I did it. I bought a Razer Mamba mouse. It’s a AU$200 mouse, AU$140 of which is in the form of its packaging. Besides being beautifully designed, it performs very well, and it’s highly recommended if you have the money.

Being inclined as I am, I decided to read through the legalese that accompanies the mouse, including the EULA for the driver software.

Razer™ IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE ENCLOSED SOFTWARE TO YOU ONLY ON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT.

That’s generous. I wonder what kind of license they’re willing to grant.

Razer™ grants you a non-exclusive, revocable license to use one copy of the enclosed software program, licensed and not sold to you, (“Software”) on one computer only with the Razer™ product you have purchased. No other rights are granted. [Emphasis added.]

It’s good to know that I won’t be able to use this mouse with more than one computer, especially given that it comes with on-board memory specifically for the purpose of easily moving it between multiple computers.

Installation on a network server for the sole purpose of your internal distribution of the Software is permitted only if you have purchased an individual Software package or concurrent dedicated license for each networked computer to which the Software is distributed. …

You may not transmit the Software over a network (except as expressly permitted above) or electronically using any means. [Emphasis added.]

So I can’t store it on my home server either. Nice.

It goes without saying that Razer does not, I’m sure, intend to enforce any of this. Indeed enforcement would be difficult for a number of reasons, particularly Razer’s inconsistent advertising. (I would emphasise, however, that there is no fair use concept in Australia.)

One of the goals when drafting a contract is to protect your client’s interests. But the other is to give effect to the bargain struck. It’s incredibly frustrating when lawyers draft licenses such as this and completely ignore the latter.

Sometimes you come across legislative drafting that is so bad that there’s no excuse for it. The Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) s 45 provides that corporations must not make arrangements that contain exclusionary provisions or that have the purpose or likely effect of substantially lessening competition. Section 45A(1) then provides this gem:

Without limiting the generality of section 45, a provision of a contract, arrangement or understanding, or of a proposed contract, arrangement or understanding, shall be deemed for the purposes of that section to have the purpose, or to have or to be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition if the provision has the purpose, or has or is likely to have the effect, as the case may be, of fixing, controlling or maintaining, or providing for the fixing, controlling or maintaining of, the price for, or a discount, allowance, rebate or credit in relation to, goods or services supplied or acquired or to be supplied or acquired by the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding or the proposed parties to the proposed contract, arrangement or understanding, or by any of them, or by any bodies corporate that are related to any of them, in competition with each other.

So what does it mean? Essentially, s 45A merely provides that arrangements between competitors to fix a price are deemed to substantially lessen competition for the purposes of s 45. So why doesn’t it just say that?

Of course, there are reasons why the section has to be so specific. Contracts, arrangements, and understandings aren’t the same thing. Proposed contracts are not contracts. Fixing, controlling, and maintaining are different concepts. But there is no reason to specify every one of those concepts in one sentence.

Besides the helpful style advice on the left, Word provides some other interesting statistics on s 45A. It scores 0.0 on the Flesch Reading Ease Test and has a Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 63.1. Thanks to Australia’s ageing population, at least 13% of Australians have lived long enough to understand the section.