The truth must be told, the process of preparing these
write-ups is tedious, It takes some hours to type the entire write-up and
another couple of hours to proofread them and in the end, the by-product of all
the hardwork makes sense only to experts in legalese.
Ironically, most website admin or software developers that
place the ‘Terms and Conditions’ or ‘ Software License Agreement’ are not
reading it either. A simple Google search shows over 5,000 different Terms and
Conditions generators out there generating the templates or HTML codes to make
it easier for business and websites to place it on their site or add it to
their applications.
Nevertheless, by clicking the acceptance button, it is
assumed that you have you have read the agreement diligently, understood the
content and as such you are bound to abiding by them. Some companies do place
it conveniently at where it can be easily reached and clicked while others make
sure you have scrolled to the end of the page before you see the ‘I agree’
button.
- Pay attention to where any word relating to money or payment is mentioned, if it is free, read more carefully to see when or how you are expected to pay for the product or service later. Watch out for the words ‘fees’. ‘compensation’, ‘liability’ etc.
- To get some help on analyzing the content of any terms and conditions, you might find helpful a Windows-based software, EULAlyzer that tells you how safe the software you are about to install is, this program analyze the entire agreement and highlight the key phrases of interest to you.
- Being a proven speed-reader does not guarantee that you will be reading every Agreement page that comes your way (you would be easily bored), rather the best way to get the most out of the lengthy write-up is to skim the text. Fortunately enough, most of the write-ups are often laid out in outline form and properly indented with capital letters, lowercase letters, bolden characters etc.
By this arrangement, you may not need to go through the
whole material unless you are highly suspicious of where you are getting into.
For instance, the Definition segment, if you know the meaning of a word, the
there is no need to read about six paragraphs telling you what you already
know, simply skim it to be sure that they are not applying a different meaning
to it.
Using these methods, you do not spend useful
time reading over a boring article but by ignoring and skimming through
portions of text are irrelevant to you and going straight to where you need to
read carefully, you are much more confident of tapping on the ‘I agree’ button.
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