I've been wondering about something. If you use software that has a EULA that you officially don't understand, is it enforcable in court? The application you're using is localized to a whole bunch of languages and you speak, for instance, portuguese. There is no way english is an official language in Portugal. If you break the EULA of that application, can you plead "I didn't know because I didn't understand" (or whatever that is in portuguese)?
Re:It isn't
Beatnik on 2005-09-22T15:17:24
Cool! Nice to know that Belgium (pardon my french) isn't the only country with strange language issues. We have 3 official languages: dutch (or flemmish), french (or walloon) and german (or "Ich bin neu hier. Wann kommt der Bus?"). Both flemmish and walloon are strangely similar to the originating language.. but there are tons of differences (go figure).
Anyway, that wasn't my point at all. My point was that I don't see how you can enforce legal documents that you don't officially understand. Not all applications force you to agree to the EULA. Most have it included in a file somewhere (like most of the GPL licensed ones). I don't speak legalees tho so I wouldn't know:)
Depends on the legal system of the country in question. For the most part, I would assume that most legal systems follow the typical “default to (almost) no rights” constellation, which means that you have almost no rights to do anything with something, unless the rights holder grants you these rights.
In that constellation, if you do not understand the EULA, you cannot understand that you were granted rights you would not usually have, which would lead me to believe that you must not use the product in the first place.
In other words, not understanding the EULA means you must not use the product at all, rather than meaning you can do anything you want because you didn’t know you weren’t allowed to.
But IANAL.
Re:
pudge on 2005-09-27T20:59:52
That is, in general, the way it works. If you agree to the terms of the EULA, then you are tacitly admitting you do know what it means, even if you don't. You are responsible to know.
Now, one exception might be if you don't even know enough to KNOW it is an EULA. But as you (and most users) have seen enough to know what one looks like, this would be hard for most people to argue.
IAANAL.
