I was reading that in the UK there is an investigation into the terms and conditions found in EULA's and can be found here (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/02/19/eulas_unfair_investigation/) makes for interesting reading and there is a link to the report mentioned there as well.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Yup. In the UK, if it breaks UK law it's an invalid contract. No 'ifs' or 'buts'. You can't even sign away your legal rights, unlike many other countries. Everyone's subject to the law, no exceptions, including the Queen - the last monarch to think he was above the law lost his head.
god save the queen...
sorry had to say that, anyway ya consider yourself lucky it seems like nearly everyones above the law here in the US.
Quote from: Will on February 20, 2008, 05:50:55 AM
god save the queen...
Great song.
Bear in mind I come from Northern England where McCarthy would have locked us all up for being Commies.... great Sex Pistols song ;)
It is rather unfair, expecting people to agree to an EULA that they weren't informed about when buying a product and that they don't understand - especially when they give themselves more rights to control the contract than the buyer. But, at the same time, Microsoft knows that (almost) nobody reads/cares about their EULAs...
This is clearly why Microsoft loves using Irish law as much as possible - nobody really checks the laws in Ireland (http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0301/abuse1.html).
Yeah, that's how it works in the UK. It doesn't matter what a EULA says. I thought it was the same in other countries though. The law is the law in the UK except if you are a politician.
Quote from: efflux on March 07, 2008, 10:35:56 PM
Yeah, that's how it works in the UK. It doesn't matter what a EULA says. I thought it was the same in other countries though. The law is the law in the UK except if you are a politician.
I agree with what you said about politicians, I am of a similar view my self and perhaps you would agree with me (Though he left office Eleven Years Ago) that there needs in the UK that needs to be both A Royal Commission and Independent Inquiry in the mess that was the Conservative Government under John Major, which must surly rank up there in the most embarrassing moments in British History the Norwegian Campaign of 1940 and The Profumo Affair of 1960 come immediately to mind.
;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
I wonder if anyone ever read even one of those agreements. I mean.. I bought the software and I want to use it. I'm not sure whether the number of users worldwide that always read them is actually greater than 10.
Also, I don't consider merely clicking OK to be a legally relevant action. Hiding important stuff within such an agreement would be considered fraudulent anyway in Germany and probably most other countries whose people are sane.
In the UK (I'm not too sure if it applies elsewhere) there is an "unexpected content" clause for things like EULAs. Its to stop mean people writing things in like "by using this software I agree to give the writer of the software my house, car, wife and kids". You can only get away with putting in things that are reasonably expected to be in there. Quite sensible I think.
Miles
Quote from: nikita on March 08, 2008, 07:54:17 PMHiding important stuff within such an agreement would be considered fraudulent anyway in Germany and probably most other countries whose people are sane.
Nothing's hidden, though. It's all there to be read before you install the software. However, if the agreement wasn't viewable before you buy the software then I would expect that's grounds for a refund, should there be anything unreasonable in there. Perhaps you could send a modified version back to the software's creators and see what they have to say? ;) (it's okay to change contracts as long as the other parties agree to the changes).
Quote from: JimB on March 10, 2008, 06:17:37 AM
Perhaps you could send a modified version back to the software's creators and see what they have to say? ;) (it's okay to change contracts as long as the other parties agree to the changes).
Hmm...Everyone should gang up on Mirosoft then, and refuse any contract apart from the GNU GPL...