Wednesday, June 9, 2010

End User License Agreements (EULA's) and Word Count Tool

       I found a friend of mine I have been searching for on the web for some time.  He is a programmer and it got me to thinking... I should check the licenses on the software I link to.  I had been providing direct downloads using copies I had uploaded  for some of the soft ware as well as providing a link to the authors sites.

    I figured Google would not appreciate me offering downloads of their software, in this case Chrome Beta but though I might as well check.
    Proof that the big software companies do not want you to read their agreements, this turned out to be a 6398 word document.  The document is extremely long and complicated, for example I found this at Paragraph 16, Part b.2 (as opposed of course to part b. and b.1).  Not of the actual document mind you!  No this is at Paragraph 16, Part b.2 of the Appendix!  Lol!

Full text available here;

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html

["b.2. Sublicensee shall not (i) circumvent the Content Protection Functions of either the Adobe Software or any related Adobe Software that is used to encrypt or decrypt digital content for authorized consumption by users of the Adobe Software, or (ii) develop or distribute products that are designed to circumvent the Content Protection Functions of either the Adobe Software or any Adobe Software that is used to encrypt or decrypt digital content for authorized consumption by users of the Adobe Software."]


    I guess it needs to be said, I just thought it was funny that there is a Paragraph 16 part b.2 of a document that probably hundreds of millions of people have signed and not read!  


    Did I count all 6398 words in the document?  Nope!  I used the easy web tool Word Count Tool available at;


http://www.wordcounttool.com/


    Just Copy your document to your clipboard, paste it in the window at Word Count Tool and click Submit!
    Works great, it's fast and no need to install anything on your computer, of course it only works while you are online!