Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do – here’s how to opt out

The thing about the EULA is ultimately it's still a license agreement.

It basically says "You have license to copy our information (as copying is an integral part of running software and our software is covered by copyright) as long as you comply with these terms."

But they can't compel you to do anything. Nor can they be allowed to do things that they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do.

So the EULA says what you have to do to be allowed to maintain a license to use their software. If you violate it, you lose the license.

So you can't really sign an EULA that says "I agree to let you punch me in the face whenever you want." because you can always refuse to let them punch you in the face. If you refused to let them punch you in the face, you couldn't get in real trouble, but they might be able to revoke the license they granted you contingent on that.

That said, it would have to reasonable for them to need to punch you in the face at all for it to be enforceable. So it would be like, I say I agree to the EULA, you want to punch me in the face, I say no, at that point things are fine. If they then say you need to stop using our software without a license, and I say I've got a license, and they say that I violated the terms of the license by not letting them punch me in the face, then I can argue that that face punching is unreasonable.

Similarly, if they come up and punch me in the face without asking me first, and then claim that my agreement to the EULA said they could, that doesn't give them the ability to do it. The EULA is them giving the USER rights to use their software, with conditions. The user isn't giving up their rights. They're just agreeing to follow their rules in order to maintain a license.

I mean, that's how it should work in theory. In reality, it's lawyers.

But the thing is, the company is giving you a license. They can't take anything from you in the process. They can dictate under what conditions they will be willing to let you use that license, but the worst they can do is argue that you violated the license, and potentially violated copyright without license.

The things that say "I agree you can do terrible things to me" don't let them do terrible things to you. It just means that if you don't let them do terrible things, they can try to revoke your ability to copy their work. But at the same time you can argue that their ability to do terrible things to you isn't reasonable.

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