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Comment by m_fayer | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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