Do you remember the 27-page legal contract you signed when you bought that Sony Trinitron back in the 90's? Or the 10-page contract you had to agree to before playing Scrabble for the first time? Neither do I.
But the corporations who started with "shrink-wrap" licenses for software have now built them into almost every consumer gadget imaginable, including TVs, media players, and even car stereo systems. That's not to mention every computer, cellphone and website on the planet.
The upshot is that the average "techie" consumer is now party to hundreds or thousands of new contracts each year, and is responsible for knowing and following the letter of each of those contracts. Are they enforceable? Yes, according to most law professors surveyed in a 2006 Carnegie-Mellon study. Even if the contracts (sometimes known as "EULA" or "Terms of Service") have one-sided or egregious terms, they can be enforced to the extent of giving the average consumer pains in both the head and the pocketbook.
My dad always told me to read before I sign, but that is no longer even physically possible in today's world. You are faced with the choice of spending half of your waking hours reading contracts, or simply becoming a Luddite and eschewing the technological world altogether. The chances of getting any legislative relief are zero, in fact the opposite is true: Congress is bent on weakening more consumer rights and favoring their corporate donors and the legal profession.
Will it change? Maybe, by the time contracts have started including clauses granting the corporations unlimited access to your bank account and ius primae noctis (look it up) for your daughters.
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