UK Report Slams EULAs

draevil writes "Britain's National Consumer Council has completed an investigation into the practice of software End User License Agreements(EULAs) with the conclusion that many consumers are signing away their legal rights and agreeing to unfair terms, which they could never have scrutinized before purchase. The report also acknowledges that even if the EULA were available prior to purchase, it would be unreasonable to expect an average consumer to understand the terms to which they were agreeing. Here are the full report (PDF) and a summary." The NCC recommends that the European Commission bring softwre licenses under the same consumer protections that apply to other products in the EU.

Comments

Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977

[tagishsimon]

UK consumers who have reason to contest contract terms would likely be protected by the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

Re:They didn't review the GPL

[sconeu]

GPL is a distribution license, not an EULA. Section 0 specifically says you don't need to agree to it to use the software.

GPL doesn't take away any of your (end users) rights under copyright law, it adds additional rights.

GPL (at least GPL2) is readable and pretty much understandable by mere mortals.

Re:Where's my signature?

[sjbe]

IANAL, but how does clicking a button on a VB form constitute a legally binding signature? A signature isn't the only way to legally agree to something. There are verbal contracts, contracts and licenses agreed to by an action (think GPL), the Uniform Commercial Code which sets the terms of many sales unless both parties expressly agree to some alternative arrangement, and others. A signature is just one way (albeit a common one) to acknowledge your agreement to something.

In college I asked a law professor about EULAs and his take was that (generally speaking) EULAs are enforceable only if the buyer has had an opportunity to review them prior to the sale. I think this is a reasonable argument, especially since in practice you cannot return opened boxes of software. He would be the first to acknowledge that this has not been widely tested in court however so take what I'm saying with however much NaCl suits you.

The Borland "It's like a book" license c. 1980s

[davidwr]

In the 1980s, Borland products came with a "treat it like a book" license.

It was written in Plain English. It essentially said you could trade, lend, buy, sell, resell, etc. as long as no more than one person had copies at a time and that the software wasn't being used on more than one computer at a time.