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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].'"
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.
The whole point of the EULA is to ensure that there are so many conditionals that you'll be snagged by at least one or two unpalatable in any given jurisdiction. It doesn't matter if 95% or more of the EULA is outright illegal in your state or country; there'll still be enough leftover to have you by the short 'n' curlies.
In many countries shrinkwrap licenses or license agreements that you can only agree to after actually buying the product, or that are "implicitly agreed upon" are not legally binding and are contrary to public policy. None of the things included in those "contracts" are legally binding and that includes the exclusion of warranties etc., even if written in all upper case.
I know, I know, RTFA is so passe... but the point the guy was making was not that Microsoft was going to do this. The point was that some company is going to go bankrupt, and their obligations & contracts will get bought by somebody with the mentality of a patent troll. And that's when people will start getting sued. And if he/she/it's successful, it will encourage others to do the same.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I can't imagine Microsoft suing a customer over some small print in the EULA. That's just dumb.
Then why is it there?
I hope you don't agree to a lot of contracts relying on a belief that they won't be enforced because "it's just dumb".
This latest corporate fad for retaining a claim to sue while offering a soothing "pledge" not to under vague, unenforceable conditions is lame in the extreme.
-=Maggie Leber=-
we are allowed to quote things to make our point.
Many of the posters in this topic seem to have adopted the "that'll never happen" mentality. After all, there's no real chance of a corporation *successfully* suing people over these outrageous EULAs, is there?
I would like to remind those posters of the methodology used by the RIAA - threaten, harass, sue, and in the unlikely case that the victim actually puts up a fight, drop the case and run away.
Consider how many people, in the face of a mere *threat* to sue from the RIAA, have rolled over and paid the amount that the RIAA was demanding? Perhaps these people are cowards. More likely, they simply calculated that paying up would be much cheaper than hiring an attorney and fighting it out.
A EULA troll could exploit the same methods.
And the only thing that could put a stop to it would be a firm ruling by the courts that EULAs are in fact non-enforceable. A ruling which the trolls would avoid like the plague by using the cut-and-run tactic whenever faced with somebody who appears inclined to fight.
After reading TFA, I sat back and attempting to count just how many of those EULAs I had clicked through without bothering to read (after all, everyone *knows* that they are non-enforceable, don't they?). I can't be sure, but the number is most certainly at least three digits.
I suspect that most *present* EULAs simply don't contain anything that could be used for this purpose. That doesn't mean that *future* EULAs won't include them *deliberately*.
How long before Wiki has an entry titled "EULA bomb"?
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.