Poppi opened this issue on Sep 10, 2002 ยท 52 posts
kbade posted Wed, 11 September 2002 at 12:51 AM
<<If I understand law correctly, in order for a contract of any type to be legally binding, it has to be read, understood, and agreed upon by both parties. If there are any abiguities in the contract, the chances are that any claims made against that contract will be dismissed.>> With all due respect, you do not understand contract law correctly...at least not entirely correctly. The plain language of the document is binding, regardless of whether one party later claims not to understand it (of course, the legal status of shrink-wrapped licenses is another issue entirely). Accordingly, in the event of a claim being made under the EULA, the user probably would argue that it is ambiguous, as you suggest. However, the existence of an ambiguity does not necessarily result in the dismissal of an action, though it generally means that a court would construe the ambiguous language against the drafter (in this case, CL). Yet there are other general rules for interpreting contracts, one of which is that more specific terms trump more general terms. As noted in my prior post, Section J of the Content Distribution section of the EULA clearly and specifically authorizes many, many authorized uses of the otherwise restricted content. The only issue I've seen raised that seems legit from a user standpoint is development or use of a third-party "helper app," but even in that case, I have yet to see one that actually would, or even could, cause competition to P5. Also, if someone like kupa makes reassuring statements now, people who rely on them can argue estoppel an argument from equity recognized in every court of which I am aware. Indeed, reliance on such statements might even be viewed as a modification of the original agreement. Of course, a broad EULA would be extremely helpful if CL wants to funnel all third-party development through the Content Paradise feature...(did that stir everyone up?)