A little progress to make EULAs easier to understand

Posted by
September 4, 2012

Which major industry sells its products with no guarantee that they will work and with no way to recover for damages if something you own is damaged by the product?

Software companies, of course. That’s what you accept when you say “I agree” to the ubiquitous “End User License Agreement” or EULA that comes with every application. Of course, almost no one has a clue what they’re agreeing to because of the incomprehensible legalese that EULAs contain. But you click “I agree” anyway because what choice is there?

Off and on I have posted about the absurdity of software EULAs (latest example here). The terms of service (TOS) that you have to agree to for various online services are similar in their incomprehensible legalese and the way they strip rights away from the consumer.

A new site is trying to help make it clearer what you are agreeing to for a number of the more popular services and vendors. It is a work in progress so the information has gaps but every little bit helps.

Related posts:

  1. A EULA that you can understand
  2. Short form for a EULA
  3. Companies don’t read their own EULAs
  4. Malware authors include EULAs to protect their work
  5. The absurdity of EULAs
Privacy, Society and technology, Software

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