Another hot build of one of the top browsers, incorporating p2p and social networking — but look out — Opera Unite‘s EULA is an eUGLY one.

Via FactoryJoe:

——-

Not exactly “decentralized” (more on this in the next section).

Furthermore, if you read through the Opera Desktop End User License Agreement (which you had to if you installed the browser — shame on you if you didn’t!), you would have read section 7: USE OF SERVICES (emphasis mine):

Opera Unite and Transmission and Receipt of Content: Certain features of the Software and Services, including Opera Unite, may allow you to post or send content and/or links to content stored on your computer, that can be viewed by others (”User Generated Content”). Opera Software ASA exercises no control over User Generated Content passing through its network or equipment or available on or through the Services. You agree that Opera Software ASA is not liable for any loss of data. YOU MAY ONLY POST OR SEND USER GENERATED CONTENT THROUGH THE SERVICES THAT YOU CREATED OR THAT YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO POST OR SEND.. You agree not to use Opera Unite to upload, transfer or otherwise make available files, images, code, materials, or other information or content that is obscene, vulgar, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws or third-party rights, hereunder but not limited to third-party intellectual property rights. We do not claim ownership of any User Generated Content. However, by submitting User Generated Content to us, you grant us and our affiliates the right and limited license to use, copy, display, perform, distribute and adapt this User Generated Content for the purpose of carrying out the Services.

You agree that we are not liable for User Generated Content that is provided by others. We have no duty to pre-screen User Generated Content, but we have the right to refuse to post, edit, or deliver submitted User Generated Content. We reserve the right to remove User Generated Content for any reason, but we are not responsible for any failure or delay in removing such material. We reserve the right to block any user’s access to any content, web site or web page in our sole discretion. Opera Software ASA reserves the right to terminate your account if you use your account privileges to unlawfully transmit copyrighted material without a license, valid defense or fair use privilege to do so.

Disputes may arise between you and others or between you and Opera Software ASA related to content or commerce, including User Generated Content. Such disputes could involve, among other things, the use or misuse of domain names; the infringement of copyrights, trademarks or other rights in intellectual property; defamation; fraud; the use or misuse of information; and problems with online auction or commerce transactions. You agree that all claims, disputes or wrongdoing that result from, or are related in any way to, the content of information that you post, transmit, re-transmit or receive through the Services, Opera Software’s network or Software are your sole and exclusive responsibility. Opera Software ASA may at it’s discretion, block certain web sites or domains and re-route you to other pages. By accepting these Terms of Use, You hereby consent to this.

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I encourage you to read Chris Messina’s entire post — it’s a good one!

EJ Tower wrote in after hearing audio of Cory’s PWNED seminars @ USC (ongoing).

> I’ll try to keep this quick. Been enjoying your pwned lectures a lot.
> Just got a Java update today for my computer and decided to give the
> ULA a read through and found these interesting:
>
> “You acknowledge that Licensed Software is not designed or intended
> for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any
> nuclear facility. Sun Microsystems, Inc. disclaims any express or
> implied warranty of fitness for such uses.”
>
> ” This Agreement is the entire agreement between you and Sun relating
> to its subject matter. It supersedes all prior or contemporaneous
> oral or written communications, proposals, representations and
> warranties and prevails over any conflicting or additional terms of
> any quote, order, acknowledgment, or other communication between the
> parties relating to its subject matter during the term of this
> Agreement. No modification of this Agreement will be binding, unless
> in writing and signed by an authorized representative of each party.”
>
> with that last part, any agreement you had with sun is changed when
> you click accept to update Java.
>
> “G. Installation and Auto-Update. The Software’s installation and
> auto-update processes transmit a limited amount of data to Sun (or its
> service provider) about those specific processes to help Sun
> understand and optimize them. Sun does not associate the data with
> personally identifiable information. You can find more information
> about the data Sun collects at http://java.com/data/. “
>
> good to know i am telling them things.

The alternative, of course, being Adobe Flash?!?

photo by whurley via flickr.

The long-awaited MS Office 2007 is here but is it worth it? The NYTimes’ David Pogue says, why hell yes: “After a radical redesign, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are almost totally new programs.”

It may help MSFT that the apps are finally online, in keeping up with Google, but history says that most companies/enterprises will be slow to upgrade to 007, and perhaps for good reason. In fact, there really may be no good reason to upgrade…

As Elsa found:

Product: Microsoft Office Standard 2007 (trial)
URLProduct: http://office.microsoft.com/office/eula
Lowpoints: Lots of vague language about “Internet Based Services” without explaining what that means. There are three separate EULAs without explaining that the RFF terms are the ones to pay attention to if you bought Office in a store. I installed without being connected to the Internet. Then when running Office, Microsoft kept prompting me to install things such as a desktop search for Outlook.

Highpoints: This doesn’t have to do with the EULA, but installation was faster than in the past. And by default, Microsoft offers the least-intrusive installation options. You’ll have to mark a radio button if you want Microsoft to see how you use Office for its customer experience program, for instance.

I’ve been working on a three part summary of this project and am awaiting a bit of peer review before posting it to the masses. I’m still receiving submissions and feedback from the ‘Net trawlers among you and forever invite and appreciate your input — the more exposure forsaken EULAs get, the more they’ll be recognized, accosted and the sooner we will see reform in the way licensing agreements are designed, enforced and accepted.

In the coming days I’ll post on Microsoft’s Vista EULA and obtuse DRM policies as a possible watershed moment/turning point for digital agreements as we know them. Additionally, I’ll summarize the year in DRM (digital rights management) and how consumers and developers/corporations alike can learn from present-day experiments and reforms in DRM-free music distribution as a way to reform the licensing and sharing of products and services. Finally, I will suggest some best practices and how I’ve found many major corporations to not only shy away from discussing their EULAs and licensing policies, but have actively worked to obfuscate the historical evolution of their licenses online and otherwise.

Now a word from YOU… Tracy submitted this in an attempt to calm her rage against her television set-maker’s unruly requirements for registration in order to provide warrantied support.

EULA URL: http://www.rca.com/content/viewdetail/1,2811,EI79-CI255,00.html?
Product: RCA Thomson, Customer service for a broken TV.

Low Point: In order to *ask a question about a product*, I have to “register an account”: I must consent to their profiting from a sale of my personal information. I know from the story of Veterans Admin stolen laptops, and other stories of stolen data, that every “live” contact is worth well over $10/. …How much, exactly, is my information worth? ( That is, I am a real person, with a real address, and a real phone number, and a real email)

PS they didn’t answer the question, they did give me a phone number (Unavailable on company literature. Company requires internet registry for any contact.)

Jesse, who previously contributed an iTunes 7 breakdown is back with everyone’s favorite critical security update (distributed every month on the second Tuesday, around the same time that Wimpy gladly pays for his hamburgers).

—–

Lowpoints: “THEY APPLY TO THE SOFTWARE NAMED ABOVE WHICH INCLUDES THE MEDIA ON WHICH YOU RECEIVED IT, IF ANY.”

– Hm, so by “SOFTWARE” they mean “CD-ROM disks” — this might be worth remembering. So you can’t disassemble the disk, for example. Does this include shredding it, I wonder?

“THE TERMS ALSO APPLY TO THE MICROSOFT:
• UPDATES
• SUPPLEMENTS
• INTERNET-BASED SERVICES, AND
• SUPPORT SERVICES

– Hm, what a lot of different names – what’s the difference between a “supplement” and a “support service?”

FOR THIS SOFTWARE UNLESS OTHER TERMS ACCOMPANY THOSE ITEMS. IF SO, THOSE TERMS APPLY. BY USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THEM, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE.

1. OVERVIEW. At the time the tool is running, the software checks your device for certain malicious software listed at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=39249 (“Malware”) and if detected, the software removes Malware from your device. The tool must be run again on the specific device to detect and remove subsequent Malware updates….

– Interesting. So MS can remove anything they please from your computer and you can’t say no — cute.

PRIVACY NOTICE: When the software checks your device for Malware, information is collected from your device only for the purpose of reporting to you whether or not Malware was detected and removed from your device. However, Microsoft may collect and publish aggregated data about the use of the software. If you choose, the software’s reporting functionality can be disabled by following the instructions found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=39987.&nbsp

– Nice that they let you disable the reporting feature – but the page linked is the full manual, and the actual instructions are rather hard to find (I couldn’t find them in a quick search)

[...]

Highpoints: “PLEASE READ THEM.” – Wow, they say please!

In an utter abomination to everything Mozilla stands for, the download page for the AOL Toolbar extension tells you to go visit AOL and find out what EULA you’re agreeing to by downloading:

Basically, the AOL toolbar is farming all your activity and software configurations:

4. PRIVACY.
(a) TECHNICAL INFORMATION.The Software is configured to automatically report back information relating to computer errors arising in connection with use of the Software, without notice to you. Information on your Software configuration settings may be included. This data is sent to AOL to help us diagnose performance issues with, and improve, the Software.

(c) SOFTWARE ID.The Software may contain a specific identification number for the purpose of tracking the number of unique instances of the Software in use.

Not to mention, as soon as you download (install) the toolbar “YOU AGREE TO RECEIVE NOTICES FROM AOL ELECTRONICALLY.”

Augusto went looking for abusive EULA’s and submitted this one from Virtual Reach‘s “Conditions of License”:

“It is further agreed and understood that such conditions are not exhaustive and that Virtual Reach may from time to time **impose further conditions outside of this EULA**.”

Some other EULA’s we found that threaten to impose unstated conditions at any given time are: Verizon Wireless – constantly redefining the meaning of the world “unlimited.” Hmm, no others jumping out of my Db here… will have to keep hunting. Got an Ex-Post Facto threats for me?

It’s nearly impossible to draw conclusions to Microsoft’s DRM and licensing strategies beyond the obvious realization that they’d like to get away with locking up as much as possible, often unreasonably so.

But Matt McKenzie does a good job in this CW article titled “Vista and More: Piecing Together Microsoft’s DRM Puzzle.” But how much pressure is Hollywood putting on Microsoft behind the scenes (or otherwise) to convince the Corp to tighten the debilitating DRM vice on it’s latest hardware and software and then run with it as a marketable (yet elastically defined) standard?

tuaw has nice screenshots of Zune and what it does in this review.

Has anyone bothered to splurge on one of these so-called iPod-killers? I’d also love to hear exactly what kind of new restrictions come with the 600 dollars Sony PS3 systems.

Here’s a list of the many Web sites and products out there that serve to help the community better understand ToS, EULA and other agreement issues they may encounter.

Many of these come from readers’ suggestions — please add any I missed in the comments, I’ll eventually build this into a wiki of sorts…

Columnists/bloggers occasionally covering EULA / terms / consumer issues beat:

Ed Foster – Gripe2Ed, InfoWorld.
Dennis Rockstroh — Consumer Action Line, San Jose Mercury News
Consumer Law & Policy Blog
Bruce Schneier on Security
Boing Boing
Wendy Seltzer’s Blog
Ed Felten – Freedom to Tinker

My research has pointed me to dozens of EULAs involving clauses forbidding the use of a product at or involving nuclear facilities.

Obviously, it does take computers and software to run nuclear power plants, etc, but it’s doubtful that anyone’s use of iTunes software will ever result in a mushroom cloud (unless, of course, their MacBook battery overheats).

So here are some of the EULAs and Terms of Service I’ve discovered that contain what I like to call the Homer Simpson clause, in honor of the beer-lovin’ animated character’s occupation as safety in spector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant (Sector 7G). Dunno how the U.S. can become less dependent on foreign energy if U.S. law has frightened every company into banning use of products for monitoring and/or discussions relating to alternative energy production.

I understand this is a typical precaution laid out in many limited liability clauses but some of these seem a bit extreme and may themselves need some regulation or at least suggestions of not so specific verbiage.

GE Industrial has an additional Nuclear Rider that must be signed in addition to their Apparatus Distributor Agreement — if products sold are “intended for use in connection with any nuclear facility or activity.” This “Rider for Nuclear Applications” (at the bottom of these terms basically reiterates the seller’s indemnity from liability claims that may arise from a “nuclear incident” as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Talk about dated!

If these agreements were a bit shorter and devoid of such ridiculous excesses they might be more effective, no? Ever hear of a would-be criminal who thought twice after reading a EULA?