Re: Vista EULA : 'Breakfast with Lewis Carroll's Red Queen at Redmond'

Red Queen at Red mond'--the words were made for each other.


"Chad Harris" <Vista RTM is really Beta 1.net> wrote in message
news:%23krctO$8GHA.3344@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
Perhaps the Red Queen is MSFT Deputy General Counsel Nancy Anderson. But
one thing you're good at Nancy is becoming a magnet for litigation that you
lose baby!

Anderson, VP Brad Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate
Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs and their eager girls and boys are
hemorrhaging a lot of MSFT stockholder money every time the elicit and
answer an exponentially growing number of lawsuits involving Vista. The
legal vista for them has become one gaping money hemorhhage.


October 19, 2006
"Forbidding Vistas: Windows licensing disserves the user "
http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archiv..._the_user.html

by Wendy Selzer, EFF Staff Attorney

http://www.eff.org/
Reading the Windows Vista license is a bit like preparing for breakfast
with Lewis Carroll's Red Queen: You should be ready to believe at least six
impossible things about what users want from software.

It is unlikely that a home user looking for a computer operating system has
any of these "features" of the Vista EULA in mind:

1.. Self-limiting software
2.. Vanishing functionality through invalidation
3.. Removal of media capabilities
4.. Problem-solving prohibited
5.. Limited mobility
6.. One transfer only
and a bonus,
7.. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video

Details below. While Microsoft should be commended for putting its license
into plain English, that doesn't help to make the license restrictions any
more palatable. Quoted italicized language comes from the Vista license.

1. Self-limiting software, or Mandatory Activation. "Your right to use the
software after the time specified in the installation process is limited
unless it is activated. … You will not be able to continue using the
software after that time if you do not activate it." Moreover, "[s]ome
changes to your computer components or the software may require you to
reactivate the software." In order to use Microsoft Vista, you must consent
to communication to Microsoft of information about the software and the
device on which you have installed it. If you don't do so in time, your
software will begin to degrade in function.

2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation. "The software will from
time to time validate the software, update or require download of the
validation feature of the software. … [if validation fails] you may not be
able to use or continue to use some of the features of the software." Again,
your computer must make periodic (period unspecified) contact with the
Microsoft mothership if you want to continue to enjoy what you thought you
paid for. Microsoft, of course, disclaims any liability for the consequences
if their servers fail or mistakenly deny you validation.

3. Removal of media capabilities. "When you download licenses for protected
content, you agree that Microsoft may include a revocation list with the
licenses." "[C]ontent owners may ask Microsoft to revoke the software's
ability to use WMDRM [Windows Media digital rights management] to play or
copy protected content." In other words, one movie or music file may take
away your ability to play another, if the content owner (not the computer
owner) chooses to cut back the Windows Media Player's features. Don't like
the reports that Creative is removing radio recording functions from its MP3
players, under music industry pressure? Prepare for that kind of feature
flux to be routine in Vista -- you've agreed to it in the license.

4. Problem-solving prohibited. "You may not work around any technical
limitations in the software." Microsoft might be referring to
anticircumvention of technical protection measures here, but since it's
often hard to tell the difference, from the user's perspective, between a
TPM and a bug, this reads as a prohibition on user debugging and
problem-solving. After all, down-rezzing HD content or refusing to allow
users to copy quotes from an e-book don't strike most people as wanted
features. Can you work around a document's failure to save properly?

5. Limited mobility. "The first user of the software may reassign the
license to another device one time." If you upgrade your machines more
frequently than you care to change operating systems, you'll just have to
pay again. Don't worry about this applying too frequently, though, because
most OEMs will probably keep bundling Windows with their hardware, thanks to
Microsoft's pricing encouragement, and Microsoft won't offer refunds if you
don't like the terms on those OEM bundles.

6. One transfer only. "The first user of the software may make a one time
transfer of the software, and this agreement, directly to a third party….
[T]he other party must agree that this agreement applies to the transfer and
use of the software." You can give your old computer to Dad, but if he wants
to give his older computer to the neighborhood community center, they'll
have to find their own operating system (may I recommend Ubuntu?).

Bonus. MPEG-4 Visual Standard

NOTICE ABOUT THE MPEG-4 VISUAL STANDARD. This software includes MPEG-4
visual decoding technology. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:
USE OF THIS PRODUCT IN ANY MANNER THAT COMPLIES WITH THE MPEG-4 VISUAL
STANDARD IS PROHIBITED, EXCEPT FOR USE DIRECTLY RELATED TO (A) DATA OR
INFORMATION (i) GENERATED BY AND OBTAINED WITHOUT CHARGE FROM A CONSUMER NOT
THEREBY ENGAGED IN A BUSINESS ENTERPRISE, AND (ii) FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY;
AND (B) OTHER USES SPECIFICALLY AND SEPARATELY LICENSED BY MPEG LA, L.L.C.


Users never asked for these impossible limitations. Microsoft decided
unilaterally to add them, claiming it could abrogate personal ownership,
fair use, and first sale rights because "The software is licensed, not
sold." If Microsoft faced real market competition on the home desktop, users
could vote with their wallets, but anticompetitive practices and network
effects make Microsoft a like-it-or-not proposition for most users.

While Carroll's Humpty Dumpty might have been able to choose the meanings of
his words at will, on this side of the looking glass, software vendors
shouldn't be able to redefine the meaning of "buying software" by the simple
attachment of a click-wrap license."

CH