Does anyone actually read terms and conditions

Two years after that, many of the rulings were reversed at appeal, but the judgement that MDY illegally broke copy protection stood. The court case did, however, reaffirm one crucial aspect of the law that surrounds EULAs: you are not the owner of software you buy. Instead, you are merely a licensee, and that licence can, and most likely does, come with conditions. Just last month, we saw that taken to its obvious end point as Microsoft sought to enforce a contract signed with testers for its upcoming game Gears of War.

It even temporarily blocked use of their console offline — something that was well within its rights because, as the testing service explained in a letter its testers, the leak broke the terms and conditions.

And sure enough, if Sony discovers that I have violated any term of its collective 20, words of legal agreements, which I and perhaps three other people in the world have read in their totality, the company reserves the right to:.

And those rules are ridiculously broad. And, naturally, the company does not provide any promise that the software or hardware will work or do what it says it will do, but it does require access to your personal information including your IP address and console ID for marketing purposes. It says so in capital letters. Not everything that is in the contract will be enforceable. In fact, one of the big wins in recent years for consumer rights in Europe was against Sony.

Just halfway through the week, but significantly more than halfway through the legal agreements I would end up having to read, I began to run out of energy.

I found myself purposefully changing my behaviour so as to not have to read any more EULAs. On Thursday, I was mercifully out of the house in the evening. And board and card games have not yet followed video games into the requiring arcane license agreements before you can play them with your friends.

But even though I knew it was over, I was broken. Sure, you find out how pitifully small your rights are compared to those that even a medium-sized company will reserve when you use its product. With no negotiating power, it ends up being mostly depressing reading. In , Instagram, then newly acquired by Facebook, changed its terms to allow the use of photos uploaded to the website for advertising purposes without paying the photographer. It sparked outrage , and eventually resulted in the company updating the terms to clarify what rights it was, and was not, requesting.

It was a rare example of a company demanding the broadest possible legal interpretation of what it intended to do and was forced back into clearer, narrower terms.

There are groups fighting for a world with clearer language, and narrower terms. The problem is that one side has to work on the transparency of these terms. You cannot expect that the consumer will spend 20 minutes reading the terms and conditions of a specific service.

That starts with reading the small print. The terms of service is a legal document that protects the company and explains to consumers what the rules are when using the service, says Ray Walsh, data privacy advocate at ProPrivacy.

A privacy policy, on the other hand, is a legal document that explains to users how their data will be collected and used by the company and any third parties or affiliates. Remember, when you click "I agree" on these documents, your approval is legally binding. Much of what's included in these documents is boilerplate or relatively innocuous.

But there are some areas to pay attention to, such as granting a company the right to sell your personal information to third parties, trace your movements using GPS and other tracking capabilities, harvest your device identifiers or track your device's IP address and other digital identifiers, Walsh says.

Beware of companies that demand a "perpetual license" to your "likeness" or to your personal data. Who has the time to wade through page after page of dense legal jargon to spot the worrisome bits? Alex Hern, a journalist with The Guardian, spent one week in reading the terms and conditions the rest of us don't. The result: It took him eight hours to skim , words in 33 documents.

If your eyes are glazing over, there are some shortcuts. Search for keywords or phrases in the document that will tell you what information the app or website collects, how long it keeps it and with whom it shares it. The project offers a free browser extension that labels and rates these agreements from very good Class A to very bad Class E on the websites you visit. When installed in your browser, it scans terms of service to unearth the worrisome stuff.

Facebook Twitter Email. What you need to know before clicking 'I agree' on that terms of service agreement or privacy policy. The real agreements are usually there to protect the company from legal trouble. Still, the experiment highlights how easily consumers are willing to waive their rights. Of course, consumers don't have much of a choice.

If they don't agree, they don't get access to the wireless network, new app or whatever it is they want to use — and there's nothing they can about it. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options.

Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts.