There is this old joke on User Friendly about license agreements: “Have any of you ever actually read a license agreement?” “I have! A few words, anyway …” “And what did the part you read say?” “umm… ‘I accept.'” (whole story starts here; afterwards, someone actually wrote a version of Clippy for Vim called Vigor).
I remembered all this when I saw this video on YouTube:
And that led me to an idea: How about an app which tracks T&C for you? In general, it should take a license and show you the important bits. Then, you could say “okay, I like that and that and I can live with those.” The app would then remember your preferences. For the rest of the terms, you could chose “I grudgingly accept these” or “no business with me because of this term.”
Even better, the app could notify you of terms which don’t apply to you because of local law or because courts ruled them out.
That way, the app could just show you the parts of a new license which you want to know about, that is the parts which you didn’t already agree to and without the parts that you’d accept anyway.
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