NCC brands software licenses ‘unfair’
The UK’s National Consumer Council (NCC) has accused Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, Apple and other software vendors of forcing customers to sign unfair license agreements. The NCC has cited 17 of the world’s leading software suppliers as having bad practices - effectively meaning that users end up with little legal rights and often don’t know the terms of conditions of the license until they have actually installed the software.
The NCC has asked the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to launch an investigation.
Of 25 software products tested, 14 failed to mention on the packaging that users must accept a license agreement when installing the software. Only four of those that did provided a link to a copy of the agreement.
