Cory Doctorow on Shrinkwrap Licenses

An anonymous reader writes "Web privacy advocate Cory Doctorow is on about shrinkwrap licenses, in his latest essay. They've always been onerous. Now, Doctorow says the new EULA in Vista and even the MySpace user agreement could put users at risk of being sued. He closes with: 'By reading this article, you agree, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all [everything].'"

Comments

Reading the what?

[Anonymous Coward]

By reading this article, you agree, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all [everything].'

This shouldn't be an issue here.

Do we have fair-use rights to EULAS?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Kinda off-topic, but I was wondering. Given that a EULA contains a huge amount of intellectual property, and that the lawyers who drafted it thus have the right to permt/allow/deny every instance of its use, is it legal to quote from EULAs?

Shouldn't there be something you have to click through before reading a EULSA.. something that says basically "you cannot view/use/think about this EULA except under the terms define below... "

Re:Do we have fair-use rights to EULAS?

[nomadic]

we are allowed to quote things to make our point.

Re:Microsoft suing users?

[DarkOx]

It's kinda of the reverse of the old line about STDs.

"remember you are having sex with everyone they have ever been with"

In this case its

"remember you are trusting every future owner of the ip"