A Vista of Licensed Censorship

Let's say you get Windows Vista sometime next year and, after using it a bit, decide it really sucks wind compared to other operating systems like Linux or the Mac OS. Can you tell your friends, family, or your blog readers about your comparative findings? Well, before you do, you will at least have to check what Microsoft's web pages say about just what kind of Vista criticism Redmond is allowing at that moment

Well, for one thing, this isn't the EULA for a product like SQL Server or Visual C++ in a category where Microsoft and its competitors have been using censorship clauses for years. Windows Vista Home is going to be as consumer-level a software product as you can get, so this provision will apply to the average user. The only comparable use of a censorship clause in the EULA for a major consumer product that I know of was the McAfee VirusScan clause that was not only invalidated but deemed a consumer deception by the New York courts.

But the bigger problem is the fact that the actual censorship restrictions for Windows Vista are, in classic sneakwrap fashion, dependent on what a particular webpage says at a particular moment. That in itself could have a chilling effect on what people can say about Vista. Consumers who don't even know what .NET Framework is will, if they want to make sure any public statements they make about Vista "comply with the conditions" of Microsoft's license, have to first decipher what that webpage means. And, of course, Microsoft could change the conditions at any time, so you'll have to check back anytime you make any more comments about Vista. Perhaps as written now it's OK for you to tell your neighbor over the back fence that Vista seems to take twice as long to boot up as MacOS XI, but what if Redmond changes the conditions at some point in the future to prohibit such activities?

And the conditions as Microsoft states them now could inhibit legitimate benchmarking, particularly the requirement that the testing "be performed using all performance tuning and best practice guidance set forth in the product documentation and/or on Microsoft's support Web sites, and uses the latest updates, patches, and fixes available for the .NET Component and the relevant Microsoft operating system." I can imagine any number of scenarios where one might legitimately want to test a version of Vista that hasn't been updated and performance-tuned to an unreal-world degree.