The Problems

The problems we wish to solve in this application are those of informed consent in End User License Agreements. Currently they focus on a disclosure and effective consent approach to informed consent (see section 1.2.2). An EULA will (usually) provide a text box with a large amount of legal text within a small area with the ability to scroll to read the entire text document. At the bottom of the window is usually a check box that allows the user to tick if they have read and understood the agreement^4.1, after which, if the response is positive, the software will install. Some examples of this style of agreement can be seen in Chapter 2, particularly Figures 2.1 and 2.2. This simple disclosure approach makes no attempt to check to see if the user understands the agreement, often contains ``hidden'' text (that is, text deep within a long agreement that users would not generally read) that allows the software to perform tasks that may not be very appealing to the user, such as pop-up advertising, or which would violate normative expectations of the user, such as privacy or security issues. These sorts of agreements are also quite prevalent in everyday use of computers, since each piece of software installed (usually) requires consent to an agreement like this. Computers usually have a number of pieces of software installed, which means that users have to consent to many such agreements, often, as explained earlier, to the point where they know that it will be difficult to read, and they know exactly how to skip past it easily. This numbness, discussed in previous chapters, is a serious problem that needs overcoming before we can claim to have a good informed consent procedure.

Thus we have two sets of problems: one being the content of the agreement, and the other the display of the agreement (and acceptance mechanism). I have already established earlier in this dissertation that the content of the agreement, mostly legal text, is difficult to read, difficult to understand, and in some cases, almost deliberately obscure in order to dissuade users from reading it or to make it ambiguous in its meaning. The display of the agreement does not encourage a thorough reading of the agreement, even if it were easy to read, with the tiny text box holding thousands of words of text, often in all-capital letters which we have seen is difficult to read and understand (see section 2.1.2). The consent mechanism in place (sometimes ticking a box, many times simply clicking ``I agree'') is rudimentary at best, but coupled with the poor quality of the license display it is insufficient for the consent process to be considered informed. In order for this to improve, the agreement mechanism needs to be changed (the more difficult route, since it could require some sort of randomness such as changing button locations to be introduced so that a new ``numbness'' doesn't eventuate), the preceding communication framework (detailing the contents of the agreement) needs to be improved (a more attractive route, since it would more easily fit within the current paradigm, giving a much better cost-benefit ratio), or both.