[PLUG] The lion in Salem

Jeff Schwaber freyley at gmx.net
Sat Aug 30 12:04:02 UTC 2003


On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 23:58, Paul Johnson wrote:
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> On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 10:43:45AM -0700, Cliff Wells wrote:
> > Speaking of EULAs, has anyone considered demanding that state employees
> > who deal with public records (which, despite their name, may be
> > confidential) *not* click "I agree" on these EULAs?
> 
> I thought giving out that kind of permission even without telling them
> not to is a terminable offense with the state.

You know, there's an interesting question embedded in here.

Think about the FrontPage license, which says that you cannot use
FrontPage to create a site which says bad things about Microsoft. That's
a click through license. By clicking it, you agree not to do such a
thing.

What if I get hired by a company to make a webpage for them, using
FrontPage? And it's a lenient company and they don't mind me using their
systems for my personal use in my off time, and I create, using
FrontPage, a web page saying Microsoft sucks.

They haven't violated the agreement, because they didn't tell me to do
so, and I haven't violated the agreement, because I didn't click it so I
didn't agree to it.

The only realistic view of this I can take is that it's illegal for me
to use software installed on my machine by someone else, because its use
is subject to its license agreement, i.e. I can only use it if I agree
to the license, and unless I install it, or at least click through it, I
am not subject to the license.

IT installs, ghost installs, even a computer company pre-installing
software could well be illegal.

Jeff





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