My latest Guardian column’s just gone up, about the message that entertainment companies send when they put crappy EULAs on their digital downloads:
Here’s the world’s shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: “Don’t violate copyright law.” If I had my way, every digital download from the music in the iTunes and Amazon MP3 store, to the ebooks for the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the games for your Xbox, would bear this – and only this – as its licence agreement.
“Don’t violate copyright law” has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: “You are not about to get screwed.”
You shouldn’t have to sell your soul
just to download some music
