Surprises in Microsoft Vista's EULA

androthi writes "Scott Granneman takes a look at some surprises in Microsoft Vista's EULA that limit what security professionals and others can do with the new operating system. You want to post benchmarking results? Well, Microsoft may now have a say in it. Vista's EULA no longer shows up on Microsoft's software licensing page, but does still exist — also take note of Windows DRM deciding what you can and can not listen to, and Defender deciding and removing what it considers spyware automatically (by default)."

Comments

UCITA and EULAs

[Lonewolf666]

There is indeed an attempt to make EULAs contractually enforceable, the so called Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA).
Wikipedia's article on the subject, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCITA, does however claim the UCITA "has only been passed in two states as of 2004 -- Virginia and Maryland". If you live in one of those, you might be out of luck.
In other jurisdictions, EULAs are probably unenforcable. Wikipedia has another article that covers the US situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkwrap_license.
In Germany, a few years ago Microsoft failed to enforce the EULA that disallowed separate sales of OEM software. The court ruled that an equivalent of the First-sale doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_first_sal e applied. The EULA that said otherwise was obviously disregarded.

Re:The Benchmarking is for .NET 3.0 only (FUD)

[Trevahaha]

I did... it does not state that. Please highlight where you think it says Microsoft must approve your results before you publicly post the information. From what I see, it just says you must post all the information in a publicly accessible place (such as a public website). It also says Microsoft reserves the right to re-run the test and publish their benchmarks.
From http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973265. aspx

Benchmark Testing, Microsoft .NET Framework
You may conduct internal benchmark testing of the .NET Framework component of the OS Components (".NET Component"). You may disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Component, provided that you comply with the following terms: (1) you must disclose all the information necessary for replication of the tests, including complete and accurate details of your benchmark testing methodology, the test scripts/cases, tuning parameters applied, hardware and software platforms tested, the name and version number of any third-party testing tool used to conduct the testing, and complete source code for the benchmark suite/harness that is developed by or for you and used to test both the .NET Component and the competing implementation(s); (2) you must disclose the date(s) that you conducted the benchmark tests, along with specific version information for all Microsoft software products tested, including the .NET Component; (3) your benchmark testing was performed using all performance tuning and best practice guidance set forth in the product documentation and/or on Microsoft's support Web sites, and uses the latest updates, patches, and fixes available for the .NET Component and the relevant Microsoft operating system; (4) it shall be sufficient if you make the disclosures provided for above at a publicly available location such as a Web site, so long as every public disclosure of the results of your benchmark test expressly identifies the public site containing all required disclosures; and (5) nothing in this provision shall be deemed to waive any other right that you may have to conduct benchmark testing. The foregoing obligations shall not apply to your disclosure of the results of any customized benchmark test of the .NET Component, whereby such disclosure is made under confidentiality in conjunction with a bid request by a prospective customer, such customer's application(s) are specifically tested and the results are only disclosed to such specific customer. Notwithstanding any other agreement you may have with Microsoft, if you disclose such benchmark test results, Microsoft shall have the right to disclose the results of benchmark tests it conducts of your products that compete with the .NET Component, provided it complies with the same conditions above.