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Licensing Update Extortion
Posted by Ernest Miller on Monday, December 09 @ 09:36:24 EST Contracts
A Slashdot reader submitted an interesting story about an online update for Quickbooks 2001 that forced the user to agree to new terms in order to maintain certain functionality for Quickbooks (Updating Quickbooks Forces Online Membership?). Previously, the user of Quickbooks could send invoices by email, but it is
now impossible to either fax or email an invoice without signing up for Quickbook's 'Online Business Member' program since it appears to use their own mail server. Membership is free for now, but the required click-agreement forces me to agree in advance to any future fees!
This sort of thing will become even more prevalent in web services land. Right now the only way to prevent these sorts of things is to strictly support programs and services with open standards. However, in the meantime, the problem will only get worse. For example, Microsoft's Palladium will make pulling similar tricks a possibility not only for programs, but data as well (Palladium's Boiling Pot: A Response to Larry Lessig)
 
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