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PB Inventor’s ‘magicJack’ Gets Panned
My heroes at Boing Boing have just posted their view of Palm Beacher Dan Borislow’s magicJack, which I blogged about March 25. (Link: Borislow Invention Gets Rave Reviews)
“Swollen pustule of crappy terms of service and spyware,” reads the headline (link). OK, so not all rave reviews…
Boing Boing is one of my go-to sites for many reasons, one of which is that the smart people there actually read EULAs — those end-user license agreements some of us hurriedly “accept” with a click, never checking to see what we’ve actually agreed to. (“Must relinquish first-born child upon request … “)
BB’s Gadgets site studied the palm-sized invention and concluded: “In short, it not only has one agree to ads with its paid-for system, but claims that the ads are necessary for it to work. It will also snoop on your calls to target ads more accurately, and has you sign away your legal right to take it to court if it defrauds or otherwise harms you. Delightful.”
None of this is funny, of course, but the spunky writing really made me laugh. Particularly the comment about the arbitration clause.
Clause: “Any claims, legal proceeding or litigation arising in connection with the magicJack device or Software will be resolved by binding arbitration … in Palm Beach, Florida.”
BB Gadgets’ comment: “Oh God, not Palm Beach!”
Bien sûr! Cocktails will be served.
Find the entire review here: MagicJack’s EULA says it will spy on you and force you into arbitration
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Around Town, People
Comments
By Madison
April 14, 2008 4:58 PM | Link to this
Yeah. I don’t think this will be so effective as we thought.
By Shirlee
September 22, 2008 12:08 PM | Link to this
After excitedly installing my Magicjack, I was assigned my phone number—only to be surprised and VERY disappointed that the nuber had a prefix for a town not in my county!! Almost 100% of my incoming calls are from the immediate area I live in. Therefore, the callers would be charged a “local toll”. I communicated with Magicjack’s Live Chat (which apparently is the only method of communication provided by Magicjack), but I found them to have a “too bad—nothing we can do about it” attitude. I’m returning my Magicjack for a refund.
By Joyce
September 22, 2008 4:07 PM | Link to this
Shirlee — Sorry to hear this! I, too, was excited about MagicJack, but after reading some of the reviews I never took it out of its package. Anyone else have an experience to share?