Credit card and licensing transactions...

Our spring break just started. I can't express how happy that makes me. To celebrate, last night I went and bought some Wyder's Raspberry Cider... good stuff, it is.

While I was paying for my goods with a credit card I had a thought on transactions (credit-card, licensing, etc.) that I'd like to share.

The very-nice checkout girl scanned my stuff. I swiped my credit card. She asked, "Debit or credit?" I said, "Credit" She hit a button on her console. By this time I was looking at something else... a magazine on the checkout rack, perhaps. She said, "You have to hit the little green button, sir." I looked down at the credit-card swiping machine... it had a prompt that said, "$11.65 is your total. Is this OK? Press the Red button for 'NO' and the Green button for 'YES'." Of course, I pressed green button.

Then I said, "I always forget to do that. It's always 'OK'. In fact, has it ever been not OK?" The checkout girl said, "You know, It's never been not OK... every one either knows that's part of the checkout, or they forget and I remind them."

This got me to thinking... what is the purpose of making the credit-card holder hit OK? Presumably, it's so they have proof that you've approved the purchase amount before the transaction is undertaken. So, why the hell do we then sign the receipt? That seems more for identification purposes... that is, if there is a challenge to the transaction, whomever (the store, the credit-card company, etc.) can use this to see who's signature it is. Why can't the signature also be used as an approval of the transaction amount? Is that because the transaction is already committed at this point?

Then, I started to think of other contexts where a similarly ridiculous 'OK'-like prompt was given. I thought of licensing transactions with software. No one ever reads the licenses or software agreements (also termed EULAs). There is always a prompt given where the user is expected to either agree or not agree with the terms of the license. Inevitably, no one (or very few people) ever declines to accept the terms of the licenses. So, what the hell is the goal of having an accept/decline prompt for license transactions? Is it to get the user to spend an hour with their lawyer attempting to translate the licenses into lay-person speak? No, it is more of a protection for the vendor. That is, the vendor can claim you had to accept the license's terms before you began to 'illegally' reverse-engineer their product. But the truth is that no one reads these damn things and very few actually understand them. The goal should be to get the user to understand and accept the terms of the license.

So, how do we get the users to understand the terms of the license so that they're in a position to really make an informed decision about whether or not they should decline/accept these terms? I think, at least, we will need either Creative-Commons style software licensing where the license is translated into a few different layers (machine, lawyer, lay-person). At most, we should have, instead of a simple decline/accept prompt for software licenses, a license quiz (like the GPL quiz, but shorter and more simple) that actually tests if the user has read the specific software agreement being declined/accepted.

I realize that this will be a barrier-to-entry of sorts for people that don't take tests well or to those who can't read or are dumb. But it seems that people are so quick to license away fundamental rights they have at a click of a click-wrap button... like reverse engineering or, in some cases with Microsoft, their rights to criticize the product (free speech). In fact, I think a test or two here and there could do very well for public policy in the United States... regardless of the Florida voting fiasco in 2000, imagine if George W. Bush had had to take a small quiz on domestic and foreign affairs before being allowed to accept the GOP nomination. He wouldn't be our president.
Posted by joebeone at Marzo 20, 2004 09:34 AM