Entries Tagged 'unfortunately' ↓

When you get bored of my rambling skip to the end for a radical idea and some light TMI.

Lately, I’ve been troubled by the sheer quantity of End User License Agreements, Terms & Conditions statements and other contractual notices — contracts of adhesion — I must agree to prior to doing anything. If, for example, I want to order from Pizza Hut using a little AIR app they have, I have to agree to pages of terms and conditions

Really?  To order a pizza?

My concern is that reading each one of these items in any type of thorough way would take a significant amount of time.  So I don’t — I just click agree and move on with it.  And I’ll guarantee I’m not unique.  I don’t know a single person who reads all that stuff on items they download and try for everyday use.  In fact, I’ll bet companies like Pizza Hut don’t even think twice about putting it in because our standard behavior these days is to just agree.

But what are we agreeing to?  And how enforceable are they?  I don’t know.

Some WikiP articles are interesting here: Click Wrap (some of the case detail is interesting) and then there’s the section on EULA enforceability.

I’m generally supportive of copyrights and intellectual property, etc., but I think we need some reform around this issue.  For example, a standard agreement that says — here’s the agreement — something I could read once and then know that I’m comfortable with what it says and how it applies.  Like some of the open source licensing that’s out there.

The other idea I had was some sort of EULA Advisor website.  You cut and paste the contents into it and get a rating on whether or not it’s appropriate for you.  Hey look — EulaAdvisor.com is open.  Someone should go do this.  C’mon.  You know you want to.

The final idea I’d like to see someone run with is that the increasing complexity and quantity of these type of agreements them, as a whole, largely unenforceable and meaningless.  In other words, a forced simplification. Some requirement that the agreement’s complexity be proportional to the transaction.  A $9 pizza ordered via free software would allow something like 100 words.  $250k software used to run a $25m enterprise could have a few thousand words.

Maybe the formula is simple: a word per $1.  $99 iPod?  99 word agreement.  I like.

We need to do something.  It’s just too many agreements, too much fine print.

* Apparently you can order from Pizza Hut by text message as well.  Having delivered for them (I was young and poor) and eaten way too much of their pizza, I’m not interested, but it’s still a neat idea.  (Which was apparently covered earlier this year by everyone else but that’s another story.)

I had some stuff to take care of last night and so my cell ringer was off.  In checking this AM, I found one VM and six missed calls.

5:39p - from A

5:41p - from A

5:42p - Voice Mail from A

5:51p - from A

6:12p - from A

6:29p - from A

7:07p - from B

It’s nice to be loved/wanted/needed/in an unhealthy codependent relationship/whatever, but sometimes its even nicer to have the ringer off.

BTW, no, the calls were not about Burrito Baby.

Dungeon’s & Dragons, originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

I started playing in the fifth grade, when I moved to Idaho Falls. Got out of it for a while after I moved to Rochester, started again at Kenyon. My first non-trivial computer program? AD&D Character generator. On a printer terminal connected to a DEC PDP 1170 at Eagle Rock. AD&D touched my life in many ways. Thank you, Gary Gygax.