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|AGREE TO THIS EULA OR DIE _ 0 X|
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|Please read and accept the terms of the following EULA |
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| ______________________________________________________ |
| |I. This legal document represents a contract |^| |
| |between you (the "Noder") and us (the "Gods") |-| |
| |II. The "Gods" grants the Noder to use E2, provi- |x| |
| |ded the Noder forego personal hygiene and dedicate| | |
| |90% of their time on E2. | | |
| |III. NO GUARANTEE OF ACCURACY OF INFORMATION, | | |
| |EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, YOUR RIGHTS MAY VARY FROM | | |
| |JURISDICTION TO JURISDICTION THIS IS IN. YOU | | |
| |AGREE THAT ANY EYESTRAIN CAUSED BY THIS LEGAL | | |
| |DOCUMENT OR EPONYMOUS' EKW THEME IS SOLELY YOUR | | |
| |RESPONSIBILITY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, | | |
| |MEDICAL EXPENSES, MENTAL ANGUISH, OR LOST TIME. |_| |
| |__________________________________________________|V| |
| |
| .--------. .------------------------. |
| | BACK | |I SIGN MY SOUL TO NATE | |
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EULAs are those annoying little screens that accompany every program that uses InstallShield. While they may have something useful to say - see GPL - they are most often abused by companies looking to restrict your rights. Recently, with spyware being installed with many popular peer-to-peer programs, many people have questioned what allows these companies to install functional equivalents of trojan horses secretly alongside the program.
The answer?
You agreed to it when the program was installed
Many users simply click past the EULA screen when they come to it. EULAS are designed to be unreadable, as evidenced by the sample EULA above. Usually, a EULA will be chock-full of legalese, peppered with outdated terms like 'null and void', and capitalizing nouns spelled forth in the first part of the EULA. They are usually lengthy, and most users have neither the time nor energy to discover just how sneaky a company can be. Some programs will force you to scroll through the EULA - nothing a quick page down key can't solve.
A EULA will usually restrict the following
- Reverse engineering
- Use of third-party software
- Distributing the program
- Allowing the company to dodge liability for faulty software
- No guarantee of warranty
- The software is "licensed, not sold" to you
- Usually allows the company to change the EULA without notice
Of course, with all these restrictions, a EULA's legal force could be compared to that of used toilet paper; some restrictions are utterly ridiculous. Of course, there's an alternative - return the product for a full refund - but many stores will not accept a return for opened software. So, you buy software, you read through the EULA, you discover several nasty clauses, you try to return the software, but no returns are accepted, so you're out $3000 or whatever ridiculous sum you paid for that software. To LICENSE the software - remember, it's not sold to you.