I’ve got into reading Boing Boing again. Today I read a (by now probably quite old) piece on the EULA for Windows Vista. I have ranted about EULAs before on this blog, but this piece hits the nail on the head on one particular aspect of it: that a unilaterally-dictated license cannot be meaningfully described as an “agreement”.
Real agreements are negotiated. You and I sit down at a table and hammer it out. Real agreements aren’t “subject to change without notice.” Real agreements don’t make you agree not to sue for negligence. Real agreements don’t make you agree to treat your property as if it still belonged to the guy who sold it to you.