Have you ever read a EULA (End User License Agreement)? Up until tonight, me either. I never really cared as long as it did what I expected it to do. Most of us go through the setup process like it’s a race to finish first, as if we are to have “this” [insert software name] before anyone else. I was the same. Tonight I wasn’t feeling well and decided to go downstairs for an aspirin and drink. While I was down, I decided to try out the Opera Browser. I went through the process of downloading it and installing, when i reached the EULA. I do not know why, but i just scrolled through it and decided to read it while i was waiting for the installation to complete. Surprise! there it was in black and white, Opera reserves the right to “block” me from pages, or “redirect” me to another site at their discretion. here, see it for yourself:
http://www.opera.com/eula/browser/
Here is a screen shot highlighted for you:
Opera isn’t the only one with these types of EULA’s. I decided to go head first and find out which of the others where “inserting” things of this nature into their EULA. of the major Browser’s (at least for Windows Users), below is what I’ve found.
The Browser Mozilla Firefox had a pretty simple EULA and nothing out of the ordinary as far as general agreements. (You can view their EULA here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/legal/eula/thunderbird.html )
Internet Explorer (version 9), They will share gathered information with other software vendors and hardware vendors. You can view the EULA here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/end-user-license-agreement and here is a screen shot of an excerpt:
Safari from Apple has it’s issues as well, read their entire EULA here: http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/SafariWindows.pdf (this link is in PDF format, you will need Adobe Reader to view it.
Here is the screen shot I took of an excerpt of Safari’s EULA:
After finding this information, I think I’ll be looking more at these “EULA’s” to see exactly how many of my rights are discriminated against to protect a corporation.
Xpyr'd 