Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

I've run into the same routine with medical professionals. Also, many of these privacy notices have a clause that they can disclose your private information for certain reasons, then a list which includes "advertising and marketing" purposes with other entities. When I ask about this I am always told they would never do that, it is a standard notice and no one other than me has ever said anything. When I refuse to sign or ask to strike that part out I am told I am free to seek medical care elsewhere and signing the agreement to disclose my private medical information for marketing purposes is "a federal requirement". It's really quite disgusting and abusive.

The situation with web sites and software that have 10 to 100 page long (when printed) EULAs or Terms of Use are a similar concept. Much software these days makes you click a box saying you have read and understood a legal agreement that is far more complex than any employment or IP transfer agreement I have ever signed.

It must have gotten to the point by now that the mere length of a privacy policy, or EULA, is enough to convince the court that there effectively is no policy or no agreement, signed, seal broken or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contracts_of_adhesion#Contracts...

Thanks for the link, learned something today, "Contracts of Adhesion"

Unfortunately, more recent jurisprudence in the U.S. has been chipping away at the scrutiny given to contracts of adhesion. In overturning a California Supreme Court decision that greatly restricted arbitration agreements when they were made in the form of contracts of adhesion, Scalia (writing for the court) noted that "the times in which consumer contracts were anything other than adhesive are long past", so California's rule being limited to contracts of adhesion was in practice so broad that it invalidated most arbitration agreements, and therefore interfered with the Federal Arbitration Act (AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, 2011).

Either way because it's a License and not a Contract, by default you have no rights to use the software.

I'm not aware of the current state of the law regarding software, but the interpretation of copyright that requires a license before the work can even be used for its intended purpose strikes me as unproductive and counterintuitive. What is the point of all the law surrounding authorized distribution if distribution doesn't implicitly grant the legitimate recipient the right to use the work (e.g. book, movie, or application) as it was designed to be used?

Yes "use" is a rather sticky word. Copyright of course covers making copies, but you have to copy software to install it, and as the copy is permanent (unlike say a digital photocopier's buffer) I suspect this is a realistic interpretation. If installing did not count as copying, then I could install one piece of software on an unlimited number of machines.

On the other hand, perhaps the legal mechanism of EULAs is simply that the software won't let you use it until you click "I Agree" - but I would have thought there would be some legal basis where if you don't agree, you have no usage rights, hence it being a "license". It's murky.

I would expect copying to your own computer would fall under fair use, but that copying to a hundred computers would require a hundred purchases. A license mechanism isn't explicitly needed here.

Even installing on 2 computers would be copying 100% of the work, and harm the market for the original work, so I have a hard time seeing this as a fair use.

You bought it, so you can do whatever you want with it.

If you buy a CD, it's copyrighted, but you can still do whatever you want with it (unless what is limited by law).

Ah but that CD has a license in the sleeve... (see my above comment on copying).

No their is no federal requirement to allow personal information for marketing purposes.

A doctor friend mentioned that even if the patient agreement allows "advertising and marketing", a medical practice still has limits on what they can do before the Medical Board would pull their license, or potentially feds busting them.

My favorite by far is that every policy says "we will only do X, Y, or as permitted by law", which is a wildcard that says they will do whatever they want unless it is forbidden for some other reason anyway.

These documents are not upper bound promises, they are lower bound warnings.

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