🚀 go-pugleaf

sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:

>jlr@uas.UUCP (John Lynn Roseman) writes:

>|It is NOT true that shrink-wrap licenses are unenforceable.
>|They are not contracts, but are enforceable under copyright law 
>|(in many capitalist countries).  Enforceability under copyright 
>|law does not require explicit agreement by both parties.

>The key of the matter is that a shrink-wrap license is not a license
>at all. Only those provisions that fall under copyright law may be
>restricted and enforced. This also goes for the GPL.

Actually, in Illinois, it is only by virtue of state law that those
shrink-wrapped license agreements have any hope of being enforced.  Before the
recent law, the only way provisions of such a license agreement not already
contained in copyright law could be enforced was by the claim that the
license agreement is a contract.  The agreements include a phrase like this:

	"The buyer signifies his agreement to abide by the terms of this
	agreement by opening the package.  Anyone who doesn't want to obey
	the terms should return the package unopened to the vendor."

in order to get the user to agree to the contract.  The naive buyer who
believes this phrase may think, as he is opening the box, that he is agreeing
to the contract, and so he DOES make a contract.  The smart buyer who opens the
box, knows that the sentence 

	"The buyer signifies his agreement to abide by the terms of this
	agreement by opening the package."

is false, and that the command

	"Anyone who doesn't want to obey the terms should return the package
	unopened to the vendor."

needn't be obeyed, so does not mentally agree to the terms of the contract, and
so he doesn't make a contract.

This was explained to me by an actual lawyer (I am not one), and I find this
explanation extremely appealing.