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Showing results for tags 'eula'.
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I would like to congratulate Squad, Private Selection and 2K on a much better privacy policy this time around. The EULA still needs work. I recommend explicitly allowing court legal appeals to the arbitration clause if the arbitration method and judgement are found to be unfair due to fault of the other party. I would also have some sort of handling of class action cases, instead of of handling cases one by one when mistakes happened. Mistakes do happen to the best of us, and dealing with those who were affected can get very costly, very fast for all sides, especially for 2K, the parent company. Another company was recently hit with this and their arbitration clause that did not permit class action cases almost drove them bankrupt.
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This topic was just created for us to read. So, I'm wondering and maybe many others with me. What does this mean? Are there any significant changes? Also @UomoCapra, it could be useful to compare the old and new one. Since I'm writing this on an impulse, I haven't searched for the old one yet.
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Here's a weird thing that happened yesterday. I made a new thread in the Technical Support subforum. After posting it, I went to edit it. When I finished, the site gave me a 'I'm not a robot' test for some reason. I'm not sure if this actually relates to the EULA and whatnot but.......... I was signed in to my KSP forum account and it wanted to make sure it was me editing the post.....
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An open letter to Take Two Interactive: New York, we have a problem. Before I get in to that, just a little bit about myself; I’ve been a professional software developer and IT consultant for over 30 years. In my career, I’ve read hundreds of EULA’s, often on behalf of my clients. I have even written three or four of them, and many more Software Development Agreements (specifically the sections covering what the software will and won’t do and what our responsibilities were if it fails). Our company lawyer once actually told me, “If you ever get tired writing software, you could always get a job writing tort.” So I believe that I am at least as capable as the average layman of interpreting a software license agreement. Now, given that KSP is stand-alone computer game that uses no network access much less Internet access, has no online player ranking system, has no in-game online access of any kind, has no e-commerce system (virtual or otherwise) and involves absolutely no personal information of any kind, and given the broadest interpretation of the Terms of your EULA and its accompanying Privacy Policy, this is nothing less than a License Agreement for spyware. These two paragraphs are especially troubling: “… you consent to the information collection and usage terms set forth in this section and Licensor's Privacy Policy, including (where applicable) (i) the transfer of any personal information and other information to Licensor, its affiliates, vendors, and business partners, and to certain other third parties, such as governmental authorities, in the U.S. and other countries located outside Europe or your home country, including countries that may have lower standards of privacy protection; (ii) the public display of your data, … (iii) the sharing of your gameplay data with hardware manufacturers, platform hosts, and Licensor's marketing partners; and (iv) other uses and disclosures of your personal information or other information as specified in the above-referenced Privacy Policy, as amended from time to time….” And from the above-referenced Privacy Policy: “…the information we collect may include personal information such as your first and/or last name, e-mail address, phone number, photo, mailing address, geolocation, or payment information. In addition, we may collect your age, gender, date of birth, zip code, hardware configuration, console ID, software products played, survey data, purchases, IP address and the systems you have played on. We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.“ Starting at the top; “…governmental authorities, in … other countries … that may have lower standards of privacy protection…” Excuse me? Why?! You’re a New York company. Under what circumstances are you sharing our personal information with foreign governments? Not as surprising, although equally unacceptable is selling all our personal information to unnamed “marketing partners.” And the ridiculously overbroad “other uses … as amended from time to time.” Taken at its broadest interpretation that means you literally can anything you want, any time you want. Please. And while we’re on the topic of overbroad requests; you may “collect” my “photo?” It doesn’t say photos I submit to you, or photos I upload somehow, it just says photo. There are a lot of photos on my computer. Taken at its broadest interpretation this means you can crawl my hard drive looking for photos and then taking them. “…[P]ayment information… software products played, survey data, purchases…” again overbroad, it doesn’t say payments I make to you, your software products played, your survey data, or even your purchases. Taken at its broadest interpretation that means you can spy on the purchases I make from Amazon, record them, along with my payment information (and then sell that a foreign government). It’s ludicrous. It has been argued that this a just single EULA for the entire wide array of your products, and that the clearly offensive sections simply don’t apply to us KSP players. Perhaps. But I ask; Would you sign an agreement with your gardener that gave him access to your bank account, because in his other job, he’s an accountant? And he just uses the same contract for everybody? (“Oh, that part doesn’t apply to you, just sign here, and also I’ll need your account number.”) I don’t think so. Now do I actually believe that Take Two Interactive is just a front for foreign mobsters installing spyware on everyone’s computer? No. Well, not completely. At least not yet. I do think your lawyers have gone way too far, and crafted a license agreement that is way over-vague, way over-balanced in your favor, and does give you permission to install spyware. They may have done so assuming we don’t read these things or know what they mean, or that we’ll sign anything. They were wrong. I do know that there are companies in the world that do install spyware. And there is a far fewer number of companies that have at least an allegedly legitimate reason for wanting that kind of information. Facebook, I believe has a “feature” where they will announce everything you buy for you. I have no idea why anyone would do that. And I (and I believe a lot of people) not use facebook because it is an invasion of privacy. KSP is not Facebook (thankfully), and my gardener is not my accountant. Therefore: I do not believe I am being unreasonable, and I do believe I speak for a very large segment of the KSP community, when I say: This license agreement must be changed. Your EULA even says it can be changed at any time, so change it now. At the very least you need to go through and add some prepositional phases, footnotes, lists of which of your products apply to which paragraphs, something. Specify which photos and purchases you are referring to, under what conditions you will give our personal information to foreign governments (?!). Even better would be to simply make another version of the EULA in which you have removed anything that doesn’t apply to a stand-alone game like KSP. (Like the two above paragraphs, in their entirety.) I say it must be changed because I believe not changing the EULA would be a tacit admission by Take Two that all of our worst fears are true. It would be an admission that even if the current build of KSP doesn’t contain spyware, you do intend to put it in there at some point. There is simply no other logical reason not to change this agreement. And let me say here that no reassurances from company spokesmen will do, we need this addressed in that EULA. So please let’s fix this little dustup before it becomes a full-blown kerfuffle. Assuming you are not an evil company intent on installing spyware, just please make that clear in the EULA. We don’t want this to turn into the Star-Wars-Pay-To-Play-Luke-Skywalker fiasco. We don’t want half the KSP community on social media screaming #KSP=Spyware! Do we? So please let just fix this. How about this: You give us a KSP EULA that isn’t a license for spyware, and I’ll buy every last bit of DLC you ever produce. Deal? (and I think I speak for a large section of the community when I say that, too) Sincerely , Brainlord Mesomorph KSP Player and Enthusiast (from version 0.23 to 1.31, anyway) To the Community: If you agree with me here, please LIKE this post.
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