More EULA Viruses
from the they're-everywhere dept
Late last year, there were a bunch of articles talking about a "marketing" company that was offering greeting cards with a sneaky little caveat thrown into the end user license agreement (EULA) that you clicked through to view your card. It said that anyone who agreed to the terms was opening up their computer to the company and granted them the privilege of sending similar greeting cards to everyone else in their address book. The virus firms at the time kept struggling with whether or not to consider this a "virus" since it was legally clear from the EULA. It's unclear if a final decision was ever made, but the issue is showing up again as yet another company has created a similar EULA virus that will spam everyone in your address book and people on your instant messaging buddy list with links to "humorous" (not everyone will agree) content. I can just imagine the business user who accidentally emails all of his business associates links to some sophomoric humor site. Either way, this is clearly a misuse of the EULA, and should help to bring up the question of what's reasonable to include in an EULA.
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
