May an Agent accepts a license to produce a build?

Question

For example, Android builds steer towards using `sdkmanager --licenses`.Suppose I get a preconfigured VPS with Claude Code, and ask it to make an android port of an app I have built, it will almost always automatically downloads the sdkmanager and accepts the license.That is the flow that exists many times in its training data (which represents its own interesting wrinkle).Regardless of what is in the license; I was a bit surprised to see it happen, and I'm sure I won't be the last nor will the android sdk license be the only one.What is the legal status of an agreement accepted in such a manner - and perhaps more importantly - what ought to be the legal status considering that any position you take will be exploited by bad faith ~~actors~~ agents?

jrockway · Accepted Answer

A similar question is what happens if you get up to go to the bathroom, some software on your machine updates and requires you to accept the new ToS, and your cat jumps up on the keyboard and selects "accept". Are you still bound by those terms? Of course. If licenses are valid in any way (the argument is they get you out of the copyright infringement caused by copying the software from disk to memory) then it's your job to go find the license to software you use and make sure you agree to it; the little popup is just a nice way to make your aware of the terms.

tomasphan · Answer

You are legally responsible for the actions of your agents. It&rsquo;s in the name agent = acting on someone&rsquo;s behalf.Your English is very interesting by the way. You have some obvious grammatical errors in your text yet beautiful use of formal register.

andai · Answer

Can a non-human entity accept an agreement? I know there are things like mountains and rivers which have been granted legal personhood. But obviously they have humans who act on their behalf.
The general question of the personhood of artificial intelligence aside, perhaps the personhood could be granted as an extension of yourself, like power of attorney? (Or we could change the law so it works that way.)
It all sounds a bit weird but I think we're going to have to make up our minds on the subject very soon. (Or perhaps the folks over at Davos have already done us the favour of making up theirs ;)

chrisjj · Answer

You asked. You're liable.

beepbooptheory · Answer

Wouldn't you want to be in control of your dependencies in this case anyway? Like why would you ever want it to autodownload sdkmanager? Doesn't this seem like bad idea?

friendzis · Answer

Interesting question, actually. The ones calling for full and immediate assumption of liability on the principal either miss a thing or imply an interesting relationship.
The closest analogy we have, I guess, is the power of attorney. If a principal signs off on power of attorney to, e.g. take out a loan/mortgage to buy a thing on principal's behalf, that does not extend to taking any extra liabilities. Any extra liabilities signed off by the agent would be either rendered null or transferred to the agent in any court of law. There is extent to which agency is assigned.
The core questions here are agency and liability boundaries. Are there any agency boundaries on the agent? If so, what's the extent? There are many future edge cases where these questions will arise. Licenses and patents are just the tip of an iceberg.

butvacuum · Answer

the answer is a hard "No" for anything touching ITAR- per several major company's lawers. (internal legal counsel, not official public stance. aka: they do as they say.)

otterley · Answer

IAAL but this is not legal advice. Consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction for advice.
In general, agents "stand in the shoes" of the principal for all actions the principal delegated to them (i.e., "scope of agency"). So if Amy works for Global Corp and has the authority to sign legal documents on their behalf, the company is bound. Similarly, if I delegate power of attorney to someone to sign documents on my behalf, I'm bound to whatever those agreements are.
The law doesn't distinguish between mechanical and personal agents. If you give an agent the power to do something on your behalf, and it does something on your behalf under your guidance, you're on the hook for whatever it does. It's as though you did it yourself.