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Doctorow Suggests Simple EULA Solution
Cory Doctorow, writing for the Guardian, has suggested an easy way for EULAs to become more user-friendly and less of a legal quagmire. He recommends reducing agreements for games, music, and ebooks to simply: "Don't violate copyright law." Quoting:
"'Don't violate copyright law' has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: 'You are not about to get screwed.' The copyright wars have produced some odd and funny outcomes, but I think the oddest was when the record industry began to campaign for more copyright education on the grounds that young people were growing up without the moral sensibility that they need to become functional members of society. ... it's not the entertainment industry's job to tell me what are and are not fair terms of sale for my downloads. If loaning an MP3 should be illegal, let them get a law passed (they're apparently good at that — the fact that they haven't managed it to date should tell you something about the reasonableness of the proposition)."
There are two main problems with EULAs.
1. You need a lawyer to interpret them correctly.
2. They generally have over-reaching and sometimes illegal demands.
Cory's idea would go a long way towards making these problems go away.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
You're already subject to copyright law... it's the law. Having a button labelled "I will obey the law" just makes it seem optional
Let's not get too radical here. Such an overly simple EULA would require corporate legal departments to acknowledge that the corporations are actually selling copies to customers, instead of merely licensing content. And that would surely lead to anarchy, what with customers thinking that they can use that copy for entertaining themselves, loan it to a friend or even sell it on as used. Surely the corporations are paying top bucks to their copyright lawyers for a reason!
In short, move along, nothing to see here.
They'll still need the EULA to say that you have no right to expect the software to do anything but trash your system -- not even to perform as advertised.
Right. When people transfer MP3, it's definitely like "loaning". Because when someone else gets a copy of my MP3s, I don't have it and can't listen to it for the duration they have it. And when they've finished checking it out, they delete it, naturally, since a "loan" is distinct from a "gift" in that it's temporary. Riiiight.
I'm sorry, but this is just disingenuous bullshit and really does you no favours. (You = the collective group of people trying to reform copyright.) How come every time the RIAA/MPAA/MSM/etc use the word "steal", people fall over themselves to split semantic hairs and insist that it can't be stealing because nobody is deprived of the original - and yet when it's convenient for their cause, they happily play the same linguistic tricks and talk of "loan", again implying the loaner is deprived of the original, when they're not?
Don't get me wrong - I have some issues with excessive copyright too. That whole "it's supposed to be for the encouragement of artists to create and the advancement of culture and society as a whole, not for endless profit generation for huge multinational corps trading off the past" is entirely up my street. I think life+70 is way too long. I think the DMCA and similar laws elsewhere are a bunch of crap. I hate DRM and as such have never purchased DRM'd music. So it's not like I'm trying to be an RIAA shill here.
But all that said, I find there is a frequent lack of honesty from the "copyright reformists", too. If it's not "loan", it's "share", another word that has warm and fuzzy implications and somewhat masks the reality of it. Let's be honest, when you put your MP3s on p2p it is nothing like sharing a toy with your little bro. You don't know the people leeching it, let alone like or respect them; you won't ever sit in the same room and share the experience of listening to it; above all, you aren't sacrificing any use of the MP3 yourself in order for them to have it - all of which are implied by warm and fuzzy words like "share".
Be honest. What you're actually doing is distributing a complete, perfect lossless copy, despite the fact the entire central notion of copyright is restricting who is allowed to distribute complete, perfect lossless copies.
If you honestly believe you should be allowed to do that, have the balls to stand up and actually say so and frame your argument as such. But don't come with these woolly words and metaphors of sharing (see above), home taping (not perfect copies), fair use (about excerpts, academic criticism, parody etc, none of which relate to Kazaa'ing your mp3s). It's just dishonest and undermines your entire position.
A EULA that said "Don't violate copyright law" is not a EULA at all... so why bother? I see no motivation to do this. Having no EULA would accomplish the same thing.
So "Don't violate copyright law" would work as well as EULAs and the law, if all companies want is copyright protection.
I think Mr. Doctorow's point is that anything beyond copyright protection shouldn't be needed.
I think there's a reason to elaborate on every single point in the EULA. And the reason is -
They don't want you to read it. By making the EULA 50 pages long, it makes it very easy to hide something ridiculous in it. Just look back and Sony and their rootkit. And countless others. Plus, if they decide to take you to court, they want to play on their field, by their rules. And by making rules that don't quite go together with copyright law, the jurisdiction becomes the contract law. And in that contract they have covered their ass in so many different ways, it's almost impossible to do anything. Look at the EULA for your cellular plan. You aren't even allowed to sue them, participate in class-action, or make any sort of claims against them.
There is of course a way to get around that, but it will take a very strong Supreme Court judge to do so.
This is why my motto (and fundamental rule for life) is Don't be a dick: it's simple to understand, and reasonable people can agree on what it means.