I don't know where or when End User License Agreements came into vogue, but I'd like to find the person who started the idea and strangle him/her with his/her own intestines. Put simply, they are evil. They limit liability for anything, they restrict what you can or cannot do with a product, and they are so long and legalese that nobody except lawyers can understand what they say. So we, the normal people, click "OK" and naively trust that we haven't just signed over our first born to be sacrificed to Rumplestiltskin. They are the tool of the devil, and they should be outlawed. I can understand a limitation of liabilty and a disclaimer of warranty, you don't want to be responsible for a product if it is used for a purpose other then intended. But the rest of it is pure garbage, invented by lawyers who decided that simply being a lawyer wasn't evil enough. If baseballs came with EULAs, it would be illegal to use them for anything other then baseballs; and the manufacturer would be happy to sell you a baseball paperweight which comes with a different EULA even if it is the identical product. One day I'm going to write a small nifty program that everyone will love and need, and in the EULA I'm going to specify that I get custody of all their firstborn if either parent is a lawyer. In the meantime, read the EULA. You never know what's in it. In this case, there was a cash prize for anyone who sent in a letter to the specified address. One dude out of 10,000 replied, and he got $1,000 cash. Sweet! [via J-Walkblog.com]
Link: