Friedman is quite logical, elegant, and artful in his description of contracts (and the pitfalls of restricting them in order to protect the “weak”. However, I have issues with his views on “contracts of adhesion”. It's simply not worth it to customers to search out whether the business is trying to screw them, leading back around to the acceptance of ridiculously unbalanced contracts. Yes, there will be a reputation hit to the business if it enforces said provisions – but this doesn't seem to be enough to help. We end up with RIAA style situations where consumers get reamed for years and then the backlash hits the corporation head-on. It benefits nobody. With the penalties for copyright law being so outrageous, classifying a violation of EULA or TOS down as copyright infringement throws any informed potential defendants into a lottery situation –

They sign on knowing that many terms will almost certainly never be enforced as a copyright violation. However, if they're lucky enough to get hit, the payment could be astronomical. I can't see this working out well. At any rate, I certainly plan to read the rest of “Law's Order” and would look forward to more comment from you on the issue.

I'm trying hard not to laugh because I wrote a 40 page paper for my advanced copyright class centered around the WoW Glider case. While my paper is focused on the implications of the case on Copyright in Virtual Worlds, the case does bring together a large set of issues surrounding modern implications of copyright law.

It is my belief that there is a much bigger chance of RAM copying being overruled then the set of issues around EULAs. As far as EULAs, read the great economic analysis of freedom of contract in David Friedman's book Law 's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (particularly chapter 12 pages 148-151)

Later this summer, after I am done revising the paper (I am hoping to get it published), I will post a much longer discussion of both the WoW Glider case and the enforceability of EULAs.

Have you heard of the WoW Glider case?

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/07/strang...

“Creative Interpretation” of two different sections of a license agreement resulted in a rather ridiculous judgment of copyright infringement. Who would have thought that the EULAs nobody actually reads could have such power behind them? Do you think there's a decent chance that the Supreme Court will end up fixing this?

Friedman is quite logical, elegant, and artful in his description of contracts (and the pitfalls of restricting them in order to protect the “weak”. However, I have issues with his views on “contracts of adhesion”. It's simply not worth it to customers to search out whether the business is trying to screw them, leading back around to the acceptance of ridiculously unbalanced contracts. Yes, there will be a reputation hit to the business if it enforces said provisions – but this doesn't seem to be enough to help. We end up with RIAA style situations where consumers get reamed for years and then the backlash hits the corporation head-on. It benefits nobody. With the penalties for copyright law being so outrageous, classifying a violation of EULA or TOS down as copyright infringement throws any informed potential defendants into a lottery situation –

They sign on knowing that many terms will almost certainly never be enforced as a copyright violation. However, if they're lucky enough to get hit, the payment could be astronomical. I can't see this working out well. At any rate, I certainly plan to read the rest of “Law's Order” and would look forward to more comment from you on the issue.

I'm trying hard not to laugh because I wrote a 40 page paper for my advanced copyright class centered around the WoW Glider case. While my paper is focused on the implications of the case on Copyright in Virtual Worlds, the case does bring together a large set of issues surrounding modern implications of copyright law.

It is my belief that there is a much bigger chance of RAM copying being overruled then the set of issues around EULAs. As far as EULAs, read the great economic analysis of freedom of contract in David Friedman's book Law 's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (particularly chapter 12 pages 148-151)

Later this summer, after I am done revising the paper (I am hoping to get it published), I will post a much longer discussion of both the WoW Glider case and the enforceability of EULAs.

Have you heard of the WoW Glider case?

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/07/strang...

“Creative Interpretation” of two different sections of a license agreement resulted in a rather ridiculous judgment of copyright infringement. Who would have thought that the EULAs nobody actually reads could have such power behind them? Do you think there's a decent chance that the Supreme Court will end up fixing this?