Technology entrepreneurship has enabled the widespread commercial adoption of internet technologies. These internet technologies have reformed consumer commercial experiences towards an online environment. As the online consumer experience becomes more predominant, various actors have recognized the significance of developing appropriate regulations for online consumer experiences to reflect various policy objectives including consumer protection. Network efficiencies and large-scale infrastructures enable a single provider to deliver services to mass market consumers. Contract negotiation at such scale is typically not the “meeting of the minds” envisaged by contract law as crafting terms carefully considered by knowledgeable parties. Such services are typically delivered under terms of service developed by the service provider alone; and accepted by the consumer with a single click and little if any consideration.
Consumers typically ignore these terms of service in reliance on consumer protection laws or the courts to ensure fair treatment. Consumer protection laws have focused primarily on requirements directed at the service provider. Common law courts have contract defenses against unconscionable terms, but these rely on community standards of reasonable behavior which may be difficult to ascertain when the adoption of new technologies and practices is not uniform. The successful adoption of new internet-based technologies and commercial practices has encouraged more technology entrepreneurship in a positive feedback cycle.
Electronic signatures have become the norm as transactions increasingly move online, unfortunately with little thought or evaluation by consumers. A swath of new internet-based technologies and commercial practices enabled by blockchains are expected to become mainstream within the near future. Regulatory and Policy decision makers are considering necessary regulatory changes as these technologies evolve to support a greater range of more complex transactions affecting not just financial assets, but also cyber physical infrastructure.
To avoid the problems created by oblivious signatures, some efforts at increasing consumer engagement with the terms of service may be a useful and tractable step towards improved consumer experiences. In comparison, previous efforts focused on the plain language movement may have increased comprehensibility ultimately failed to achieve the necessary consumer attention for a true “meeting of the minds”. Blockchain smart contracts appear to provide promising capabilities to enable greater consumer engagement with the terms and conditions of the online services by enabling e.g. multiple signatures per transaction, and more sophisticated transaction logic to verify engagement. If service providers and regulators will also engage, by considering such click through licensing processes through the lens of consumer engagement, consumer orient blockchain smart contracts could become more widespread.
I’ll be presenting a technical paper on this approach at the International Symposium on Technology and Society 2020. If you’d be interested to discuss this topic further please contact me Dr Steven A Wright.