undefined | Better HN

0 pointsTuna-Fish4mo ago0 comments

In the EU, it's complicated.

There is a very clear law that forbids any additional contract terms post the point of sale, so that if you go to a store, purchase a box with software in it and then go home to install it, when it pops up a dialog for you to "agree" on, you can just ignore it, nothing in that is enforceable at all. And no, small print text on the box that says you have to agree to terms in the software does not change anything. But that's not how software is sold anymore.

EULAs in general are not unenforceable, so long as they are presented before the sale. This is precisely why Steam (for example) now gives you the EULA before it lets you buy anything.

0 comments

warpspin4mo ago

I'm not even sure you can generalize to "in the EU" here. A lot of contract law might be different between countries.

So for example, in Germany, an EULA would be considered an AGB, and subject to §303 BGB and following paragraphs, which e.g. means, "surprising" clauses which you cannot reasonably expect beforehand being part of the EULA would be unenforcable or §307 BGB would make certain kinds of one-sided/lop-sided clauses unenforcable.

Other EU countries might have other laws. I'm not really sure this is an area of unification, and a lot of the commonalities there is might be more due to the common heritage of Napoleon's Code Civil which underlies contract law in many european countries, instead of EU unification efforts.

layer84mo ago

There’s still some principles that it must be proportionate and reasonably intelligible to the average person. A 100-page EULA for end-user software generally won’t be enforceable.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse