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FILE 016 · VOL II · Something Answered
You Agreed to Clause 11.4. Read What It Takes.
You signed it. Everybody signed it. Nobody read it.
Based on: Demonic Pacts and Contracts
Intake record
| Recovered from | Law office, personal workstation of a paralegal on unexplained leave |
|---|---|
| Contents | 412 pages of printed terms of service, highlighted; one certified mail receipt; a child's drawing |
| Finder | R. Mehta, contracts paralegal |
| Status | The opt-out deadline referenced in this file has passed for most readers. |
Recovered file
In 2008, two researchers at Carnegie Mellon calculated how long it would take the average American to actually read every privacy policy they agreed to in a single year. The answer was about seventy-six full working days. [1] Nobody does it. Everybody clicks I AGREE. Everybody knows that everybody clicks I AGREE. It is the most widely signed contract in human history, and it is signed blind.
Companies know it. On April Fools' Day in 2010, a British video game retailer called GameStation added a clause to its online terms granting it ownership of each customer's immortal soul. Seven thousand five hundred people agreed in a single day. [2] In 2017, a public Wi-Fi company added a clause committing users to a thousand hours of community service, including cleaning portable toilets. Twenty-two thousand people accepted. In two weeks, exactly one person noticed. [3]
Raj Mehta read contracts for a living. He was a paralegal at a mid-sized firm that did commercial leases. He was thorough to the point of irritation. His wife said he was the only man in America who read the instructions on a box of pancake mix.
In October, bored and unable to sleep, he decided to read the terms of service for the phone in his hand. All of it. Every clause.
On page 311, in a section labeled MISCELLANEOUS, at clause 11.4, he found a sentence he read nine times.
Schedule K was not attached. Schedule K was not anywhere on the website. It took Raj four nights and a contact in the provider's legal department who stopped returning his calls to find a copy, a single page buried in a regulatory filing from 2009.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 016 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.