Comments on: The Arcane Mystery of What Everyone Does

By: laptop battery

laptop battery — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:19:31 +0000

This is great news. Best of luck for the future and keep up the good work.

By: laptop battery

laptop battery — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:19:31 +0000

This is great news. Best of luck for the future and keep up the good work.

By: Steve R.

Steve R. — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:32:48 +0000

Point accepted. I guess that I am being a bit bipolar. Great EULA that you have there.

Here is a link to Battle of the Forms by William Woodward. Ed Foster, who died, had a wealth of articles on his Gripe Line webpage exposing the abuses of EULAs and Contracts of Adhesion. Unfortunately, that wealth of information appears to be no longer (easily?) available.

Mr. Woodward writes: “Increasingly, these fine-printed, boring documents are new “terms of contract” claiming to govern the relationship you have with the provider. The practice is common in all forms of business with business and consumers alike. But what is new is a set of provisions limiting your access to courts and juries and limiting your ability to get meaningful relief if the seller or lender either doesn’t comply with its service obligations or disobeys state or federal law.”

By: Steve R.

Steve R. — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:32:48 +0000

By: dmarti

dmarti — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:33:42 +0000

Steve R. -- you might want to read the Web Site User Agreement for my web site http://zgp.org/~dmarti/meta/tos/ and do something similar. (I was thinking of something like "by reading my blog you agree to send me a pony" but did that one instead.)

And please don't call people "consumers" even if they are end users of a network service. Network value comes in at the endpoints, too.

By: Steve R.

Steve R. — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:02:38 +0000

Incredible, contracts of adhesion are designed to unilaterally "protect" the seller by "restricting" (depriving) the consumer of their rights. To assert that we can't due better by not taking the trouble to negotiate seems incredibly anti-free market. Are we to blindly accept whatever a company says is in our best interest?

Ms. Singleton also makes the unbelievable assertion that the ability of the consumer to negotiate a contract would -> "make every purchase an endless research process." and would not facilitate business. So we are to left with the conclusion that the role of the consumer is to mindlessly accept what a company gives us as somehow being in our best interest in-order to buy a product? As a counter viewpoint to facilitate commerce, companies could save significant dollars by not hiring lawyers to develop these "contracts" and not printing them. If these contracts of adhesion are pointless from the consumers point of view, then why do companies spend significant money developing and distributing them? Clearly not for the benefit of the consumer.

While this may seem far fetched, if a company can include a contract of adhesion, why not the consumer? Ms.Singleton seems to take the position that only companies can issue contracts of adhesion, but I would advocate that if a company can generate such as so-called contract the consumer would also have the right to create their own contract of adhesion that can handed to the cashier at the time of sale that supersedes the company's. Based on Ms. Singleton assertion that contracts of adhesion facilitate business, companies should willingly accept the contracts of adhesion created by the consumer. After all it promotes sales!

By: dmarti

dmarti — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:36:26 +0000

Why don't more proprietary software vendors use a common license? The proprietary EULAs mostly say the same things — couldn't the BSA or somebody issue a standard one?