license agreement

For software, a piece of paper describing what you can and cannot do with it. I think license agreements are a farce because once you buy a copy of a piece of software, you should be able to do what you want with it as long as you don't distribute it or, in a bsuiness environment, use it on more than one computer. See piracy.

For the most part, this isn't even a piece of paper any more, but some electronic text that you're supposed to read through during the install procedure, but never really do.

And even this is becoming extinct with the advent of the shrink-wrap license, which refers the user to a web page on the company's site that can be updated at their whim.