Re: Strange outfit...
How refreshing it is to see people recognizing that simply having something in a EULA or other such shrinkwrap contract that someone lazily clicked through doesn't mean that contract has the force of law. The corporations like MS and their willing accomplices in government (such as those who brought the abomination known as the DMCA to America) sure have the people bamboozled.
The most recent example was a discussion that followed the news of the release of that patcher that re-enables updates on Windows 7 when installed on Kaby Lake or Ryzen platforms. My opponent in the debate (if you could really call it that) was arguing that MS was probably going to bring legal action against the patch author, on the basis that the Windows EULA forbids reverse engineering of any Windows component, which the author of the patcher had already said he'd done, not to mention that it was modifying Windows components, which the EULA also forbids.
Never mind that the loose definition of reverse engineering that would encompass what the patch author had done would also prohibit most debugging of any programs developed on Windows, which MS has permitted for decades (obviously). Never mind also that MS has never taken action against the authors of any other patchers, like the ones that enable third-party themes in Windows, or any other of a myriad of programs that customize Windows without patching any files (Classic Theme Restorer, WindowBlinds, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, Old New Explorer, etc.) would have also required "reverse engineering" of Windows such that the author of this most recent patcher had done.
It's always the same... "you're not buying Windows! It belongs to Microsoft, so they can do whatever they want with Windows (and therefore any PC that has Windows on it)," and other such assorted stuff. MS seems to believe that putting Windows 10 on my machine essentially transfers ownership of that PC over to Microsoft, and there are a lot of people out there who would agree. It reminds me of a vulgar episode of South Park entitled (I think) "Human Cent-iPad." I won't go into the details, but the thrust of it is that the victims have ostensibly agreed to whatever Apple wants when they clicked "Accept" on the EULA without reading it, and Apple then went and grabbed them off the street and made them part of the product that is referenced in the episode title.
The bottom line is that these shrinkwrap contracts are on shaky ground, and they've never been put to the test in court. MS or Monster or anyone else can put quite literally any language they want in their EULA, but it doesn't mean it's valid. It also doesn't mean it's all meaningless; it would be foolish to think the EULA means exactly nothing. The reality lies somewhere in the middle, and we don't really know where it is. Maybe one day a precedent will be established that a Windows buyer has, in fact, "bought Windows," which the EULA-thumpers tell us we haven't. That doesn't mean the buyer has the rights to use Windows trademarks or redistribute bits of Windows code (or all of it)... but it would mean that things like prohibiting people from modifying components of their own Windows installations are not among the powers that Microsoft has.