End User License Agreement Research Papers (original) (raw)

After a brief introduction that sets out the overall argument of the paper in summary, the second part of the paper will offer a meta-ethical framework based on the moral theory of Alan Gewirth, necessary for determining what, if any,... more

After a brief introduction that sets out the overall argument of the paper in summary, the second part of the paper will offer a meta-ethical framework based on the moral theory of Alan Gewirth, necessary for determining what, if any, ought to be the ethics that guide the conduct of people participating in virtual worlds in their roles as designers,

Spyware detection can be achieved by using machine learning techniques that identify patterns in the End User License Agreements (EULAs) presented by application installers. However, solutions have required manual input from the user with... more

Spyware detection can be achieved by using machine learning techniques that identify patterns in the End User License Agreements (EULAs) presented by application installers. However, solutions have required manual input from the user with varying degrees of accuracy. We have implemented an automatic prototype for extraction and classification and used it to generate a large data set of EULAs. This data set is used to compare four different machine learning algorithms when classifying EULAs. Furthermore, the effect of feature selection is investigated and for the top two algorithms, we investigate optimizing the performance using parameter tuning. Our conclusion is that feature selection and performance tuning are of limited use in this context, providing limited performance gains. However, both the Bagging and the Random Forest algorithms show promising results, with Bagging reaching an AUC measure of 0.997 and a False Negative Rate of 0.062. This shows the applicability of License Agreement Categorization for realizing informed software installation.

These days, it is common for people to buy goods that only exist in cyberspace. These items have been dubbed “virtual property” by many academics, although the notion of virtual property has not been expressly accepted or denounced by the... more

These days, it is common for people to buy goods that only exist in cyberspace. These items have been dubbed “virtual property” by many academics, although the notion of virtual property has not been expressly accepted or denounced by the legislator.
Currently, the status quo is that people who purchase virtual goods within virtual worlds are granted a right to use these goods through various licensing agreements with the developers of the virtual worlds within which these goods are located. This means that the individual is not afforded the full scope of rights that would accrue to him/her would these virtual goods be classified as a manifestation of personal property.
In a vacuum these considerations do not seem to warrant much concern, however, they become more than a mere triviality when one comes to the realisation that some manifestations of virtual goods often accrue values of thousands of dollars on the secondary market. In instances where creditors are probing the virtual contents of an insolvent estate, this question becomes even more interesting.
This dissertation will consider the way the term “property” is defined in the Insolvency Act 24 of 1936 and, more specifically, whether the notion of virtual property could be recognised within the definition’s broad scope. Furthermore, it posits that the recognition of virtual property rights in the context of insolvency is not only possible, but that it would be in the interest of the creditors of the insolvent estate to do so.

Spyware is a significant problem for most computer users. The term "spyware" loosely describes a new class of computer software. This type of software may track user activities online and offline, provide targeted advertising and/or... more

Spyware is a significant problem for most computer users. The term "spyware" loosely describes a new class of computer software. This type of software may track user activities online and offline, provide targeted advertising and/or engage in other types of activities that users describe as invasive or undesirable.

Being a Muslim, it is our responsibility to obey the rules and p2rinciples defined by our religion (Islam) in all the walks of life. Without a doubt, Islam is a complete religion and it has addressed every aspect of life in a detailed... more

Being a Muslim, it is our responsibility to obey the rules and p2rinciples defined by our religion (Islam) in all the walks of life. Without a doubt, Islam is a complete religion and it has addressed every aspect of life in a detailed manner. In this scenario, whether it is a matter of personal life, social life or professional life, Islam gives appropriate guidelines for all the aspects of life. In addition, we learn these principles and rules from Quran and Hadiths. In fact, it becomes our obligation to follow whatever is written in the Quran and Hadiths. But, in our daily lives, we have a large number of situations where we ignore these religious sayings. In fact, these situations occur in our lives so frequently that we have become used to these situations. This paper addresses some of these situations with respect to organizational environment where we ignore Islamic values and principles over other unimportant activities. In this paper, we have addressed these issues with resp...

As computers are increasingly more integrated into our daily lives we become more dependent on software. This situation is exploited by villainous actors on the Internet that distribute malicious software in search for fast financial... more

As computers are increasingly more integrated into our daily lives we become more dependent on software. This situation is exploited by villainous actors on the Internet that distribute malicious software in search for fast financial gains at the expense of deceived computer users. As a result, computer users need more accurate and aiding mechanisms to assist them when separating legitimate software from its unwanted counterparts. However, such separations are complicated due to a grey zone of software that exists between legitimate and purely malicious software. The software in this grey zone is often vaguely labelled spyware. This work introduces both user-aiding mechanisms and an attempt to clarify the grey zone by introducing the concept of privacy-invasive software (PIS) as a category of software that ignores the users' right to be left alone. Such software is distributed with a specific intent (often of commercial nature), which negatively affects the users to various degree. PIS is therefore classified with respect to the degree of informed consent and the amount of negative consequences for the users.

Each year, the President of the University of New Haven selects a professor to give a "Last Lecture." The challenge is to offer a talk that would, in the speaker's view, be appropriate if it were the last lecture they could ever give.... more

Each year, the President of the University of New Haven selects a professor to give a "Last Lecture." The challenge is to offer a talk that would, in the speaker's view, be appropriate if it were the last lecture they could ever give. Glenn McGee was selected to give the lecture for 2016. The title of his lecture is "Lost"; its premise is that our digital identities are far more easily lost than we realize.

Privacy-invasive software, loosely labeled spyware, is an increasingly common problem for today's computer users, one to which there is no absolute cure. Most of the privacy-invasive software are positioned in a legal gray zone, as the... more

Privacy-invasive software, loosely labeled spyware, is an increasingly common problem for today's computer users, one to which there is no absolute cure. Most of the privacy-invasive software are positioned in a legal gray zone, as the user accepts the malicious behaviour when agreeing to the End User License Agreement. This paper proposes the use of a specialized reputation system to gather and share information regarding software behaviour between community users. A client application helps guide the user at the point of executing software on the local computer, displaying other users' feedback about the expected behaviour of the software. We discuss important aspects to consider when constructing such a system, and propose possible solutions. Based on the observations made, we implemented a client/server based proof-of-concept tool, which allowed us to demonstrate how such a system would work. We also compare this solution to other, more conventional, protection methods such as anti-virus and anti-spyware software.

Being a Muslim, it is our responsibility to obey the rules and principles defined by our religion (Islam) in all the walks of life. Without a doubt, Islam is a complete religion and it has addressed every aspect of life in a detailed... more

Being a Muslim, it is our responsibility to obey the rules and principles defined by our religion (Islam) in all the walks of life. Without a doubt, Islam is a complete religion and it has addressed every aspect of life in a detailed manner. In this scenario, whether it is a matter of personal life, social life or professional life, Islam gives appropriate guidelines for all the aspects of life. In addition, we learn these principles and rules from Quran and Hadiths. In fact, it becomes our obligation to follow whatever is written in the Quran and Hadiths. But, in our daily lives, we have a large number of situations where we ignore these religious sayings. In fact, these situations occur in our lives so frequently that we have become used to these situations. This paper addresses some of these situations with respect to organizational environment where we ignore Islamic values and principles over other unimportant activities. In this paper, we have addressed these issues with respect to software development firms. The basic purpose of addressing these issues is to make software development firms and their employees responsive of their religious duties while performing their duties.

Disclosed are method of and apparatus for continuously casting a compound metal bar, the bar comprising a core member encased in a clad member which in combination form a unitary metal matrix. Said compound metal bar is cast by... more

Disclosed are method of and apparatus for continuously casting a compound metal bar, the bar comprising a core member encased in a clad member which in combination form a unitary metal matrix. Said compound metal bar is cast by continuously pouring a first molten metal into a casting mold and discharging a second molten metal beneath the surface of the first molten metal beneath the surface of the first molten metal and continuously solidifying both molten metals to form said compound metal bar.

A cornerstone of the law and economics approach to standard form contracts is the "informed minority" hypothesis: in competitive markets, a minority of term-conscious buyers is enough to discipline sellers from offering unfavorable... more

A cornerstone of the law and economics approach to standard form contracts is the "informed minority" hypothesis: in competitive markets, a minority of term-conscious buyers is enough to discipline sellers from offering unfavorable boilerplate terms. The informed minority argument is widely invoked to limit intervention in consumer transactions, but there has been little empirical investigation of its validity. We track the Internet browsing behavior of 45,091 households with respect to 66 online software companies to study the extent to which potential buyers access the standard form contract associated with software purchases, the end user license agreement. We find that only one or two out of every thousand retail software shoppers chooses to access the license agreement, and those that do spend too little time, on average, to have read more than a small portion of the license text. The results cast doubt on the relevance of the informed minority mechanism in a specific market where it has been invoked by both theorists and courts and, to the extent that comparison shopping online is relatively cheap and easy, suggest limits to the mechanism more generally.

Much has been written about the simplification of legal English, especially considering its implications upon the power relationships between companies and individuals and how consumers’ rights may be at risk when contractual terms and... more

Much has been written about the simplification of legal English, especially considering its implications upon the power relationships between companies and individuals and how consumers’ rights may be at risk when contractual terms and conditions are not sufficiently clear. It is true that over the last decades great progress has been made in this respect, and contracts (especially clickwrap agreements signed online) already show signs that the user is taken into account and unnecessary obscurity has been avoided: this can be seen, for instance, in sentence length, in the decrease in legal jargon, in syntactic structures avoiding excessive subordination and passive sentences, and even in the use of direct address forms (“you”) instead of anonymous third persons (“the user”, “the purchaser”. However, when a product is aimed at a younger audience, such as some videogames, the simplification must be even greater: such is the case of the Terms of Arbitration used by Mojang for the renowned “Minecraft” game. In our study, we shall look at how the drafters have made an effort to reach the maximum of simplification in the terms, to the point where, through the use of dialogic language, an attempt is made even to create complicity between the user and the games manufacturer.

We investigate the hypothesis that it is possible to detect from the End User License Agreement (EULA) if the associated software hosts spyware. We apply 15 learning algorithms on a data set consisting of 100 applications with classified... more

We investigate the hypothesis that it is possible to detect from the End User License Agreement (EULA) if the associated software hosts spyware. We apply 15 learning algorithms on a data set consisting of 100 applications with classified EULAs. The results show that 13 algorithms are significantly more accurate than random guessing. Thus, we conclude that the hypothesis can be accepted. Based on the results, we present a novel tool that can be used to prevent spyware by automatically halting application installers and classifying the EULA, giving users the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether to continue with the installation. We discuss positive and negative aspects of this prevention approach and suggest a method for evaluating candidate algorithms for a future implementation.