Fighting fire with fire

Encaped, begoggled balloon-blogger Cory Doctorow posts his daily anti-(legal stupidity) rant on Boing Boing, this time about the end-user license agreement imposed by the wonderful (cough cough) web service ApplyYourself:

This is the standard ridiculous EULA junk (we can be as negligent as we want and you can't ever sue us, no matter what), so after I sent in the letter for my student, I immediately fired off an email to the address listed, explaining that I didn't agree to this non-negotiated "agreement" and closing with my standard anti-EULA:

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

Am I the only one who's noticed a reflexivity problem here?

Suppose Alice is the ApplyYourself employee who gets Cory's email. Couldn't she just send it right back? Assuming the anti-EULA actually works, then by reading Alice's reply, Cory would automatically release Alice from her non-negotiated obligation (to which Alice agreed by reading Cory's email) to release Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to Alice's employer (to which Cory automatically 'agreed' by using ApplyYourself).

Of course, Cory could send the anti-EULA right back, thereby obliging Alice to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to Alice's employer.

And then Alice could reply back again, thereby obliging Cory to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to Alice's employer.

To avoid a stack overflow (which could potentially give Cory superuser access to Alice's mind) she'd probably add Cory to her spam filter at this point, thereby ensuring that she could not read Cory's obvious reply, and thus could never be obliged to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to Alice's employer. To be nice, she sets up an auto-reply informing Cory of this fact.

Cory, not content to let the matter rest with his non-negotiated meta-obligations intact, could then change the opening phrase of the anti-EULA from `By reading this email' to `By accepting this email onto your mail server'. Alas, Alice is using gmail, which means that Google is now obligated to release Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to free Alice from her non-negotiated obligation to free Cory from his non-negotiated obligation to Alice's employer.

At this point, Cory drops Alice into his gmail spam filter as well, with the same auto-reply message. Google is now stuck in an infinite loop, forever freeing itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated obligations to free itself from its non-negotiated et cetera et cetera et cetera, ultimately on Cory/Alice's behalf.

The extra network traffic generated by the Cory/Alice anti-EULA loop slows the internet (and thereby the world economy) to a grinding halt. As a result, Cory's recommendation letter does not actually reach the school for which it was intended, and the poor recommendee not get into grad school.

Question: Is ApplyYourself liable to Cory for losing his recommendation letter?

Comments

[D. Eppstein]

Re — The extra network traffic generated by the Cory/Alice anti-EULA loop slows the internet (and thereby the world economy) to a grinding halt:

All die. O the embarrassment.

[Jon Ray]

You reinvented the counterspell

Google has the gall to assert a terms of service without even linking to it on the main search page. How can someone consent to a contract without being aware of its existence?

[resim]

is this possible?