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Full-Text Articles in Law
Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance Of Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance Of Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Virtual worlds have seized the imaginations of millions of people who now live, work, and play together in these new environments. But all is not well. These online communities are ruled nearly exclusively by contract law, through end-user licence agreements, terms of service, and codes of conduct. Contracts are a critical means of helping two (or a few) people negotiate their preferences. But online communities are made up of enormous and shifting populations that have no time or ability to negotiate agreements with every other community member. Relying on contracts alone thus threatens the investments and creativity that go into …
The Cost Of Consent: Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
The Cost Of Consent: Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
This article argues that informed consent to contract terms is not a good to be maximized, but is rather an information cost that courts should minimize. The goal of mass-market contract law ought to be to keep costs low by encouraging contract standardization. The article applies information cost theory to show that information-forcing rules are often inefficient at both the micro- and macroeconomic levels. Such rules also impose greater costs on third parties than the benefits they create for the contracting parties. When one consumer creates an idiosyncratic deal, the information-savings benefits of standardization are reduced for all other potential …
The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation centered view of contract continues to lead courts to try to construe the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated, and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, courts lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the …