DP-Approved EULA's

[Stephen Adkins (spadkins)]

Hi,

It seems to me that one of the enemies of DataPortability is the legal
language that sites make the users accept on registration, variously
called a EULA ("End User License Agreement") or just "Terms of
Service."

It would be nice if the Policy group could survey a handful of these
documents from various sites and catalog the things they contain that
are good and the things they contain that are objectionable from a DP
and user rights perspective.

This might result in two things.
1. A sample EULA that the DP group would recommend for use by social
sites (or at least a checklist of recommendations for a site to
consider when authoring its own EULA)
2. An approval program for social site EULA's similar to how
opensource.org approves software licenses as Open Source and how
gnu.org approves software licenses as Free Software licenses.

If we can start highlighting to companies what is objectionable about
their EULA's, it would bring into clear focus what simple actions they
can take to clear away legal hurdles even before they enhance their
site technically to support any additional standards.

Stephen

[Jacob Chapel]

This is a great idea and I think something that is very important for
us to cover. Although we might need lawyers or people with legal
backgrounds to really handle any documents we present as examples for
member companies, this will be one of those ace in the hole parts of DP.

Jacob Chapel

[Elias Bizannes]

I might be worth getting into a discussion first what rights we expect?