Comment by pjmlp
5 hours ago
Software companies so far have been getting away with it, because the industry is relatively young versus others, and outside high integrity computing liability is yet to be a common expectation.
If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now.
Not to mention the whole EULAs ("we don't have any idea what we are doing here, please sign") disease.
> If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now.
How can they do that when they probably had to sign an arbitration agreement to use the product? Can't pull that shit with a box of oatmeal or most other physical items without software components.
Steam (the game store) had an arbitration agreement. It turns out there's no class action arbitration and the merchant pays all arbitration fees. When they did something wrong (I don't remember what) and got inundated with thousands upon thousands of individual arbitration cases, suddenly they wished for a class action lawsuit instead. They removed forced arbitration from the EULA.
It's not clear if it meant anything anyway. Half the point of an EULA is to scare you away from trying to enforce your rights even if a lawyer would rip it up.
Hence my remark with EULAs, they should be illegal.