EULAs Getting Worse And Worse
from the thank-you-Microsoft dept
Dan Gillmor’s latest points out just how bad end user license agreements are becoming with the main example being Microsoft’s latest EULA – which makes you promise that they can update your computer whenever and however they wish. The fact is no one reads these things at all. Lawyers for software companies basically make sure that they are so ridiculously in favor of the software company that in most cases you’re probably better off not knowing what you just agreed to. Gillmor suggests that we need consumer protection laws that will guarantee that if a software maker’s software screws up, they should be required to fix it – and also that EULAs shouldn’t take a law degree to understand. His final point is dead on: “What’s amazing, and disturbing, is that any of this should even be an issue.”
