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Microsoft Sling
is a form for computer people to with nowhere else to go
This Article was Submitted by Khawar Nehal
A shock for all those who pay Microsoft for supporting its products.
According to the End User License Agreements, this highly limited warranty is
restricted to a period of only 90 days. After this time you are on your own.
Another example of how Microsoft secretly gets users to agree to their terms by
hiding them and how those agreements are used later against users and consumers
rights. Company CEOs are indirectly agreeing to the terms and conditions of the
Microsoft Licenses because they never get to see the licenses for which they
are paying.
The license is only visible to the IT managers who blindly click on the "I
Agree" button while installing the software. Little do the IT managers,
CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs realize that they are slowly being entrapped by a
corporation which intends to use their money for its own current and future
profits without much regard for its customers legal consumer rights.
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Control with fine print
THE MOST DANGEROUS snake is the one you don't see until you step on it. I think
that might also be said of the license terms hiding in shrinkwrap/clickwrap
licenses.
This was amply illustrated last week after I mentioned here that the EULA
(end-user license agreement) for FrontPage 2002 contains a term prohibiting use
of the software in connection with a site that disparages Microsoft or its
online services.
This confused some FrontPage users, as they reported that they could not find
that term in the EULA they could read in the program's Help files. Adding to the
confusion was the failure of some non-FrontPage users to find a copy of the EULA
on the Internet; all they came up with were bans against using the FrontPage
logo and/or specific Web components such as the MSNBC news headlines on
Microsoft-disparaging sites.
I knew the EULA my sources had provided was different than those mentioned
above, but I decided to go down to the store and buy a copy of FrontPage 2002
for myself. The first thing out of the box was a four-page folded sheet with two
bold lines saying "Microsoft FrontPage 2002" and "Licenses:
1" at the top, followed in big letters by "End-User License Agreement
for Microsoft Software." Several paragraphs down, in what otherwise seemed
like the standard Office application EULA complete with all the typical
warranty is claimers, was the "Restrictions" paragraph
containing the term. The whole sentence read: "You may not use the software
in connection with any site
that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services,
infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any
state federal or international law, or promote racism, hatred or
pornography." (Parse that sentence and you'll see that either it's intended
to be even more overreaching than it first appears or somebody in Microsoft
legal needs to brush up on his or her grammar.)
When I went to install the program, however, a slightly different "End-User
License Agreement for Microsoft Software" popped up. Although similar in
many respects to the printed version, it didn't make any specific mention of
FrontPage or the number of licenses being granted. And the whole
"Restrictions" paragraph, including the no-disparaging-Microsoft
clause, wasn't there.
With more than one EULA that appeared to apply to FrontPage 2002, I asked
Microsoft if they could clarify matters. A spokesman acknowledged that having
two EULAs was confusing but pointed out that the printed version says it applies
to the "Microsoft FrontPage Web components." That, the spokesman said,
only refers to things such as the MSNBC news headline and MSN Search components.
"Those components include logos and trademarks of other companies, so that
additional EULA does include that language to cover how they can be used,"
he said. "I agree that we could certainly make that clearer, and I think we
will. But there is nothing in FrontPage or its EULA that limits free
speech."
Given the other examples that readers found where it was clearer that the term
did apply just to the logos or Web components, I can certainly accept that the
term owes its origins to the desire to prevent abuse of those logos and
components. But also given those examples, which were just a few
paragraphs at most, it's hard to believe that the printed EULA is not supposed
to apply to the FrontPage program itself. If the software being described
is only those components and not the full
program, why present a full license with many terms that don't apply to those
components? Why say Microsoft FrontPage 2002 at the top and specify the number
of licenses being granted (thereby making it a document one had better save in
case the compliance police show up)? And if the license being granted isn't for
the full program I purchased, shouldn't I return the whole package from whence
it came as a possible counterfeit under Microsoft's own anti-piracy guidelines?
Ultimately, of course, it doesn't really matter what Microsoft's intent was in
creating the no-disparaging-Microsoft term. That it exists at all is what's
important, because we already know how it might be used in a situation where
they really want to squelch somebody.
When Microsoft included a term prohibiting disclosure of benchmarks without its
permission in the SQL Server license, it's pretty certain the intent was not to
prevent people from publishing benchmarks comparing Windows 2000 performance to
Windows NT. But that's exactly how it was used to block an independent lab from
releasing results of an OS comparison that used SQL
Server as part of the test bed (see The Gripe Line). If SQL Server's license
could be applied in that situation, the FrontPage EULA could be used to limit
free speech at least as easily.
I think we should take this as an object lesson, not just about Microsoft, but
about software licenses in general. Few FrontPage users could find their printed
EULA, and the actual license was nowhere to be seen on Microsoft's Web site.
Even when you know it exists, a term like this is almost impossible to see.
That's what really makes it dangerous.
License Agreement
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Thank You.
Best Regards,
Khawar Nehal
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