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

sined, sealed and delivered

[yagu]

To quote the Buckaroo Bonzai movie, Microsoft's locked in monopoly is sined, sealed and delivered. The EULA for Vista provides more evidence Microsoft is the 800 lb. guerilla that doesn't care about potential faceoffs on these issues any more. The article seems to think differently:

If you thought that the legal troubles the company faced in the late 90s would perhaps mellow it out, you were wrong. Far from it. The draconian limitations I've discussed could only be enacted by a monopoly unafraid of alienating its users, as it feels they have no other alternative. Microsoft may yet learn, however, that there are limits to what its users will bear. To paraphrase what my fifth-grade teacher often told his rambunctious class, "Beware the wrath of a patient user base." Security pros have already given Microsoft a deserved black eye over the never-ending string of gaffes and vulnerabilities streaming out of the company. It seems now as though another black eyes and a bloody nose may be coming, along with a final wave goodbye. There comes a point at which corporate hubris causes a fall, and we may be seeing the beginning of that collapse. If so, Microsoft will have no one but itself to blame.

I'm not sure how the article's author would see the user base reacting. Pick a different platform? How? At what expense? No, Microsoft has got this one in the bag.

I predicted in the late 90's if Microsoft didn't have to pay real consequences for their business practices, eventually they would be rolling out OSes at any price they wanted and noone would be able to do much about it. This was at a time where hardware dramatically was decreasing in price but Windows, all flavors, continued to sustain an amazingly different cost curve. I predicted eventually:

• Microsoft would put out an OS at around $400
• Their OS would eventually be the largest cost of a new machine

It looks like we're pretty close to both. I'll continue to do my development in my Linux world, but I'm guessing there will be a momentary raised eyebrow with Microsoft's Vista, Vista's EULA with it's almost amazing restrictions (especially compared with already draconian past EULAs) and then business as usual.

Re:sined, sealed and delivered

[ClamIAm]

Yeah, tell me about it. Soon, MS's EULAs will require a paper contract, with a notary cosine. And with every little thing they get away with, they'll get more obtuse. Of course, I feel like I'm going off on a tangent, here...

The only winning strategy

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Is not to play

Moo

[Chacham]

I have the best comment *ever* about this story.

I'll post it as soon as Microsoft oks it.

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.