Re: follow up re: end user indemnification

["Karl F. Bridges" <kbridges@uvm.edu>]

My only issue with those click through agreements is that they're 
sort of meaningless.  99 percent of users probably just click 
through and go to the product without reading -- which makes 
having them sort of pointless. They do protect the school and the 
library I suppose.

It would seem better to not have those kinds of things AND have 
some comprehensive educational program for students about ethical 
use of information and databases.

Karl Bridges


Quoting "Kemp, Rebecca Laura" <rkemp@email.unc.edu>:

> Hi, again, all- I have gotten some requests for a report on what
> I learned from my Counsel's office, so I thought I would share.
> Here is what I found out:
>
> There is no *legal* reason that my institution would need to
> prohibit our library patrons from entering into a click-through
> agreement with a vendor that requires end users to indemnify the
> vendor, as long as the patrons agree only for themselves and not
> on behalf of the university.  In other words, it is legally
> acceptable for our patrons to sign/click through this kind of
> agreement; there is no prohibition against it. In light of this,
> it is completely up to our campus libraries to decide whether we
> want to create a policy that says we will not pass on such
> end-user agreements to our patrons.  I am not sure how all the
> libraries on my campus feel about this; it would take some
> discussion to come to an agreement.  As of now, we have no such
> policy.
>
> Our Counsel's office suggested that we could try these options:
>
> 1.We could create some sort of intermediate click-through screen
> for our patrons that indicates that when they agree to the
> vendor's click-through, they are taking on the risk of
> indemnifying the vendor. I think that the likelihood that patrons
> would read and/or understand this is low, however.
>
> 2.We could simply walk away from the contract and hope that the
> vendor is willing enough to secure our business that they would
> allow us to get rid of the end user indemnification (or perhaps
> even the whole end user agreement). I am not sure how it will
> work out in this particular case, but this seems like the better
> option to me.
>
> Sorry that this is not ideal.  I would appreciate it if vendors
> would not create end-user agreements at all but rather rely on
> the institutional license.
>
> --Rebecca