Re:Apple iTunes Contract Fail
by semanticist on Saturday June 26, 2010 @07:07PM
(#1464472)
The FSA (Financial Services Authority - UK financial industry watchdog) ruled that simply checking a box that says you've read and understood a contract doesn't protect the financial services company from your later complaint that the contract was unfair or not explained to you properly.
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/fsa_contract_guidanc...)
I found the OFT guidance really interesting:
"The purpose of declarations of this kind is clearly to bind consumers to wording regardless of whether they have any real awareness of it. Such statements are thus open to the same objections as provisions binding consumers to terms they have not seen at all."
That implies that in the UK situations where you have 50 screens of unreadable guff with an 'I agree' checkbox at the bottom may not be enforceable.
In Canada, for example, there is an "average person" test, which deals with evaluating the reasonableness of one's action by comparing it what an average person would've done in the same circumstances. If on average noone reads T&C before accepting, then perhaps this may invalidate this T&C agreement model.