[JoeCianflone]

I’m not a lawyer but the way I always understood it was that this license agreements are not really valid as contracts because a contract is something all parties agree to and can amend. Consumers can’t amend these terms therefor while they may limit liability they not valid contracts. Is that not true?

[kube-system]

The ability to amend a contract is not a requirement for a valid contract (but agreement is). Contracts like this, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, are called "contracts of adhesion".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_%28contrac...

They are generally valid but courts may limit what may be enforced to a standard of reasonableness.

[orev]

Your intuition on what’s legal is miscalibrated. Clickwrap licenses have been found valid and have been upheld by courts in many legal rulings. You maybe could have made that argument 15 years ago, but not now. Some are getting to the point where “your continued use of the service indicates your acceptance of the license” is also fully valid.

See the Wikipedia entry on Clickwrap, and Planet Money episode “Surprise, you just signed a contract!”

[JohnFen]

I'm no lawyer, but I've never heard this. On the face of it, I don't think it's true. Or, if it is, then the vast majority of the consumer contracts I've entered into are invalid. I'd think that if that were the case, we'd hear more about the consequences of that.

I believe that any contract that doesn't contain "unconscionable" or illegal terms, is agreed to by all parties, and that involves consideration, is valid. I don't think that the ability to negotiate the terms is a factor. It's hard to see why it would be -- if I get a "take it or leave it" contract that I can't accept, then I can always just not enter into it.

[salawat]

Meeting of the minds is what the other poster is probably closing in on in regards to the qualities of a valid contract. Problem is, most click throughs are made in such a way as to offer no channel through which negotiation is able to occur, and even if that channel were available, most businesses would avoid maintaining it's efficiency as it massively vomplicates pricing and business system implementations if all of a sudden you're dealing with potentially millions of slightly different sets of terms.

The Courts have, in my opinion, abdicated their responsibility in ensuring that a contract is considered invalid by recognizing take-it-or-leave-it clickthrough licenses as valid.

Not doing so, and requiring a negotiation pipeline, would rein in these types of encroachments, because the burden incurred by playing these types of games would provide a better feedback loop to companies on what is vs. is not conscionable.

[SoftTalker]

> a contract is something all parties agree to

This much is true and I think it's a well-established fact that consumers don't read the terms and conditions that they "agree to" by clicking a checkbox, because it's dense legal boilerplate and it would take hours to read and understand. Nobody is going to do that to sign up for a streaming service. Any terms not directly related to the streaming service should be unenforcable on that basis alone.

[convolvatron]

not a lawyer either but I don't think there is a 'right to amend', you can always read the terms of Disney+, review them with your lawyer, decide that the benefit of that contract doesn't outweigh the burdens or risks, and not accept it. you are of course free to submit alternative terms to Disney for consideration.

[deisteve]

aren't these still suable in civil court