Is Microsoft Licensing Forcing Banks To Break The Law?

from the when-laws-and-EULAs-collide dept

Oops. It appears that any bank that uses Microsoft operating systems may be breaking the law. Someone who actually (oh my!) read the fine print on the Microsoft EULA has discovered it requires users who enable the "auto update" feature to allow Microsoft access to information on the system - which violates a law, soon to go into effect, not allowing access by third parties to information without the consent of whoever's data it is. Of course, there is a pretty simple solution (besides ditching Microsoft altogether) which is not to use the auto-update feature. Anyway, honestly, this seems like much more of a nitpick on bad language choices by Microsoft's lawyers in not clearly defining what they mean by allowing "access to information" on the system.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Steve Snyder, 22 Oct 2002 @ 3:38pm

    Lawyers don't make bad word choices

    Unless they're bad lawyers (and Microsoft does not have bad lawyers) they didn't make bad word choices. The absolute essence of what lawyers do is to consider every word of a document and what it's ramifications are. And it's not like this is one exception that slipped through, the fact of the matter is Microsoft documents and EULAs are constantly trying to take big things little by little without us noticing. Do I think that Microsoft plans on using the things you agree in the EULA to look over every file on your hard drive? Of course not, but time and again they show that they want to be able to do things even if they never actually do them.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    2Lazy2Register, 23 Oct 2002 @ 6:16am

    Pharma & Healthcare companies have same issue...

    ... due to new HIPAA regulations. Most are apparently are just choosing to ignore it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.