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EULA Hijacking
19 Nov 2003 by Jason Fried
Does anyone else get the feeling that there’s only been a handful of people who have actually paid a lawyer to write their End User License Agreement for their software product or web site? Same for privacy policies. Is there anything on the web more pirated than these agreements which generally rail against piracy or reverse engineering?
10 comments so far (Post a Comment)
19 Nov 2003 | Dr_God (fka Tibloto) said...
With the power of Google and BBEdit's "Find and Replace All" command, who needs a lawyer? :)
19 Nov 2003 | Mark Fusco said...
Actually, not too long ago (maybe a few years) Truste used to offer an automated privacy statement generator. Fill in a few form fields with specifics on your company and blamo - instant privacy statement.
However, a quick visit to their site shows theyve discontinued that free service and now only offer guidelines for those who wish to write their own or hire an attorney.
20 Nov 2003 | Steven Garrity said...
Yup - try this:
"choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping for you, improving our stores, and communicating "
20 Nov 2003 | Adam said...
But it's a privacy policy. Shouldn't they all be worded the same? It's not like it's sales copy. Although I like the Amazon.com mention.
20 Nov 2003 | brian breslin said...
i think its funny the second result on that page is Tivo's uk privacy statement.
i bet if you bought a book on this subject @ barnes & nobles, you would find 10 or more generic privacy statements that 95% of those on the web would almost mirror.
plus those companies that do hire lawyers, those lawyers probably use these same templates.
20 Nov 2003 | dc said...
Perhaps there's a Nolo Press for corp. law, with boilerplate contracts.
Yes, there is.
20 Nov 2003 | Dan August said...
Dunno, never actually cared enough to read an entire EULA - or even compare two or more.
20 Nov 2003 | Darrel said...
We hired a lawyer for our software product's EULA. It's pretty much a clone of any other one I've read.
20 Nov 2003 | One of several Steves said...
Lawyers have templates for common documents all the time. In some instances, case law has pretty much dicatated that certain documents cover certain areas, say things in such and such a way, etc. I've known lawyers that will even base their fee structures so that you pay a given rate for essentially customizing a template, and a different rate for getting something from scratch.
17 Jan 2004 | Cuthbert said...
At WWDC, I listened to Apple representatives make some excellent points about taking the time to build a 100%-compliant Aqua application, and I think all developers need to look beyond the code and listen to what the folks at Apple have to say
