UK consumer group slams Apple, Microsoft
The National Consumer Council (NCC) has referred 17 software manufacturers to the Office of Fair Trading following an investigation (PDF link) into End User Licence Agreements.
The NCC investigation bought 25 individual items of software and followed the standard installation process, while its legal team studied the terms and conditions attached to each piece of software.
In many cases, the agreements were found to encroach upon or nullify a user’s legal rights under statutory consumer law. The user agreeing to a licence agreement on a given piece of software could effectively be signing away their wider legal rights, shifting the legal burden away from the software creator onto themselves.
Some consumers don’t have a clue
tech.co.uk