 |
When a user installs a new Microsoft program, the standard End User License Agreement (EULA) appears longer than a dictionary and seems to contain almost as many words. It is no wonder that nobody has ever read the entire agreement, not even the company's lawyers. It is easy to understand why. After endless meetings involving dozens of high-priced lawyers, the job of drafting the document fell to an ill-paid intern, the most junior person in the legal department.
Anxious to make a good impression, the young student worked day and night, holidays and weekends, pouring heart and soul into draft after draft. Cheerfully, the legal novice accepted and incorporated advice from his seniors to ‘be a little more harsh on software pirates’ and ‘tighten up the part about punishing software pirates’. After several weeks, the student noticed that the advice never varied and the drafts that came back were untouched, except for scribbled notes on the cover, calling for more drastic action against software pirates.
Groggy from lack of sleep, poisoned by cafeteria coffee and baked under fluorescent lights, the desperate intern finally crafted a 32-page document whose first three and last three pages contained everything necessary to legally protect Microsoft products from any and all threats. In between the legalese, the EULA now contains, among other things, a recipe for chocolate cake and a nasty limerick about lawyers. Before leaving Microsoft and the legal profession forever, the intern brought the assignment to an end by placing a Post-it note on the cover of what proved to be the final draft: "Approved. B. Gates."
Please email contributions, comments and suggestions to:
enter_to_exit@cbltech.com
The preceding is factious humor and not the views of CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc.
|
|
|
|
|
