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I don't, as a consumer, sign these things because I think they're reasonable. I sign them because I don't have the negotiating power to get a better contract, and the market isn't frictionless enough to offer my preferred terms at any reasonable price.

There is already specific law in some jurisdictions which reduces the applicability of this kind of consumer take-it-or-leave-it contract: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion.

I think that simply requiring the contracts to be read in order to have force could take care of unreasonable terms in this case. Here's how I imagine it playing out:

1. Because long contracts would immediately cause hugely increased costs for these companies if they had to wait for every customer to read them, they would greatly reduce the length and complexity of their contracts.

2. The most unconscionable clauses are also often the least necessary, so they would likely be the first to go. Of those that remain, the consumer is now much more likely to both read and understand them.

3. Because everybody is reading the contracts, they'll become aware of unconscionable clauses immediately, rather than only when they get bitten, or when they see some news story like this one.

4. Because everybody knows they're in there, competitive pressure or widespread outcry should force the removal of any remaining unconscionable clauses. (In theory this should happen now, but in practice people mostly don't know the clauses are there in the first place.)

Reading the whole contract as an individual wouldn't change much (although I think it's a good idea anyway), but I think that forcing everyone to read them would change a lot.

Whether you've read the contract is entirely meaningless when there are only three competitors in your market who all offer the exact same contract and have the freedom to tell you to fuck off if you don't want to sign it.

It is all about bargaining power.

That's where my step 4 comes in. They won't all offer the exact same contract they do now, because it will be too expensive for them, and since people are actually reading the contract then competing on clauses will actually be a way to get customers to switch over.

> Whether you've read the contract is entirely meaningless

No, and that's the whole point. If courts nullified contracts that even a reasonable person would "sign" without reading, phonebook contracts would carry enforcement risk, discouraging the practice.

Reading the contract isn't sufficient. You also need to be able to understand the legal language and its implications, and most people can't do that. If I read that arbitration clause, it wouldn't occur to me at all that it's a way for the other party to circumvent the court system.

The real problem here is that companies tend to have their own legal counsel writing these documents, but customers don't have their own legal counsel reading them and advising them about potential pitfalls.

You can't force people to read them. You can only force them to agree that they've read them. Which is by and large what contracts say already. ("I have read the terms and conditions...")

And even if you could force people to read them, you can't force them to understand them, which is really what's necessary for your plan to work. Those contracts are generally written by lawyers for other lawyers. To understand them you need the IQ of a lawyer and a fair bit of their education. Not being able to get an oil change until you've done a semester of contract law is something that nobody's going to be happy about.

> The problem is simply that people don't read this stuff in the first place. They simply sign without reading, assuming/hoping/praying that the terms are reasonable.

that's not the problem. I see these arbitration clauses all the time, yet I sign anyway. Because I can't function without a credit card, without a cellphone, without internet hookups to my house, etc. It's not reasonable to say that I have to forego these services, or that I need to carefully shop for those vanishingly few providers that currently don't have such a clause, only for them to add one in when the contract renews in a year.

What choice does the consumer really have if these clauses are unavoidable?

edit: waqf's comment makes this point way better.

>Most consumers... They simply sign without reading...

You seem to be implying that many people on HN do read them, and if that's the case, I would be very surprised. I certainly don't. There's frequently a new EULA I have to consent to when I update iOS, or iTunes, or some app, or sign into a cloud console, and the list goes on. If I read all of them it would probably add up to a good workday every week. I'm willing to bet that the number of people who are willing to devote that large a chunk of their lives to reading EULAS is somewhere near zero.

You've edited the quote to make it look like I said something I didn't say.

I said that "most consumers" could understand what contracts say if they actually read and put in effort to understand them.

I said that "people," meaning basically everybody, don't read contracts in the first place.

"Most consumers" and "sign without reading" aren't together in my original comment, either in space or meaning!

In any case, I certainly didn't mean to imply that HN readers are any different in either respect. I'm sure most HN readers could understand contracts, and I'm also sure that almost none of them actually read the boilerplate ones.

I just highlighted the phrases that made me interpret your statement as I did, but I misinterpreted. Wasn't intentional, thanks for the correction.

I edit the HTML on most end user agreements I sign to read, "I disagree and waive no rights," then I click that button.

I wonder in what sense these agreements are enforceable when they cannot prove that people actually agreed with them? Hard copies of contracts are kept for a reason, I always assumed.

I would really like to see that play out in court. The fix (for the companies) would be to simply include the text of the contract (or maybe even just a hash) in the form submission.

If there were a way to transmit the altered user agreement back to the other party, the ramifications could be amusing.

Unfortunately, changing the text on your end has no legal effect. It's not a contract unless the other party agrees to your change.

Turning into "not a contract" is a legal effect, though, and typically it's the desired one.

When there's a EULA or similar, the company is trying to form a contract with you, usually with lots of unfair terms.

If replacing the text with your own and clicking a button that you renamed from Agree to Disagree voids the whole thing, well, mission accomplished.

There would only be a problem if the law says that not only does your modification not form a contract, but that you acted in such bad faith that you actually still somehow agreed to the original contract.

"voiding the whole thing" means you don't have a license to the software either.

Software doesn't necessarily need a license. Purchasing software can be simply a matter of handing over money in exchange for a copy of the software. Free downloads can simply be a matter of downloading a copy of the software. EULAs are everywhere, but not because they're necessary, only because software makers see some advantage in using them.

I don't have the time to read all this crap if I wanted to. And even if I did, I have no recourse to unreasonable terms. It's not like there's an actual negotiation going on.