Re: Proposal to help fight deceptive software

Simson Garfinkel proposed something like this a few years back.  There's 
an article here about it:
http://www.simson.net/clips/2004/2004.TR.04.PureSoftware.pdf

But other than that, seems like a worthy project.

serge

Brian Erdelyi wrote:
> I'm working on a personal project proposing a way to fight deceptive 
> software at http://www.clearware.org by helping to make sense of 
> software end-user license agreements (EULA).  P3P and Creative Commons 
> was part of the inspiration for the idea.  The concept is similar to 
> nutrition facts on food, care labels on clothing and warnings on 
> hazardous materials... a "software use" label if you will.
> 
> EULA terms and conditions can be grouped into permissions, requirements, 
> restrictions and functions.  I've identified a set of characteristics 
> that I found in existing EULAs that impact control over the user's 
> experience, system security and privacy and depict it with a symbol.
> 
> The idea is to translate the laywer readable format (EULA) into a human 
> readable version (clearware label) and a system readable RDF/XML version 
> (to automate the use of user preferences similar to P3P and other 
> possibilities).
> 
> I would appreciate thoughts and suggestions from others on this list, 
> particularly getting the involvement of software vendors.
> 
> Regards,
> Brian Erdelyi