I stand corrected about this EULA [LWN.net]

I stand corrected about this EULA

Posted Nov 16, 2005 4:15 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
In reply to: Sony's rootkit: an update by pr1268
Parent article: Sony's rootkit: an update

I was wrong earlier; the GPL is indeed a good example of a license vs. a contract.

Furthermore, I found the actual text of Sony's EULA on Mark Russinovich's Web page here.

I read through all the legal-ese (IANAL), and sure enough this EULA does indeed target the "DIGITAL CONTENT" of the disc. Which means pretty much all the content, since a CD is a 5km-long spiral of microscopic pits and plains that represent binary 0's and 1's. How someone might interpret the music to be part of the digital content could be debated; I realize that once you play the CD on a loudspeaker system, it's no longer digital and therefore not subject to the restrictions of the EULA (although it does fall under the jurisdiction of performance restrictions under copyright law, but that's a whole other topic).

Also, I'd like to thank Mark Russinovich for sharing his experiences. Although I do not use MS Windows (I've been "Windows-Free" since August 2004), I feel that we need people like him with incredibly sharp Windows skills and a Blog to make people aware of the consequences of installing closed-source software (and having to agree to a EULA) for which you have no knowledge of what that software's actually doing to your PC.

But that goes for all licensed software. I feel better about running a piece of licensed software on my computers for which somebody is examining the safety, security, and reliability of that software (thus explains one of the many reasons I like open-source). A college professor told me that the legal issues of running licensed software later found to be intentionally (or negligently) malicious will be very seriously examined in the next few years. Perhaps the "Sony DRM Rootkit incident of 2005" is only a preview of what's to come...

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I stand corrected about this EULA

Posted Nov 16, 2005 9:27 UTC (Wed) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]

Despite reality, the EULA defines DIGITAL CONTENT not to include the music:

This compact disc (CD) product contains standard so-called Red Book-compliant audio files that can be played on any standard CD player, including those contained in many personal home computer systems. As an added feature, this compact disc (CD) product also enables you to convert these audio files into digital music files and/or may also contain other already existing digital content (such files and content, collectively, the DIGITAL CONTENT)

Incidentally, even if you accept the validity of EULAs, this one doesn't come into force until you click "AGREE". If you don't click "AGREE", then presumably normal copyright law is in effect:

By clicking on the AGREE button below, you will indicate your acceptance of these terms and conditions, at which point this EULA will become a legally binding agreement between you and SONY BMG.

Unfortunately, in the USA "normal copyright law" includes the DCMA. A case could be made that if the DRM software was "technical measures", and the technical measures included a mechanism designed, documented and labelled to turn off the technical measures, then you aren't circumventing them. But I wouldn't care to rely on that if I had to defend myself against Sony.

As always, I Am Not A Lawyer. Sorry.

Tab, enter?

Posted Nov 17, 2005 3:15 UTC (Thu) by midg3t (subscriber, #30998) [Link]

Now if you were to press tab a couple of times and press space or enter on the "Agree" button, would you still be accepting the EULA?

What about if you wrote an application to scan all window elements for the text "I Agree", and any that matched would be sent the appropriate Win32 API "activate" signal.

And what about if somebody else installs that software on your machine.

How about if you wrote a wrapper around the installer that bypassed the entire EULA, beginning execution at the first real install step, were files are decompressed & installed.

Perhaps it's a long shot, but in a world where the law is what is written and not what is intended, who knows what you can get away with.

I stand corrected about this EULA

Posted Nov 17, 2005 8:52 UTC (Thu) by chad.netzer (guest, #4257) [Link]

My reading is that they DO include the "audio files" in their definition of "DIGITAL CONTENT", or at the very least, any "digital music files" created from the "audio files". And you can bet that is what they intended.

What is wierd is that they claim to include software to convert audio-files into digital music files, which further implies that they may have included code from LAME (and probably some CD-Paranoia like application). Ie. they claim to include ripping and conversion software. Hmmmm.