Microsoft’s License Police
Most software programs today are not sold, but are only licensed. At times one can find some surprising terms in the end user license agreement (EULA) that must be agreed to before downloading. For example, at the beginning of the last decade the EULA for Microsoft’s FrontPage Web-design software included the following statement:
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.
As one Web site developer (who used FrontPage) noted:
Putting a critic in the same club as lawbreakers, copyright infringers, racists, and pornographers is stupid. Apparently, whether my Web site stays or goes depends on the meaning of the word disparage. Well, I think the Microsoft crowd are a bunch of monopolists who want to control the world, and plan to keep stuffing everything anyone does with a computer into an operating system that only they control. Was that disparaging?
Questions
1. Do you think Microsoft should be able to tell the licensees of its software that the software cannot be used to “disparage” Microsoft? What about its attempt to prevent its products from being used to “promote racism, hatred, or pornography”?
2. If Microsoft brought a lawsuit against one of its licensees for in fact using one of its products to “disparage” Microsoft, or to “promote racism, hatred, or pornography,” what do you think the outcome would be? (McAdams 794)
McAdams, T.. Law, Business and Society, 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 40848. VitalBook file.