From BBC site: “The National Consumer Council (NCC) has accused 17 firms, including Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec, of using unfair end user licence agreements (EULAs). The NCC has asked the Office of Fair Trading to launch an investigation”.
The news is not yet on NCC site, so we could not investigate further, but we’ll try to have a direct contact with them, as soon as possible.
It would be interesting to deal with these issues at a global (vs. national) level, since these EULAs affect the rights of millions of users worldwide and it’s time to make them better.
EULAs need to be as short as possible and readable by common users (and not just by a good laywer), do not need to be a sort of punishment for the customer (e.g., the “I have a desktop and a laptop, may I install…” faq), and well, they just need to be fair and well balanced (more respect for users’ privacy, more responsibilities for the holder, etc.).
Is it too much to ask?
Unusable EULAs on Usability Blog
The Anti-EULA on BoingBoing
