HTC Zoe gets Chromecastability, HTC EULA madness
While HTC Zoe isn’t for me, and I silently judge anyone who uses it after reading the TOS (I’m kidding), there are some people who enjoy it and would like a way to display their highlight videos in a larger setting.
To these ends, Chromecast support has been added allowing you to show your Zoes on a TV, or take over your neighbor’s Chromecast and force them to watch baby videos.
Not having used this in a while, I’m not sure if the content re-ordering was a feature before or not, but it is listed as a new feature along with no longer being an HTC exclusive. I’m able from Google Play to install it on a Samsung device I never have been in possession of or heard of (I’m assuming it’s one of my Android emulators).
There’s also chunked uploading so if your connection gets dropped it can retry and resume without you having to intervene.
I ran out of things to say about Zoe, but I found the end user license agreement, the rights you’re signing away, and what you’re expected to do unrelated to the application, a bit over the top.
The end user license agreement for the Zoe app states that as a user of Zoe you’re not allowed to disclose the application to any third party (section 2, subsection d), so if you use this app make sure you don’t tell anyone about it. I don’t use it, you’re welcome.
If you’re a blogger, you’re also not allowed to take a screenshot (the pic is from their Google Play page, fair use,) and you’re also effectively prevented from printing out any screenshots of the app or the source code and burning it to keep warm if your power goes out.
If you’re using a non-portable Android device, you’re not allowed to use the application. So if you’re running an emulator on a PC or an Android business class phone (tethered), skip it.
If you don’t agree to the EULA, you’re bound to delete, erase, or otherwise destroy any copy in your possession. As it comes pre-installed and is not removable on several devices, grab a hammer bud. Best friend wants to play with your phone and look at it, nope. Lending to a friend is a no no.
On the Zoe backend terms of service, you’re granted a personal, non-exclusive, revocable, nontransferable, limited license for personal, non-commercial purposes to use the service to view and create content. While HTC doesn’t control and won’t be held liable for your content, they can use it and turn it into a royalty free (to you,) commercial if they want to. Probably not a worry however.
But wait, you’re also bound by the HTC Code of Conduct if you want to use this app. One of these includes posting something that would impose a significant burden on HTC services. So don’t upload anything that might go viral. Also don’t upload anything that criticizes HTC as that’s verboten.
There are roughly 13 pages worth of TOS for the application EULA, TOS, and HTC Code of Conduct. The end result appears to be anything you use on Zoe can be considered someone else’s property, don’t like it? You’re not allowed to criticize HTC as there’s a damage to reputation clause.
Want to schedule an email to go out tomorrow that has nothing to do with HTC or Zoe? Yeah they’ve got you there too based on an issue where they (probably accidentally,) broke it out of a list that indicated on an HTC service and instead just flat out stated you can’t do that.
It’s otherwise a jumbled mess you’re agreeing to, which you’d think with all the lawyering up HTC has done that they’d have picked out some of these issues and streamlined it.
Oh well…
[Android Police]
