It’s a well-known phenomenon that your average person on the street does not actually read software EULA’s. South Park did an episode on this a year or two ago.
To what extent do companies or other organizations, especially large ones, read, review, and evaluate the licenses for off the shelf software (i.e. not software that they are having custom-made by a contactor, but basic stuff like basic office software, operating systems, device drivers, teleconferencing software, etc.)?
“I recommend that Conglom-O go with SuperSoftware’s Pro Teleconferencing+ 2.5 rather than MegaAppCo’s Virtual Meeting 6.3 because the Virtual Meeting 6.3 EULA states that the license shall be interpreted under Kansas law and none of our company attorneys are familiar enough with the nuances of it, and there is also a clause giving them the right to keep copies of all our teleconferences.”
They don’t. Shrinkwrap EULAs are like non-compete agreements: useless, unenforceable nonsense that has no legitimate reason to exist except to keep lawyers employed.
A properly-managed organization will make sure that they have purchased the right number of licenses and such, but that’s about it.
My understanding based on the wiki article is that Apple was suing Psystar on the basis that Psystar was circumventing Apple’s DRM in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Also, the text for the August 12, 2009 ruling suggests that Psystar may not have paid Apple for each copy of the software that it re-sold.
That case was more about Apple enforcing the license to their copyrights rather than the voluminous nonsense that appears in a typical EULA. (Although I suppose the text of licenses is among the things that appears in a EULA.)
When I think of EULAs I typically thing of things like the absurd clauses disclaiming all possible liability, clauses that have regularly been ruled unconscionable and contrary to the UCC, (but which nobody ever removes) and so on.
But to be clear, there is stuff that appears in EULAs has been judged acceptable, but that’s mostly the stuff that falls under existing copyright law anyway.
An experienced techie can skim through a eula pretty quickly to pick out the few non-standard clauses and determine if they’ll be an issue.
Eula’s make look long and imposing, but they all say pretty much the same thing. Once you take out the disclaimer of warranty/liability and legal garbage (definitions, one invalid clause won’t invalidate the rest, dispute jurisdiction, etc.), you’re usually left with only a few short paragraphs.
Big companies do. Most off the shelf software is covered by site licenses, and are orderable through a company tool. That is covered when the site license is done. Non-standard stuff has to go through purchasing, who evaluates the license. And open-source software has a special procedure with legal review and reasonably high level management approval. Yes there are standard licenses, but we like some better than others.
Downloading software onto company computers without this, even pretty standard things, is a big no-no.