I just went to buy something on iTunes and had to review and agree to their latest (and what seems like weekly) change in the terms & conditions. Then I noticed how tiny the scroll bar was in the T&C window. I pity the fool trying to do this on an iPhone. I copied the text into a word processor to do a word count.
Are you kidding me? At 180 wpm, I’ll be sitting here for at least an hour and a half reading that. Naturally, and as 99.99% of you all will do, I scrolled as quickly through the T&C as I could while looking to see if any danger words jumped out at me. Then I clicked on agree.
This got me thinking how often I really read (for comprehension) these types of binding documents. Surely there are some that I read, like my mortgage loan papers? Well not really, I just signed where the closing agent told me to, as he explained in legalese what I was signing.
Sometimes I’m amazed at the temerity of these companies. How long can these documents get before we start refusing to sign them? How do they continue to have legal force if so few people actually read them? Sometimes I think they make them longer on purpose, just so people will flip through the many pages and sign it out of exasperation.
I remember one time I was renting a car and the agent handed me several pages of tiny print that I was expected to sign. I’m sure it would have taken me a half hour to read it all, meanwhile the agent was drumming her fingers on the desk and there was a long line of exasperated customers behind me. I signed and initialed wherever she indicated and was out of there in three minutes.
So on to the poll: How thoroughly to you ready these lengthy, sleep-inducing documents?
If it’s something important, like say the terms and conditions for online banking, I’ll browse through it a bit but for the vast majority of stuff I just automatically click OK and move on. Windows 7 EULA? Yeah sure, whatever. Click Xbox Live changed their EULA? Yeah sure, whatever. Click
No, I don’t.
Even when I bought my house I didn’t read the mortgage, but on the one hand, I figure the bank does this all day long, why are they going to try to screw me and second, I paid a lawyer something like $150 to do all that for me. He read the mortgage papers beforehand and then attended the closing.
Occasionally I scroll through them quickly. I’ve stumbled upon some nice loopholes. Like how most shareware does not say that the license is only for X number of days, as they rely on the software shutting you out. Fortunately, I know some ways around that that don’t involve modifying the software in any form.
Of course, now I can usually find freeware. But it boggles my mind that they continue to leave that loophole in nearly everything.
Well that’s good news because iirc iTunes EULAs used to be 51 pages long the last time I bothered to check. On the other hand, ironically enough the GPLv3 is equally long, although the language is more along the lines of “you have the right to redistribute this as much as you can without restrictions, mofo…”. And so on and so forth for 50 pages… Didn’t really fully read that one all the way through either, heh.
I think the “depends on the type of contract” kinda screws up the poll.
Lots of people would read a mortgage application thoroughly, but among that group they may differ a lot in how likely they are to read more trivial legal stuff.
Hey! This is almost the post I’ve wanted to start for a long time.
My question is this: whenever computer programs (Adobe Reader, Java, and so on) want to update themselves, we all have to click that we agree to the EULA. I’ve probably “agreed” to a dozen of these this year.
What’s to stop them from inserting text like the following? “By signing this, I hereby transfer ownership of all my assets and possessions to Apple, irrevocably forever and ever amen.”
It’s really really irritating because they are basically asking people to either read the entire EULA or lie about it. Otherwise you don’t use the software.