The digital shrink wrap dilemma

End-user agreements with application providers are a required commitment for digital citizens - students, employees, customers and everyone else. Despite their proliferation and use by nearly every major multinational company, there exists a basic rationality failure. These agreements are routinely agreed to with scant, if any, comprehension. This paper examines the current situation with quantification-based analysis, compares variations among countries and outlines possible solutions to bring more integrity to the “voluntary” agreements between end users and application providers. It introduces a Readability Gap measurement for describing the disparity between a population's comprehension and the readability level of electronic agreements they routinely make.