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The Self-Modifying EULA?
An anonymous reader asks: "Years ago, when I first installed Windows 2000, I accepted its EULA. Despite serious defects in the product, I resisted installing Service Packs because they modify the original EULA. Now even Homeland Security is on my back to upgrade and install a fix. I would be happy to install SP4 and all the security patches BUT ONLY IF IT IS DONE UNDER THE ORIGINAL EULA. Otherwise, Microsoft has made me an unwilling zombie. The clear fact is that Microsoft delivered a defective product- should not allow them to redefine our agreement. I cannot think of any other market that successfully browbeats its customers in this manner. Can this be legal? Has it been tested in court?"
Well there not really on your back to install the fix. It's just the simplest solution for the vast majority of people. If you are not the vast majority read the freaking website on how to plug up the holes. The DHS does in fact post more than one way to ensure you computer is secure but closing up the holes. Of course with the number of holes you will be bashing your head up against the wall. It depends on your stuberness. Here is an interesting question though. Are then infact changing the EULA or just giving you another one for the patch. Im not hip to the jive of the Microsoft's EULA.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Excuse me for thinking you're missing a few nuts but why the hell do you care what it sais in SP4's EULA? Yes, SP4 EULA has its problems and I would be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt if it was't for your inexplicable explanation that you need to update your windows now cause DHS sais so... doh! Where have you been for the last three years? SP4 came out on June 26, 2003!!! And as for MS products being defective - this is surely news to everyone here. Reality is a harsh place for those who can't cope with it.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I think it's just on products that you already bought where the EULAs' validity is questionable. The reasoning was that the terms of the transaction were already finalized... you paid money and got your product. The EULA tries to add on additional terms on top of that, when the transaction was already finalized WITHOUT those terms, or so they say (IANAL and all that). Add onto this the fact that many places won't let you return opened software, and you can see that anyone who CAN'T agree to an EULA for whatever reason is in an unfair position.
But the service packs are free, so this wouldn't apply there.
What if the EULA allowed Microsoft to require spyware on your machine. Actualy, the HIPPA crowd had a huge issue with a change a few years ago when MS added the ability with WGA to inspect your machine and documents and phone home at will... that's not in the original EULA of Windows XP. For the HIPPA people that addition could mean non-compliance with the law... by installing a security update? That's taking advantage of the customer needing their product to work in order to better their own position....that's wrong.
Unless you have to get the legal department to sign off on all EULAs. Some companies have this policy.
Under UK law, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 states that goods must be
* of satisfactory quality - which means the product you buy should be reasonably reliable.
* fit for purpose - which means it should perform the function you bought it to do.
* as described - means it should be exactly what the trader told you it was.
Those white envelopes containing CDs that state "by opening this, you are agreeing to these terms & conditions" are an example of where these EULAs arent enforcable.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
W2K with SP2 and SR1 is secure and stable thank you very much.
Not if you use Internet Explorer, any version of Outlook, Windows Media Player, Realplayer, Microsoft Word or Excel.
All of these programs have built into their design, at a low level, in a way that can't be fixed without breaking existing third-party software, mechanisms to allow untrusted documents and objects to execute code with the full rights of the application itself. Because Microsoft decided that sandboxes slowed things down too much.
Err, Billg and co owe more to implementing BASIC on every late-1970s platform, ever, and later selling a CP/M clone to IBM and then to every reverse-engineered-PC-BIOS firm in the world, than they do to any of Xerox's crown jewels pinched from PARC.
It was their dominance in the BASIC, DOS and DOS application fields which built the Microsoft empire, and without them the Windows product line wouldn't exist; Windows wasn't even worth using and thus commercially viable until Windows 3.0 in 1990 - fifteen years after the company was founded, seven years after the product was announced, five years after Windows 1.0 was released and the same year Microsoft's collaboration with IBM on OS/2 fell apart.
If anyone's to blame for looting GUI and WIMP technology from PARC (which had past precedent with Englebart, et al), it's Steve Jobs, who did a better job of commercialising the technology than Xerox ever did.
neuro at well dot com (when I post, it's my opinions, no-one elses)
It's a license, not a contract.
Arguments about single-sided contracts do not apply to licenses.
You're missing the point, that's not an EULA.
Shouldn't that be
while (!dead()) {
work_8_to_7();
if (total_hours_worked_this_week() > 40) hourly_rate=0;
}
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Ignoring the fact that "Slashdot" includes a large number of opinions and not just one, and does not advocate just one, you raise an excellent point.
The basis of copyright is the idea that, while people can easily copy ideas, works of art, and software (particularly when in digital form, not just when it's digital), it's not in our collective interest to always do so. Thus, the government enforces a time-limited monopoly on the implementation of an idea, preventing its citezenry from exercising their natural rights in the hopes that the creators of idea implementations will find this good enough incentive to create more implementations of ideas. At is core, then, copyright is a tradeoff between our natural rights and the desire to have more art, literature, software, etc.
Copyright is entirely artifical--in the absence of copyright, anyone can copy anything at any time in any way they wish. This is possible because it's an idea, not a physical object. (If you could create matter without any energy or prior matter, then many things would have to be revisited.) As it stands, however, you cannot simply replicate a physical object--you must deprive someone else (if it has a prior owner) of that object (or, if matter compilers existed, then the precursors of creating that object). That is theft--obtaining an object by depriving someone else of that object. Breaching copyright--a time-limited monopoly on the specific implementation of an idea (as opposed to a patent, which is a time-limited monopoly on the idea itself--is categorically not theft, as the original author still possesses the original implementation.
So that gives you some background on why copyrighted idea implementations (here, software) is different from physical objects. Without knowing what specifically you believe "different set of rules" entails, I cannot be of more help with that side of things.
Now, given this context, what is the basis of believing that the software vendor isn't required to provide defect repairs (e.g. security updates) that fall outside of normal wear-and-tear (which obviously doesn't apply, since the defects have been present from the original creation of the software)?
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Depends on what you mean by "enforcable".
In the UK, copyright law is stricter than in the US. There's no "fair use". You do, actually, need a license to perform any act that requires copying takes place. This includes copying software onto your hard drive (otherwise known as "installing" it) or possibly even into memory.
Now, if a license doesn't come with a piece of software, it's arguable that you have an implied right, under the Sale of Goods Act, to run it. If you can't run it without installing it (ie it doesn't run from the disk), then you may have an implied right to install it. Once. No back-ups. But if it does come with a license, or an EULA (which provides licenses if you agree to certain acts on your part), and the license is compatible with using the product in its intended way, then yes, you're obliged to either accept it, or take it back.
Is it not enforcable? Only in the sense that without draconian monitoring, some provisions of the EULA cannot be proven to have been breached. But otherwise, yes, it's enforcable, that license agreement, if provided, does indeed apply in the UK.
That's in the UK though. In the US, where the "Sale of Goods Act" has no juristiction, EULAs occupy a murkier area.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Indeed -- it's really unfortunate that some people don't realize this. Also, it doesn't help that lots of GPL software (especially on Windows) displays it and requires the user to "agree" as if it were one. OpenOffice is guilty of this one, IIRC.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz