[rkagerer]

Nice analogy, though I respectfully submit it's imperfect. I email them at the time of signup so it's clearly not a change of heart. And with a mortgage, at least there is someone on the other side of the table providing an opportunity to negotiate.

One thing I miss about paper documents is you could cross things out before signing. I suppose I'm trying to do the digital equivalent of that. I'm all ears if you can suggest a better way to shove an amended counteroffer down their throats the same way they try to shove their ToS down mine (https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/17476/can-i-cross-ou...).

[KyeRussell]

The other party is presenting their service and the terms by which they are offering it. Nobody is shoving anything down your throat. The fact that you are given no opportunity to negotiate is representative of the power dynamic. I’d put money on you feeling differently about this situation were you on the other side, having potentially millions of customers and probably-just-one person that overestimates their importance thinking that you’re going to put any amount of effort into operationalising a varied TOS for them. Beginning to use their service under the assumption that your varied TOS has been accepted is really shoving something down their throat.

I have experience selling SaaS licenses to large organisations and there is certainly room for negotiation there, sometimes to the point where the base contract is provided by the customer. It doesn’t sound like you’re talking about even remotely comparable circumstances.

[salawat]

Except...

It's baked into every contract that you must have a neeting of the minds. Yet there is no pipeline for back and forth in most of these agreements.

The fact is, a system is both what it is, and what it isn't. Both are positive things.

Technology, and the EULA in particular, has turned the idea of a contract, which is the end product of a negotiation brokered between two parties, into a one-way dicta. Think about the selection bias here. If you don't accept service X because their ToS has clause Y, and everybody else has clause Y, so clause Y is essentially normalized.

90% of people that didn't give a shit are doing whatever, the businesses are off to the bank with it, enjoying their network effect, and decreased legal costs/simplified legal pipeline/accounting/bookkeeping process, and you're just SOL. Want to negate the clause? Sorry.

Either A) No standing. You didn't sign it therefore you aren't in a recognizable position to claim damages/relief

Or

B) You signed it, it's a contract, you should have known what you were getting into. (If you accept the current zeitgeist on EULA in some jurisdictions)

Guess you'll just have to make your own thing if you want it so bad... Or work through legislators/regulators, where you're still likely having to rely on some stack of EULA to even coordinate that.