Very plain language EULA
In part of my research for the Eduserv study on the use of open content licences, such as Creative Commons, by cultural heritage organisations, I ran into Spoken Word Services. This site is an audio archive of BBC material held for access by educational institutions.
It has an extremely informal End User Licence Agreement (EULA). I particularly like the indemnification clause and the choice of law and jurisdiction clause:
You will pay us any costs and damages we suffer if you do something you’re not allowed to. This would include the costs of our legal types. As we are proud to be a Scottish based project, this agreement will be under Scots law and enforced in the Scottish courts.
I also like this description of the educational restriction:
You can only use the material for educational purposes, so don’t go selling it on e-Bay. Beyond the fact that it is illegal, it is also not very nice.
I hope to find out in the project if they considered a Creative Commons like licence for their content. The EULA and their separate copyright policy restricts the use of the content outside of the educational setting and specifically prohibits placing any of the files on a page accessible to the internet.
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July 5th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for your interest in our license.
Our choice against Creative Commons was for two reasons: firstly, the majority of our content is sourced from the BBC, and more restrictive licensing is necessary to protect their content (the BBC hold only very limited rights to the content they broadcast). Secondly, the ground-work and negotiations for our project pre-dated the first CC licenses.
Please feel free to contact myself for more information and I’ll do my best to put you in touch with those in the know.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Hi Graeme,
Thanks for you comment. I suspected as much — the problem of 3d parties owning rights to the material is a major obstacle for institutions dealing with cultural heritage material to release under CC and similar licences.
As to your second reason, I hadn’t really thought about identifying programmes that started before December of 2002 in the survey, and will take that into account.
I’ll definitely be in touch.