Just noticed the EULA for Stellaris

[Kron]

Reinstalled Stellaris last night, and just started it to play (finally bought all of the expansions!). The EULA, which normally I ignore on all games, caught my eye…

“BY EITHER REMOVING THE SHRINK WRAP AND/OR JEWEL CASE SEAL OR DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, OR OTHERWISE USING THIS GAME, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS:”

Wow, I could set up a contractual obligation just by taking the plastic off, before I even know of the existence of said contract? That seems odd.

Just thought I’d share if nobody noticed it… caught me by surprise.

[squeegee]

Shrink wrap EULAs have been common for at least a couple of decades.

[bump]

Sure, but do they actually hold up in court? I can’t imagine that when push comes to shove, that any judge or jury in the land would actually hold up the idea that you agreed to something before you knew of its existence, by opening the package in order to find it out.

More likely, it’s some kind of lame lawyer dodge that is intended to scare the non-legally informed into thinking that they don’t have any recourse, and discouraging them from any legal action. All the while having no chance of standing up in court if actually challenged…

[squeegee]

@wikipedia

The legal status of shrink wrap contracts in the US is somewhat unclear. In the 1980s, software license enforcement acts were enacted by Louisiana and Illinois in an attempt to address this issue, but parts of the Louisiana act were invalidated in Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. , and the Illinois act was quickly repealed.[1] Case history also fails to clear up the confusion. One line of cases follows ProCD v. Zeidenberg which held such contracts enforceable (see, e.g., Bowers v. Baystate Technologies [2]) and the other follows Klocek v. Gateway, Inc. , which found the contracts at hand unenforceable (e.g., Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp. [3]), but did not comment on shrink wrap contracts as a whole. These decisions are split on the question of consent, with the former holding that only objective manifestation of consent is required while the latter require at least the possibility of subjective consent. In particular, the Netscape contract was rejected because it lacked an express indication of consent (no “I agree” button) and because the contract was not presented directly to the user (users were required to click on a link to access the terms). However, the court in this case did make it clear that “Reasonably conspicuous notice of the existence of contract terms and unambiguous manifestation of assent to those terms by consumers are essential if electronic bargaining is to have integrity and credibility.”

From here

[Kron]

@squeegee

Shrink wrap EULAs have been common for at least a couple of decades.

Shows how long I’ve been ignoring them

[bump]

I talked about it with my wife (an attorney), and she said two things that were interesting. One was that even if they are unenforceable, someone’s still got to spend the money to actually challenge it in court. Which makes it the sort of deterrent that I was suggesting- few users of retail software have those sorts of resources.

Second, she said that if it’s widely known or expected that those sorts of EULAs are present, then it might be something that an end user would reasonably be expected to be aware of.

All that said, I haven’t seen a piece of software in the past 20 years that hasn’t required you as the installing user to click “yes” past the EULA before actually installing the software. I’m pretty sure that’s something subtly different legally than merely opening the box, where the actual license is contained.