EULAs and contracts

Posted Feb 10, 2006 19:53 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (guest, #14569)
In reply to: EULAs and contracts by giraffedata
Parent article: Linux in Italian schools - five months later

You say "I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it" which is true, but you also say "The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises" which basically means that they are affecting how you can use their product.

Which gets me to the other thing you say "If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software" because it does not only affect your right to copy but a host of other things that are commonly found in EULAs, like Microsoft saying that you MUST upgrade if they tell you to or you lose the right to use the product.

So we get back to what I understood is the norm in several european countries:

- the first is that you can not add restraints or additional requirements AFTER having bought the product. You are only bound to the requirements known to you at the moment of the sale. In that case a judge would most likely agree with the buyer ignoring an EULA.

- the second is that sometimes EULAs require you to make promises which go against certain rights given to the buyer by local laws and in that case local law trumps EULAs. The interesting thing would be to see if a judge would agree with a buyer selectively ignoring parts of an EULA or that you can only accept or reject the whole of it.

Of course IANAL, just relating what I think I heard a vague friend of a cousin of mine say at a party where we were all lying stoned around the swimming pool. But it could be true though :-)