Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
In short, an "agreement" in which one party dictates all the terms, which is in practice contrary to the purpose and intent of the law itself, and where the other party has no choice but to take it or leave it, is not an agreement. It is an exercise in raw power, unsanctioned by law or by any moral code worthy of the name.
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Yes.
And it would be acceptable... if the sites didn't work very, very hard to *hide* those agreements, publish them in obscure corners in small grey text with large sections in all caps, to discourage people from reading and understanding them.
They encourage people to believe "this is a normal sale, just like at the supermarket, with a few extra details because it's digital, like we need your credit card info." They work hard to hide anything that's drastically different from that, and they're not fond of answer questions to clarify the details.
They're also prone to including "terms could change at any time" phrases, despite those being unenforceable (and possibly fraudulent) in some districts. (Does anyone believe they could get away with adding a term of "all previous customers owe us an extra $500 this month, and we'll be charging their credit cards immediately?" According to the current phrasing, they could add that.)
I can tolerate "these are the terms for doing business with us; take 'em or leave 'em." I won't accept "the terms for doing business with us will be described for 1500 words in tiny type and written in obscure lawyerese, but please, just click YES already and buy your stuff because we know you don't actually care what those terms are."
I haven't agreed to those terms. I've agreed that I saw they existed.