Man Finds $1,000 Prize in EULA

bhtooefr writes "When Doug Heckman was installing a PC Pitstop program, he actually read the EULA. In it, he found a clause stating that he could get financial compensation if he e-mailed PC Pitstop. The result: a $1,000 check, and proof that people don't read EULAs (3,000 people before him didn't notice it). The goal of this was to prove that one should read all EULAs, so that one can see if an app is spyware if it is buried in the EULA."

GIVE ME MONEY

[oliphaunt]

where was that EULA link again?

Reading every EULA?

[BizidyDizidy]

Don't know if it's worth 1,000.

Excellent

[Grid Reaper]

Now I need a magnifying glass to read al the fine print for my $$$.

Ctrl-F

[Anonymous Coward]

From now on, I'm at least doing Ctrl-F, 1,000

$1,000 for reading all the way through EULAs?

[ackthpt]

$1,000 for reading all the way through EULAs, looking for an Easter Egg?

Mmmm. That's a tough one, but I'll have to pass on the $1,000.

Too many look like that Gator one - pages and pages of gobbledy-gook and mumbo jumbo which ultimately translate to all your base are belong to us.

Cereal Port

[tiktok]

I'm still waiting for my scale model replica Herbie The Love Bug that I was supposed to receive after mailing in 15 Cheerios box tops in 1974.

hmm... money?

[qw0ntum]

I'm reinstalling all the programs I own just so I can check their EULA's now.

Of all the bad luck ...

[eck011219]

I read my Win2000 SP4 EULA and found out that I owe THEM $1000. Those jerks still haven't cashed my check, either.

that does it...

[nigham]

me, and everyone in my team are just going to spend time reading EULAs all day long. Sounds like its more productive than research anyway.

Steve Mann's Ouijagree

[QuantumG]

In Steve Mann's award winning paper [eyetap.org] he describes a technique he calls Ouijagree. The next time you are presented with an EULA, grab three nearby people (family members, fellow employees) and have them gentle place their fingers on the mouse. Add your own fingers and then call upon the spirits to agree to the EULA. Watch! as the mouse slowly glides from its current position, possibily spelling out the names of lost loved ones, as it approaches the I Agree button. Should it linger over the button too long, feel free to click yourself as the spirits have made their intention clear. Now it is not you who has agreed to that EULA, it's your long dead great grandfather, who came from beyond the grave to take away your legal responsibility.

Now the question is...

[mikeophile]

Will he read the soul-selling EULA on the back of the $1000 check?

Re:yea let's make society crazy

[Ravenscall]

Think of Rumplestiltskin, without the princess even knowing what her end of the deal is.

And yet the princess was pretty venal, expecting to take advantage of the little dude. Ain't no saints in that story.



That's the point

Re:No Kidding

[jacquesm]

Hehe, that reminds me, a long long time ago in a country far far away from the present one I was a game writer, and one of the games I worked on (the code bit) was a game called 'FlightDeck'.

Now, flightdeck was the most boring game you could imagine, and one night after a hard days work a couple of guys sat in the place where we worked and decided to liven things up a bit. Every so many thousand games one of the elevators in the carrier would go down, a guy would stand on it, the elevator would go up again, he'd strip on the deck and jump off the ship...

This lead to the most baffling support calls of people that really could literally not believe that they'd just seen what they'd seen, and of course we never let the support guys in on the joke...

to give you an idea of how long ago this was, the atari ST was the best machine you could get for little $, 68 K assembler was the way to go for fast games and the Dire Straits had just released "Brothers in Arms" :)

Re:Of all the bad luck ...

[LnxAddct]

Don't worry, windows isn't the only one. I just reinstalled linux and while reading the agreement it turns out I owe some 3rd party $699.

Re:Cereal Port

[winkydink]

Read it again, that was Herpes the Love Bug. See your doctor. :)

Only took 3000 users?

[focitrixilous P]

Man check out what I discovered in the GPL after reading it closely.

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

SEND EMAIL TO [e-mail] to claim a million dollars and a portion of my beard.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

HEY YOU! Want free ci41i5? Email [e-mail]

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

KICK ME

Man the things you can't do with an EULA these days.

Unfortunately, that $1000 check

[bwcarty]

has small print on the back stating that by endorsing that check, he agreed to switch his long distance carrier to Siberian Porn & Bell, he provided his bank account number to the entire country of Nigeria, and his testicles will be fed to contestants on Fear Factor.

Cut 'n' Paste, baby

[Spasemunki]

I'm not convinced that the people who include EULA's in their products even read them. There is clearly a lot of cutting and pasting that goes on. I find lots of bizarre threats about infringement and exclusivity attached to unsupported free products. One Eula had changed the warranty section to read: "by agreeing to this license, you are granted a warranty for a period of zero (0) days.", rather than just change the language to indicate that their was no warranty.

Best one I've seen so far: reading the EULA for a RPG dice rolling program, I find this:

Section 3.a.i: This software is a guitar utility. This is a learning tool.

A dice roller that teaches you to play the guitar? Now that's a feature!

Re:Of all the bad luck ...

[swerk]

My favorite agreements (not quite EULA's, most of them, but similar) are on websites. Most of the time they just use a textarea as a poor man's iframe to hold the agreement's text, and you must click the "I accept" submit button to continue. Nearly every one of these i have encountered (Verisign does this for sure, if you want to try it out) does not lock the textarea. So, I erase all the crap that's in there and replace it with:

Company XYZ hereby agrees to pay me $1,000,000.

Now that's a contract I can agree to!

text of EULA from article

[Fox_1]

a special consideration which may include financial will be awarded to a limited number of authorize licensee to read this section of the license agreement and contact PC Pitstop at [e-mail]. (FoxNote: it should be obvious we shouldn't bombard this email server) This offer can be withdrawn at any time.

Re:No Kidding

[NanoGator]

"One of our developers buried some easter eggs in a web-based game, and nobody has claimed them yet after several months."

Heh. I buried something like that in an essay I wrote in English Class. I had a teacher that just piled and piled and piled work on us. I was CERTAIN she didn't read through everything. "If you read this far, I owe ya a soda." I don't know which was worse: Being wrong about my teacher not reading my work, or being out 50 cents.

Re:fp master

[Anonymous Coward]

i am 1337

n0, j00, 51r, 4r3 t3h s|_|(|. j00 ph41l3d 2 g37 fP, 4$$|-|phux0r. 1 4m t3h 0|/|3 wH0 15 1337 4r0uNd /. -- 1 4m a 1337 h4x0r b3kUz 1 k4n $p33k t3h 1337 5p34k l1k3 n0b0d33Z B1zZN155.

Re:$1,000 for reading all the way through EULAs?

[Babbster]

Are you sure they weren't shocked because while you were carefully reading the consent there was a two-foot-high geyser of blood spouting from your belly button?

Re:Of all the bad luck ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really amusing is that they almost always respond with a "200 OK" HTTP response.

Re:No Kidding

[AhtirTano]

Heh. I buried something like that in an essay I wrote in English Class. I had a teacher that just piled and piled and piled work on us. I was CERTAIN she didn't read through everything. "If you read this far, I owe ya a soda."

I did that in an English class once. The teacher seemed to accept just about anything as an answer, so I figured she was just checking to see if every question was answered. One day I answered the question with "I bet you don't even read these." When I got the assignment back, she had written "Yes, I do." in the margin. At the end of the quarter she admitted that she usually didn't, but her eyes just happened to fall on that sentence.

Common End User License Agreement

[defile]

Software companies, feel free to use in your own products. Released into the public domain.

----

YOUR_COMPANY_NAME_HERE ("Company") makes this copy of NAME_OF_YOUR_SOFTWARE_PRODUCT ("Software") available to you ("Licensee") under terms of this End User License Agreement ("EULA"). By installing software you agree to be bound by the terms contained herein.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

Company makes no guarantee of any kind, and waives all implied warranties including mercantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. Company shall not be held liable for any damage, personal injury, deaths, loss of profits, growth of additional organs, or any other injury or debt suffered by licensee due to any negligence, fraud, or other criminal or civil breach of contract or law committed by company. Licensee will hold company harmless under all circumstances in perpetuity.

PARTICIPATION IN GAINS

Company shall participate in the profits, advantages, or other benefits that the licensee experiences as a result of installing, using, or otherwise having anything to do with software no matter how remote or mundane. Company reserves the right to inspect the records of licensees business, premises, or person at any time for any reason to determine if it is entitled to a share of licensee's gains.

GRANTING OF ALL RIGHTS

Licensee gives software and company the right to do do anything it wants to your property or person for any reason. See limitation of liability and participation in gains for more information.

SEVERABILITY

Should a court of any kind find any part of this agreement unenforceable, the remainder of the agreement shall still have full force and effect.

IMMUNITY FROM LAW

No court shall have the power to enforce any of these provisions against the company, but shall have unlimited power to enforce any provision against the licensee. Licensee accepts the jurisdiction of any court.

RECOVERY OF FEES

Licensee must reimburse company for all enforcement fees incurred as a result of any action, in addition to paying a $100,000,000 penalty to the company, whether or not its action is justified.

GOOD FAITH AND DUE CONSIDERATION

Licensee declines any due consideration in accepting this EULA. Licensee accepts this agreement in good faith and verifies that they have read it and understood it in its entirety even if they just scrolled to the end and clicked OK without so much as glancing at it.

RESTRICTIONS ON REDISTRIBUTION

Licensee may not redistribute software in any way. Licensee may not format shift or space shift this software. Licensee waives all fair use rights, including the right to make a backup copy. Backup copies may be purchased from company for a (large) fee.

RESTRICTIONS ON USE

Licensee can only use the software for its intended purposes. We'll let you know what its intended purpose is when we catch you doing it and bring costly legal action against you.

Licensee must discontinue use of software and upgrade when company decides software has reached its end of life.

REVERSE ENGINEERING

Don't even think about it unless you've got really deep pockets so we can sue you for everything.

Sorry, still nobody will read it

[famazza]

Even Software Companies.

Your brand-new generic-EULA is so faithful that I can't even read the first paragraph.

Contratulations.

Please, can somebody explain me the funny part of this CEULA?

Re:No Kidding

[swv3752]

In geomety class, out teacher would walk around looking to see if we did our homework. To test how closely she checked, I would show my Spanish homework. I did this for over a month before one of my classmates ratted me out. Of course, she only started checking after I admitted that had not even opened the math book. I had worked out several theorems on the board that put us several chapters ahead, and the teacher was questioning me if I had read ahead. I replied something like, "You think I read ahead? I haven't even opened the book yet."

Re:No Kidding

[Reignking]

"If you read this far, I owe ya a soda."

And if you used "ya" in an English essay, I hope she docked you :)

Re:No Kidding

[MEGAMAID]

haha, i duplicated the same three pages in my technical documentation on a software assignment in high school. Just did up a real looking TOC, changed the headings and added some line breaks, because I knew my teacher wouldn't even read it.

And she didn't

Re:No Kidding

[Brandybuck]

That was at school. Try doing that at work in an important document. I did. In my self evaluation, I wrote about how I saved the company CEO from drowning, performed CPR on the vice president, single handedly rallied the stock market around our product, etc. My boss cut and pasted my text into his formal review without ever reading it.

At the point where he asked me to sign my formal review, I had to confess.

That reminds me of a prank....

[Gadgetfreak]

My buddies and I in college had an ongoing gag... anyone who got up and left the vicinity of their computer with a lab report/paper/presentation on the screen had the phrase "I poop too much" inserted somewhere at random.

Unfortunately, an otherwise excellent paper that I got back had a red pen circle around a certain phrase on the 9th page, with the comment "proofread" written next to it.

Re:No Kidding

[dtfinch]

I never could beat that game.

Re:$1,000 for reading all the way through EULAs?

[wed128]

Somebody set us up the bomb!!!

Re:Er...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

$1000 for paying the guy off.

$100,000 for new servers which can handle the Slashdotting. :)

Re:No Kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

I managed to give her an orgasm...
HA! You are such losers and I'm a real man, cause I can give digital girls orgasms! HA! And that I'll never find a real girl doesn't matter at all!!11one