Concerns about the new EULA

Thats because a lawyer wrote it and a lawyer can't be clear on something like that to save their life. If they can use big words that cover 20,000 things to describe the one expected situation you can bet that the lawyer will go for the biggest amount of coverage that they can.

The important thing to remember about EULA's are.

A) They exist to CYA the company for standard things the company does.
B) They have never actually been found to be enforcable.
D) Having one protects you [thus the CYA aspect] from lawsuits for your standard practices because you posted the standard practice in the EULA.
E) This is why the lawyer writing the bloody thing will try to make is as broad and general as they can.

Sort of like not given an metric for "exploit" because when people push the line you'd have to move it and listen to them cry fowl.

Dont forget to uninstall the game and the NCSoft launcher! bye

There are plenty of folk who say bad things about the game in these very forums and they don't get banned.

Sooooo... where the heck are you getting this from?

Nooo, but you need that language to shut up the folks who say, "How was I supposed to know you couldn't do that?"

A free punch in the balls is still a punch in the balls

Not necessarily. Depends on what kind of balls you're talking about. At fancy dress balls free punch is a beverage. At a martial arts dojo it's an eye watering injury to the groin.

Oh and he must change his master account password and security phrases to random characters and numbers and not write them down. And change his email address to an invalid one so he can't get any support emails. That should properly unsubscribe him.

If you put a good cup on first the free punch in the balls can be fine.

I was getting hopeful until I got this far. I knew there was a reason I should have hit the forum earlier.

Years too late for that.

I'm fairly certain they outright *invited* some of the devs and ex-devs over there. Sooooo.... yeah.

*raises hand*

Need I reiterate my general image of the dev team's attention span?

He referred to it that way elsewhere, too, so I didn't take it as claiming Westley was shouting, more a poke at the ALL CAPS WALL OF TEXT *crits for 9001*

Oh, didn't you see the "But if you chaaange this...." bit?

See my Guides and Tutorials

I have never seen a website EULA that makes the kinds of claims we're talking about. Among other things, it's not possible for most of them to do without installing software. I never install software unless the point is to use that software, and I have never installed software with this sort of EULA.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not going to go quit over this or anything of the sort. Weighing my awareness of what they probably mean to do with this against my interest in continuing to play comes out in favor of staying. That doesn't mean I like this new EULA terminology - its far too broad, and I dislike on principal giving people permission to do things that I don't actually want them to have permission to do. I'm looking around to see if there's anything besides unsubscribing that I can do to apply useful pressure to get them to change it. Probably not, but it's at least worth looking into.

I have some familiarity with anti-cheating methods on computers. So I know why they want/need to have access to memory, files on the drive, etc. They need to be able to query their software and have it puke back it's specifics and what it's doing in memory to be able to tell that it's been tampered with. Thing is, they NEED tacit permission to do so.

They're GOING to keep the wording vague. Because they run a risk of being caught with a corner case if they try to spell it out exactly or they have to write an encyclopedia set to cover each and every specific scenario on a case by case basis.

This is standard boilerplate.

And I'm no more projecting a motive onto NCSoft than Westley is.

Also, use Occam's Razor. What's more likely?

That the company needs butt-coverage as it researches allegations of cheating?

Or that it's some huge *CONSPIRACY!!!*to deprive you of your privacy and peep into your life?

What the EULA says is that NCSoft, at it's own discretion (or not) reserves the right to monitor user traffic relevant to CoH on any forum it comes across (or not) and take action (or not) as they see fit. It also grants them discretion (or not) to utilize their software as a means to look at any hardware or software or data that's used to play their game and act (or not) on what they find (or don't find).

Yes, it COULD be used to trojan our computers. Yes, it COULD be used to spy on our ostensibly "private" conversations. But, as noted, the likelihood is vanishingly small. Moreover, their EULA does NOT trump local, state, and federal law. If they do something that's illegal, the fact that their EULA says they can doesn't protect them.

Trust me. I'm fully cognizant of the consumer and privacy abuse issues that could come up because of this. While I'm not particularly happy with NCSoft's marketing-gated development cycle right now, they have enough of my trust right now that this sort of language (which I've seen in EULAs for online services before) doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

Isn't that sort of, more or less just indicating you're NOT?

{NCSoft} You must agree that you are mentally competent
{Ragequitter} WHY I'VE NEVER BEEN SO INSULTED *FROTH*FROTH*RRAARR*FROTH*FROTH*SPIT*FROTH*
{NCSoft} Case made.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

What I got from the OP, is that he's been disgruntled for a while and used Freedom's EULA as a soapbox to give his last two cents before he "quits." But with free to play coming in a couple days, he'll still have his soapbox to preach (albeit in limited form) without subscribing to the game.

/e waits for the first court case involving an austic player, and their parents trying to get back a couple of hundred dollars.

{NCSoft} He said he was mentally competent.
{Lawyer} Two weeks before that he said he was a pair of curtains.

They do not need permission to have the program send back its own memory. The main objection I have is to the clauses which, in theory, could allow them to view any memory or files on the computer.

I'm a savvy computer user. If it came down to it, and I really wanted to, given the way this game works currently I could run the game in a way that couldn't do or see much outside its own files and process space. I'm not particularly worried. I still don't like the wording.

Thank you for the eye watering image. Really. Thanks.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.