[darawk]

> I can't believe you're being serious. OK, let's take it a step further. What about this: in the middle of the book the author says you can't finish reading if you don't stand on your head. Will you do it? Classic reductio ad absurdum.

That is not an ad reductio argument in the least. It's a silly condition, but if the author requires it, then you must do it, or you can simply not read the book. What part of basic social contract theory do you not get?

[TeMPOraL]

There is no requirement in social contract that you have to obey anything another person says, just because they said it. On the contrary, social contract has it that whether an exchange is a gift or a business transaction must be defined before the exchange happens.

[darawk]

Yes, of course. In the example I assumed the terms were laid out beforehand.

[TeMPOraL]

It's important to make that assumption explicit, because the current situation on the web is that sites do not lay the terms out beforehand, do not demand an informed consent, and then proceed to complain people use the web the way it was intended to use (according to web protocols).