That’s what I’m saying – depending on the contents EULA may or may not be enforceable. For example Microsoft could put “I agree to give Microsoft 10% of my annual earnings” in their Windows license agreement, but no judge in the world would treat this as a valid contract.

IANAL but I don’t think that there is much case law in this area either. Most copyright infringement suits ask for such outlandish damages that most of them get settled out of court.

You can return software if you don’t agree with EULA but you need to send it back directly to the manufacturer. Most stores won’t accept open software back, but most companies with those big EULA’s will give you your money back if you send them back your box and proof of purchase.

I always wonder exactly how much of whats in there, they can really hold you to
I know that if you dont want to be caught out you should read it before you proceed.. but who really does that?

Besides, by the time you’ve bought it and got it home, you may not be able to return it fully (e.g. Game (games shop, unsurprisingly) won’t allow you to refund a PC game, only get store credit. Presumably so people cant buy, copy and return games)

There was something I saw on TV – a reality show where they get two friends, one a spender, one a saver, and give one complete control over the others finances for a few weeks (yeh, lame) He signed a credit agreement whilst blindfolded because otherwise he would never agree to sign it and then when he found out he returned it and refused to pay – the agreement wasnt enforceable because of how he had signed it

If the important part there is that he never read it….
On the other hand, thats probably not applicable to software since theres no reason why you couldnt have read it.

Theoretically, yes. I think it would fall under fair use. In most cases you are allowed to make backup copies of your media. So you should be able to borrow someone’s backup too – as long as you use it with your own CD key or whatever. It’s a gray area though.

In practice – probably no – it’s probably explicitly forbidden by the EULA that comes with the game.

And then you have to consider the legality or enforceability of click through EULA’s…

So… Who knows.

I’ve found a workaround :)
But I won’t be mentioning what it is since its legality is questionable….
Or is it.. If I still own the original copy of the disks am I allowed to seek alternative copies when they go kaput?

Yeah it worked fine – I installed it from the C&C First Decade DVD, which includes patches and the Yuri’s Revenge expansion pack, but it also works fine if I install it from my CDs :)

yeah.. I figured it was probably an issue with the disk :(

Matt – I haven’t tried installing RA2 on XP but what you describe might be a problem with the CD. I had similar things happen to me with some game, but I fixed it by wiping the big fingerprints from the CD.

It also could be privileges problem – are you running as Admin?

I thing nearly anything that used to work on a Windows system should run on XP. Old DOS games like Frontier for example are the tricky ones. But anything that used to run on Win95 and up should be just fine. Or at least in most cases.

@ Fr3d – Have you managed to get Red Alert 2 working on XP?
If yes, please share your secret :wink:
I found RA2 in a big stack of old games, remembered some fun times and tried to install it but it kept failing at a particular file in the install process :(

apparently it has a lot of problems on XP but I swear I used to run it on this machine

Yeah, unfortunately though some game designers choose to hide them by giving them nonsensical names and extensions or compressing them in archives… Meh…

I recently played Red Alert 2, and had to edit the .ini file to make the resolution run higher than 1024×768.

For most games, you can delete or rename the movie files, if you can find them, and the game will just go straight to the main menu :)