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Originally Posted by Brentano
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sik1977: "I am a lawyer myself"
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Cool. I'm graduating from law school this May. This whole starforce thing is very interesting from a legal standpoint. It almost has the scent of a class-action.
It's especially interesting if the developer and publisher, Ubisoft, knew about the problem before they released the game. They did include a lame "disclaimer" on the box and in the manual. |
You mentioned 'class-action', I take it you are doing your JD from one of the US law schools. I did my LLB and LLM from University of London (UK) and practice in my home country (Pakistan - most probably the only one in my country playing SH3 which I got while in London last year). We have public interest litigation but it is a somewhat different beast then 'class-actions' you may be used to in US.
Anyhow, as far as the 'disclaimer' goes, if it ever comes before a court it will be weighed against whatever consumer protection laws you have in place. In UK for example, we have the Consumer Protection Act (rather complicated and not the best around), and the Unfair Contract Terms Act (UCTA) which deals with, inter alia, such disclaimers and tests them against a Section 11 reasonableness test under UCTA. Hence, any disclaimer which is unreasonable or tries to get away with any and all liability for ones actions, specially against consumers, has a good chance of falling foul of UCTA. Also Sale of Goods Act states that goods must be of satisfactory quality and fulflil the stated purpose to a reasonable extent (can't remember the exact S.14 text, but you can look it up). Any such goods if found to be less then satisfactory quality can be returned to the seller with appropriate claim for damages. If Starforce can be shown to damage hardware then SH3 can also be considered to be of non-satisfactory quality and the disclaimer if falling foul of UCTA won't indemnify UBISOFT.
I for one love SH3 and enjoy it without Starforce, as the laws in my country don't disallow use of third party tools to make backup copies or No-DVDs. The EULA is ofcourse a contractual issue between me and UBISOFT which can be enforced in my country (depending on the applicable law of the EULA ofcourse).
P.s' Check your inbox Brentano... I sent you a disclaimer....
