> I would have thought that user's rights are covered by expectations of
> suitability of purpose as enshrined in consumer rights legislation, not
> by a shrink-wrapped licence the consumer cannot read before purchasing
> a product. It is a conflict of interest for the software supplier
> to dictate the rights of the purchaser.
As a matter of interest, are you guys familiar with the attempts by large
software making businesses to gather even greater enforceable rights than
they currently enjoy in the US? I am not sure how this would affect
Australia, however I think we can guess.
http://www.acm.org/usacm/copyright/ucita.cacm.htm
Quote:
... software vendors may modify the terms of the license, with only email
notification. They may remotely disable the software if they decide that the
terms of the license have been violated. There is no need for court
approval, and it is unlikely that the manufacturer would be held liable for
any harm created by the shutdown, whether or not the shutdown was
groundless. (The mere existence of such mechanisms is likely to enable
denial of service attacks from anywhere.)
Since a small contractor probably will have a contract that holds him or her
liable for damages, the little guy may be forced to pay for damages
resulting from buggy commercial software. Furthermore, the small business
owner may be unable to sell the software portion of the business to another
company, because most shrink-wrap licenses require the permission of the
software vendor before a transfer of software can occur.
Very few manufacturers of other products have the chutzpah to disclaim all
liability for any damage whatsoever caused by defects in their products, and
most states restrict the effectiveness of such disclaimers. Software vendors
base their non-liability claim on the notion that they are selling only
licenses, not `goods'....
When most people learn of UCITA, they assume that the unreasonable
components of software licenses won't survive court challenges. But because
there is very little relevant case law, UCITA could make it difficult for
courts to reverse the terms of a shrink wrap license.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.1 : Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:10:03 EST