very conservatively), if it takes 15 minutes to read the EULA, and 3000 people have to read it, then it really costs society $5625.
It's right in front of your face. How can you publish stories like this? This is almost as bad as the local news telling you to only pump fuel after dusk.
Then of course, there are the related urban legends like this, this, and this.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Many people don't read EULAs because they're understood to be generally unenforcable or intentionally deceptive.
The problem with an EULA is that it makes use of a product contingent on you agreeing to terms not stated until after having already paid for it. Whether or not you can receive a refund if you do not agree is moot (particularly since it may be exceptionally difficult to receive a refund on software purchases).
There are ther issuse too: EULA dialogs do not constitute an agreement. Keybounce, font issues, display problems, etc. can all obscure or entirely hide the EULA for the user, so it's impossible to unequivocably establish the end-user agreed to the terms of the agreement. The assertion that the software would not install without consent is demonstrably a technical fallacy.
What if the end-user is frightened of installing software and has a thrid-party do it for them? If a third party installs the software with blanket consent to use the system but without specific consent to install a particular application?
If you read EULAs, they often have ridiculous requirements such as prohibition of using the software in conjunction with other vendor's applications, or "you can't use this software if you don't recycle soda cans" sort of things. Moreover, they are often written in such a manner as to be intentionally vague or difficult to understand, or to use jargon that has specific legal meaning beyond the standard denotative meaning (i.e., it reads differently if a lawyer reads it compared to a lay person).
Here's a place where the GPL has an advantage in spades: reuse. Rather than a per-application regimen of legal restrictions of dubious enforcability and tortuous readbility, the GPL spans thousands of applications, is clear and concise, has very few restrictions, comes with annotations and FAQs that clarify and provide the spirit of the agreement AND, you can get the agreement BEFORE you get the product and WITHOUT PRIOR PAYMENT.
The GPL and LGPL are great if you are a company. It makes getting your legal ducks in a row (with regard to software) as painless as the system could ever make it.
3) after being told exactly how to find it by someone else who found it through methods 1, 2
or upon being leaked by the developers themselves. I think this is one of the common ways easter eggs get discovered. From what I've seen of the access codes to some, I don't think anyone would have discovered it without some help.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Wait till you buy a house. Getting through all the paperwork takes about an hour, and that is just if you have someone summarize it and you sign it. If there was anything I was curious about, I skimmed through it - but to read everything (and understand it all) might take days.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I know someone who works for the House of Blues and she can confirm that is exactly why the bands/artists include those demands in their contracts. More often than not, the venue will not read the contracts and the concert-goers suffer because the venue didn't live up to the band's requirements for a successful show
Funny, I refer to software that has installed itself onto my machine without my knowledge as 'Spyware.'
You beat me to it with the Frontline thing, but I actually think that the credit card example is very fitting here.
The problem with the credit card industry is with the misconceptions of how it works. When you're given the impression that it works like any other industry, then when you learn the facts you feel like you've been lied to. That episode showed me that it's mostly a marketing problem that needs to be addressed.
Getting back on topic: The standard format of credit card agreements allows a customer to easily compare two similar contracts and the total text is limited to what can fit on that sheet of paper. With EULAs, while there is a general format, it's entirely in paragraph form (no tables) and the length has no ceiling so quickly comparing two similar EULAs is practically impossible. Also, the EULA is shown to the user when installing software and is normally produced in a small scrollable window which many times doesn't even fit a full paragraph.
One of my peeves is that it's always tucked into the packaging. If the EULA was sufficiently succinct and standardized, it could easily fit onto the side of a box like food products that have FDA nutritional info. But that's a different issue.
Conclusion: A software EULA is in paragraph form with an unbounded length that allows the author to easily hide stuff. A credit card agreement follows a standardized format with very limited surface area and any special "hidden" clauses, while perhaps difficult to understand, are easy to locate using side-by-side comparison tests.
I'd say the credit card example fits well.
This is not my sig.
GAIN is the Gator network. Gator changed its name to Claria after suing some website for calling its software "spyware" because they believe that people consenting to Gator's actions in the EULA means that those who install it have notice of Gator's activities, making it non-covert, and thus making the "spy" part of "spyware" inapplicable. Nevermind conventional useage of the term "spyware" refers to software like Gator which reports all manner of user activities back for marketing purposes as well as delivering advertisements, user authorization in EULAs nearly incomprehensible to the majority of educated adults notwithstanding.
Gaim, as mentioned, is an open-source IM client, which should not be confused with the GAIN advertising network made by Claria, the makers of Gator.
I almost wonder if gaim was ever trademarked? Or if there's any cause of action for the loss of reputation for being misassociated with GAIN? Clearly, the grandparent posts highlights a likelyhood of confusing the two...
For PLATO users, an unattended terminal session was likely to earn you a posting in derfnotes:
"I'm such a derf, leaving myself logged in here."
Ahh, nostalgia...
... but it still isn't relevant so WHY am I allowed to ruminate about it in the EULA? It just doesn't make sense ladies and gents.
I am the Barber of Seville.
Something the old man used to do to make us change the toilet paper... Mom found a $20 bill in the toilet paper roll, so the kids from then on out changed it every time it was empty for the chance to look and see if there was another big bill in there...
What works for the bathroom, obviously works for EULA.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Has anyone else ever read the EULA for the original Visual Studio .NET (the 2002 version)? You'll notice that the words "activate" and "activation" never appear in it, let alone some phrase that limits the number of times you can activate the software. I'm curious... can Microsoft legally force people to activate software if they never agree to do it?
I am scientifically inaccurate.
As a young software engineer I found that not even the lawyers read their own legal disclosures. After a bruising round of edits where a lawyer edited his own edits, I inserted the phrase "Reading legal mush can turn your brain to guacamole!".
:-).
And indeed, that's how the Amiga Rom Kernel Manual was published (Addison Wesley ISBN 020156775X - if memory serves). To my amazement at the time, I did not even get in trouble
As for me, I write for money. Doing this means that my stuff goes throgh an editor. I write how-to pieces on Linux. I'm not interested in writing for academic journals.
As for what i do to advance humanity... alternative energy research into biofuels. What do you produce besides hot air?
Tech Public Policy stuff