I'm getting tired of EULA (End-User License Agreement) spam. Everything we do seems to entail clicking through some egregiously long multipage document written in legal-speak. Even if I did take the time to read it, I wouldn't understand it. People don't read these at all and the implied contract by blindly accepting one seems farcical. EULAs are like bad advertisements, they are ignored.

Follow up:

Now I'm not a lawyer and it isn't my intent to imply that a software contract shouldn't exist between an end user and an app's author or manufacturer. It seems fairly obvious that any non-free software should be usable only by the purchaser and perhaps only in one instantiation. It also seems quite reasonable that the software could malfunction and potentially cause some damage to the end user (loss of work, computer crashes, etc.). It's reasonable that the author would like to protect themself from lawsuits relating to user damage claims. I would expect that the author would want to protect their work from duplication, modification, and unauthorized resale. These things are common sense and we shouldn't need anymore than a common commercial software agreement to create this relationship between author and user.

Everything we touch now has agreements, contracts, and disclaimers on it. Alcohol warns not to drive or get pregnant. Cigarettes warn they cause side effects, including death. Cars have warnings about sitting next to airbags. The only things you can still buy that come warning free are guns and water, and both can kill you quicker than cigarettes.

I do understand the purpose of warnings, and they are important. Protecting content authors is important as well. Books, newspapers, magazines, web pages, and music are all protected from inappropriate use by extremely simple means - the © . We don't need to click through, to "actively" denote our agreement, when we pop open a can of beer or slip a DVD into a player. We shouldn't have to actively agree to software either because the intent of the EULA is the same as a copyright: to protect and preserve the rights of the content originator.

Fortunately, Jackrabbitscrewball has a solution, and I am releasing it free to the public domain. This elegant solution will save developers time and money by not having to consult lawyers to write EULAs. This will save users time by not having to read... uh, I mean blindly click through, page after page of EULAs. It is an elegant solution because it is simple and universally understood just as copyright standards are.

All I probably need to do is create a new page on wikipedia entitled "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EULA_symbol_license_agreement" and the EULA symbol's legally binding status will become fact. If anyone with more legal experience than me would like to go ahead and write that page up, I'd appreciate it.

Please feel free to copy and use this symbol at the bottom of your software boxes, inside your programs on the Help --> About screens, or wherever you wish. You need only agree to get rid of that useless text EULA in return.

Software users everywhere will thank you.