A modest proposal to fix contracts

Rescuing contracts from sprawling garbage legalese novellas masquerading as “agreements.”

10 min readAug 10, 2022

A pair of shaking hands; one of them is demonic red, with sharp black talons. The demonic hands’ cuff buttons are the glowing red eyes of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Behind the two hands is a contract with a pen scrawling a signature. Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read

Every time I click through one of those garbage legalese novellas you’re expected to say “I Agree” to before doing something totally normal and inconsequential, I’m reminded of the legendary Lenny Bruce bit “Eat, Sleep and Crap.”

A modest proposal to fix contracts

Rescuing contracts from sprawling garbage legalese novellas masquerading as “agreements.”

Written by Cory Doctorow