Lessons from Contracts

So you’re sitting home in your underwear with a beer:
Professor James J. White: “The buyer will understand that his click on the “I agree” clause is a proper acceptance of the seller’s terms, but now the seller’s offer is coercive. The buyer has received and spent all evening setting up his computer, and he is sitting in his study in International Falls, Minnesota, in his underwear with a beer when he has to decide whether to agree to the new terms or go out in the negative-thirty-degree temperature and return the computer. The offer is more objectionable than a pre-delivery e-mail because it is coercive.”
Why we don’t read it for you:
Judge Easterbrook: “If the staff at the other end of the phone for direct-sales operations such as Gateway’s had to read the four-page statement of terms before taking the buyers credit card number, the droning voice would anesthetize rather than enlighten many potential buyers. Others would hang up in a rage over the waste of their time.”