The Small Print Project                                       

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.)

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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).

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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)

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

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