Another serious blow delivered to the validity of EULAs
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by gewg_
(4444 messages posted)
AutoDesk has been squabbling with Tim Vernor for several years now.
He just wants to sell some spare copies of AutoCAD on ebay.
AutoDesk has said that violates their license.
Tim said he never agreed to their license (the packages are unused[1]).
A Federal court has ruled that AutoDesk is wrong and that
according to the First-Sale Doctrine which has been established law since 1908
http://google.com/search?q=Bobbs-Merrill+First-Sale
the licenses are crap.
http://google.com/search?q=AutoDesk+Vernor+"Western.District.of.Washington"
The question you're asking yourself is
"How does this affect M$'s End-User License Agreements?"
It doesn't. M$ has already been thru this and their response was DRM
(Windows Product Activation and Windows Genuine DISAdvantage).
Until a court rules that those are violations of this same law,
ain't nothing you can do about M$'s current crop except boycott them;
the alternative is giving money to M$
then waiting for them to use their remote kill switch.
Big hint: At one time, 22 percent of WGA checks
called what they saw a bogus Windoze install.[2]
Do you think that 1 of every 5 people is running pirated Windoze?
Do you think pirates would be stupid enough to install that remote kill switch?
Do you think they would be stupid enough to allow their systems to be scanned?
Bottom line: Another massive M$ failure.
The next question is "Are there any teeth behind this AutoDesk decision?"
We'll have to wait and see on that one.
Note: Though there are several strong analogs of AutoCAD in the Unix/Linux world
as well as some in the (cross-platform) Free Software realm,
AutoDesk remains a dominant player (via inertia)--and it is Windoze-only.
Note also: AutoCAD started as a Unix app.
[1] We could get into a whole thing here
about licenses that you aren't allowed to read until AFTER you've paid for an item
--but I'll let that go for now.
[2] Indeed, in their initial implementation the number was 42 percent.
What words are there to describe something that is WORSE than a massive failure?
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