The Small Print Project                            

I’m not sure I fully understand how you’re deriving that Amazon will delete all the movies they sell you from that paragraph. To me it reads: If Amazon changes their service, something, mechanical I assume, may screw up and you won’t be able to watch the movies using whatever program you were previously using, but that you will still be able to view them. Say, for example you were using Quicktime, but Amazon made some changes and now you’re forced to view their content in some other program. Not that that is cool. Can someone explain this? Am I missing something, of course, I’m not an agreement writer either so I may be wrong here.

“If Amazon changes any part of the Service or modifies license terms applicable to Rental Digital Content or Purchased Digital Content, which it may do in its sole discretion, you acknowledge that you may not be able to access, view, or use Digital Content in the same manner as prior to such changes, and you agree that Amazon shall have no liability to you in such case.”

So this is the full text and honestly it sounds like they are simply protecting themselves from being sued if they make any technological changes. I assume this clause is being used to cover future methods of media playback, regardless of whether the end user has the capability of using such technology, which could possibly render the end users video defunct in some unforeseen manner.

Again, this is how I interpret this clause and I’m more than willing to listen to what everyone else has to say.

The MS one only applies to Virtual Machines. Basically, they’re covering the possibility that someone might run Winders in an emulator and thus getting a full memory map of their DRM and hacking it from there. It’s an analog hole-like end run around DRM.

Monster Angriff,

While the EULA was probably intended to cover the situation you describe, it nevertheless would permit Amazon to, say, change the license terms from whatever the payment scheme is now (I’m assuming you make a one-time payment in exchange for the ability to view the file whenever you want) to whatever they want. For example, they might revise the license such that you must make a small payment every time you view a movie, instead of a one-time fee. Or revise the license such that you must purchase a separate proprietary player software to view “your” movies. Or for that matter you could “buy” a movie on Monday, then they change the license terms such that all purchases made before Wednesday are void, and you must pay them again for the “right” to view the movie you “bought.”

I don’t think this sort of revision of the license is any more likely than you (probably) do, but the EULA does appear to give Amazon the right to do whatever they want.

I thought the MS one looked like it was about DRM – “you may not play or access content or use applications protected by”… blah blah protection stuff. And it only applies to virtual/emulated hardware – like foggen said, its about stopping people breaking the DRM by using virtualisatin by saying you arent allowed to play any DRM’d content on a virtual machine

not that they were admitting it might not work

I have a laptop here that runs a very crippled host XP system, and vmware, on which my actual OS resides(server 2003) I have differant machines set up with differant setups and software… this would completly prevent me from useing any DRM protected stuff… again, makeing it easier and more desireable to pirate than pay… is the ONLY reason to pay for content now moral?

JeffW,

You’re right and according to this following clause this point is driven home: e. Amazon reserves the right to make changes to this Agreement at any time. Your continued use of the Service following any such changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes.

The agreement also states that only by continuing to use the service are you agreeing beyond the change point, and they have a right to change it without your knowledge. This portion of the agreement is the most shifty to me.

I personally feel this clause is causing more damage than assuming Amazon will delete your files. If they did so, users would discontinue the use their service, so what purpose would that serve? Unless of course, we get super-paranoid. They could in effect state that by using this service you agree not to use other services and assuming you did so a whole slew of unwanted retaliation actions could occur.

Honestly I don’t see Amazon screwing with the user base so much that they would do something like this. They would run the risk of putting UnBox out of commission, as in, potential future users would simply avoid it.

Isn’t saying Amazon will delete your movies getting a little paranoid? I agree with BoingBoing.net “Real agreements usually reflect a negotiation among near-equals who sit down at a table and hammer out something that’s mutually acceptable.” But it isn’t possible for a company like Amazon to sit down with each person using UnBox and set an agreement with each person. I take that back, it could be possible for an online agreement to be made in which the end user could go through and agree to exactly what he/she wants and suffer limitations within the final program as a result of turning down portions of the agreement. Though I don’t see Amazon doing that as they would need to modify UnBox for various users choices, and even then they may need to create different versions to keep hackers from accepting the least amount of terms and still benefiting from the entire agreement. Their only alternative is to protect themselves from people wishing malicious intent while the rest of us just want some videos to watch.

Thoughts?

I would also like to say that if these agreements are subject to such wide interpretation would they hold up in court with the editors original intent?

Um.. yeah… neither of those two headlines seems to reflect what the EULAs are actually saying… Amazon’s does not say they will delete your movies, and MS’s doesn not say that nothing will work. I agree that most EULAs an skewed unfavorably toward the companies providing them, but let’s not just make stuff up. And also, where is the Disney EULA mentioned on BoingBoing? Now THAT’s a good example of a freaky EULA.

Windows not Window’s

Thanks for visiting & keep it comin’! I’ve received a handful of replies and will post the inaugural EULA of the Week submission shortly.

keep ‘em comin!

Why are you hiding your comments?

weird — not sure what the deal is with that. I’ll fix — I guess my comments are showing up in WHITE!

“[...] you’re only purchasing access to said content for as long as we decide to make it available in its current form.”

With most “digital content” (software/music/video) and even in the real world (CD’s/books/DVD’s), you don’t actually BUY it; you buy the right to play/view it.

The Amazon thing covers the straight DRM screw. Like when Microsoft sells you a bunch of Plays-For-Sure songs and then stops making players for Plays-For-Sure. You won’t be able to access any of the stuff you bought from us, and it’s your own fault because we warned you in advance that this was going to happen. Stick with MP3 and FLAC.

Wendy Seltzer at Chilling Effects has the Vista license broken down here. (per bb)

The MS one is really a bit strange. Maybe they intended it to read that “If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services… on the virtual machine”, however, in its current form, it essentially says that if you install a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate on a virtual machine, then you are not allowed to use protected content AT ALL (even on the host computer or another physical computer)!

The Amazon (Unbox) one is awful. I’m not sure about the Vista one – it seems to only apply to emulated systems.

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