End-user license agreements (EULAs) can be hazardous to your freedom, if they prohibit you from publicly criticizing the product you bought or allowing the vendor to snoop into your computer at will and without your formal permission, never mind customizing the product to your more specific needs and abilities, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a white paper released this week.
"Overbroad EULAs are one of the greatest threats to consumer rights in the high tech industry," said EFF policy analyst Annalee Newitz, who wrote the white paper.
"Few people realize that simply visiting a website or downloading a software update may constitute 'agreeing' to a EULA that permits third parties to monitor your communications or allows a vendor to dictate what you can or cannot do with the product you've bought,” she continued. “Clicking the 'I Agree' button may mean clicking away your privacy, freedom of speech, or other rights."
The white paper cited several familiar companies as having such clauses in their EULAs for certain products. Microsoft’s EULA for MS XML and the SQL Server programs specifically bar users from telling any third party the results of any “benchmark test,” and the practice continues elsewhere even though antivirus maker McAfee was once sanctioned for such a prohibition.
Windows XP is said to come with a EULA clause that allows the company to download software onto a user’s computer on behalf of third parties called “Secure Content Owners,” and that isn’t even close to the most disturbing such EULA clause, the white paper said: McAfee has one that could be taken to mean a buyer becomes a McAfee user forever whether they want to or not: "Upon expiration of your subscription to the Software, the Company may automatically renew your subscription to the Software at the then prevailing price using credit card information you have previously provided."
Whereas EULAs began as a way companies could limit warranties on goods and disclaim liability, Newitz said, they expanded to become ways for vendors to limit unauthorized copying of the products—but expanded soon enough to become “the choke-collar that it is today, limiting people's ability to talk about products, take them apart, and even remove them from their computers.”
