Let's think about it: how many end-user license agreements have we approved without reading a single paragraph? Over time, it has become clear that these CLUF or EULA (their English version) can contain disturbing terms that force us to cede broad rights to use a program or service. However, a historical exception occurred in 2005, when a certain Doug Heckman contacted the developers of PC Pitstop Optimize to claim a hidden prize in the contract. All he had to do... was send an email.
The Hidden Cost of Clicking "I Agree"
You check the box, and you accept. "Terms of Use", "End User License Agreement", "Legal"... different names for the same thing: an endless wall of text with cryptic expressions that, in most cases, are not in your favor. Remember the famous phrase "if you don't pay, you are the product"? A good part of its substance is hidden in contracts.
A service can be "free", but if its EULA states that every image and word you enter into that service can be used commercially on a global scale without warning or compensation... then the price is much higher than we imagine. In short, we have a problem: contracts are important, but nobody reads them. Or really, almost nobody.
The 2005 Case
The original story goes back to February 2005. A man named Doug Heckman began reading the contract of an old optimization program called PC Pitstop Optimize, and found an entry under the title Special Consideration. There, the developers mentioned a consideration that could include financial compensation for a limited number of authorized users. The only requirement (besides reading the contract, of course) was to send a message to an email address. Heckman contacted the company... and received a reward of $1,000. Heckman was the only one who sent that email, and he did so after five months and more than 3,000 sales of the program.
The 2015 Repeat
The chance to find $1,000 waiting in an EULA should be enough reason to read it from start to finish, but the truth is we haven't learned anything. Why? Because the people at PC Pitstop repeated the experiment in 2015 with their application PC Matic. 60,000 downloads and a month and a half later, user Stephen Ellerin discovered the same clause in that program's EULA, and received a payment of $500, plus a lifetime license. Anyway... if free money doesn't convince you, at least copy and paste the contract into some online EULA analyzer to get a summary.
PC Pitstop
