Ex-TerCo Goal #3

Sign Before You Buy and Protect Kids

Any T&C should be agreed before purchase. A product should be exactly what you paid for: a video game is a game, a TV is a TV, nothing hidden comes with it. And no child should ever be bound by a wall of legal text shown after they bought something. That is not a contract. It is predatory.

The Evidence

Courts already require terms BEFORE the deal, sometimes

In Specht v. Netscape (2002), a US federal appeals court refused to enforce terms users never reasonably saw before acting: no visible notice plus no clear assent means no contract. Yet ProCD v. Zeidenberg (1996) blessed the opposite "pay now, terms later" model that the industry still relies on. The law is split, which is exactly why the default must become sign-before-you-buy.

Specht v. Netscape (2d Cir. 2002), Justia

A record fine for charging kids: Epic Games paid $520 million

The FTC hit Fortnite's maker with a record $275M penalty for collecting children's data without parental consent, plus $245M in refunds for dark patterns that tricked players, including kids, into unintended purchases.

US Federal Trade Commission (2022)

You bought a TV. It was also spying on you.

Vizio paid $2.2M to settle FTC charges after secretly collecting second-by-second viewing data from 11 million smart TVs and selling it, enriched with age, sex, income and marital status, to third parties. A TV should be a TV.

US Federal Trade Commission (2017)

A streaming free trial almost blocked a wrongful-death lawsuit

Disney argued a widower couldn't sue over his wife's fatal allergic reaction at Disney World because he had once accepted Disney+ trial terms. Disney backed down only after global public outcry. The fine print itself said otherwise.

NPR (2024)

"Buy" often means "borrow": 551 purchased movies deleted

Sony announced removal of 551 already-paid-for StudioCanal films from PlayStation libraries with no refund; Ubisoft argued in court that buyers of The Crew only ever held a "limited license". California's AB 2426 (2025) now bans "buy" language for revocable digital licenses without clear disclosure.

Consumer Rights Wiki; California AB 2426

Children legally cannot contract, yet they click "I Agree" daily

The centuries-old infancy doctrine makes minors' contracts voidable in virtually every US state, and GDPR Article 8 requires parental authorization for children's consent in the EU. Selling a game to a kid and binding them with a post-purchase EULA contradicts both.

GDPR Art. 8; Berkeley Law (Preston)

91% accept terms without reading. Consent is a fiction

A Deloitte survey found 91% of US consumers (97% of ages 18-34) accept terms without reading them, and experiments show ~93% accept even deliberately absurd clauses. Agreement extracted after money changed hands is not consent.

Deloitte via Duquesne Juris Magazine