Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Most commercial sites have a line that says "you must agree to our Terms and Conditions in order to register," with T&C being a link to a popup box or another page; you have to click "yes" to finish registration & be allowed to buy anything. Most people don't read them; they just click yes.
The legality of this hasn't been tested in court. While click-agreements have been confirmed as legal, click-agreements that are buried on another page or are deliberately hard to read (like being in all caps, or a tiny scroll box) haven't been confirmed as a legitimate way to present them.
And, of course, agreeing to terms that are illegal to require doesn't obligate people to adhere to them. If the terms say, "these terms may change at any time," and you agree, that doesn't mean they can change the terms to say "all users in states that end with the letter 'A' are required to pay a $50/month fee," and bill your credit card for it; nor does it mean that if they change the terms to say "all registered users are required to house and feed the board of directors of BookStore Inc on request."
Saying, "you agree not to resell or give away this book" may not be legally enforceable, just like it's not legally enforceable for a physical bookstore to put a sign on the door that says "you agree not to give away these books when you're done reading them; they must be thrown into shredders for recycling; if you don't agree to those terms, you may not buy here."
If you fail to follow the terms, the store may refuse to sell to you--but they can't prosecute you for it.
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Take amazon for example. I've had an account long before the Kindle and the first time they sold eBooks. So in that case, there was no way of agreeing to the terms for eBooks when creating the account as I had it before Amazon had the EULA. So because I've never agreed and they've never had me agree to it, does that mean the EULA is invalid? I would think so.