You agree to the contract by performing the act of installing and using the software (frequently by clicking an "i agree to this" box).
I might not have even clicked on "I Agree" - who is to say I've installed the software in the way you want me to? Regardless, I'm interacting in isolation with my own property. I can sing a loyal oath to the estate of Oliver Hardy in my bathroom or write "I'm going to give all my money away to Scientology" on my bedroom wall, and all sorts of other nonsense - none of these things form contracts. A contract involves interaction with another party.
knowing or having should have known of the piece of paper.
If I warn you that the next paragraph contains an obligation for you, are you obliged to follow the instructions therein if you continue reading this post? Of course not, because you've not even consented to *this* paragraph.
You owe me an ice cream.
When you buy a cupcake from the bakery you form a contract without signing anything.
Interaction. Entirely different.
If you don't like the EULA and you've already paid for the software without having an opportunity to see the EULA, then by law you can return the software to the manufacturer.
At purchase, I gave Apple some money and they agreed to give me a copy of the software. I didn't agree to later read and agree to any further terms, returning the software otherwise. Similarly, if you sell me any item and I find some sticker giving me extra rules concerning its use - a couch you built with an instruction under a cushion indicating that only people wearing bowties may sit on it, say - I'll laugh and ignore it. You should have provided me terms to explicitly agree to at the time of sale.
EULAs are a travesty to the reasonable notion of a contract.
The "freedom of speech and of the press" apply only to the GOVERNMENT.
If EULAs are not a contract, then any abridging of my right to speak or publish Mac OS X comes directly from force of government, rather than voluntary agreement. Since the government can only do this under the Constitution's Copyright and Patents clause (also some 20th century innovations on national security, etc.), it's otherwise breaking the First Amendment. I assume we are agreed that code is speech.
KnightWRX said:
Psystar settled a few claims because they knew they were going to lose and they knew an appeal wouldn't give them anything but bigger legal costs.
Or couldn't afford the legal costs - especially not costs involved to overturn argued unconstitutional enforcement of EULAs.
Limited time, exclusive ownership of an idea is a kind of property.
1. Limited time ownership where time is dictated by government is not ownership at all.
2. For property, exclusivity results from ownership. For Copyrights and Patents, any relation to "ownership" is the result of a fallacious understanding of (i) the purpose of; (ii) the nature of copyright. In detail:
(i) Physical property is naturally (in the sense described by the FFs) owned, and its description in law is a codification of that natural state. Ideas and their expressions cannot be naturally owned. See Jefferson above. Copyright and Patents are merely a pragmatic convenience.
(ii) As such, Copyright and Patents only exist to the extent that they are described in law. Otherwise, ideas and their expressions are as free to pass from man to man as any speech. Meanwhile, physical property exists whether law recognises it or not.
You only now oppose it because you want to appropriate what someone else has worked hard for (sense of entitlement).
On the contrary, I'm so disappointed by Apple's repeated un-American approach to ideas and their expressions that I've decided to move myself away from Apple. I'm encouraging the same of my clients. I feel neither entitled nor not entitled to what Apple thinks up - I simply don't want to deal with such an entity at all.