Coping with Contracts

• Google's personal products APART from YouTube (doesn't include their business offering)

• Hover for internet domain name registration and email services

• UK government's website which hosts a very wide range of citizen-oriented information under the same reasonably-long terms and conditions

• Religious Forums which is a website for people to have faith-based forum discussions.

• "Free Software"
  Consider using "free software" (such as Ubuntu Studio Linux, LibreOffice, Audacity, MuseScore, and OnWorks) rather than proprietary software. Proprietary software often has very long and difficult-to-use contracts, that are unique to each piece of software. In contrast, the licences/contracts for "free software" (such as the GPL licence) are often much easier to handle. For example, the GPL licence allows you to run the related software for any purpose, without condition. This makes contract/licence compliance much, much easier: you effectively don't need to read the GPL licence if all you are doing is running the software. Additionally, the same "free software" licences are often re-used across very many pieces of software. This means that you often don't have to process/read a brand new contract/licence for every new piece of "free software". In January 2026, it was estimated that millions of pieces of software were licensed under the same GPLv2 licence. If you feel guilty over the software being free of charge, you can always make a donation to the related software project to ease your guilt.

• Possibly German products
  German website terms and conditions are simply often not present, making contract compliance much easier for users. This ease of use with regard to websites seems somewhat also to extend to other German products. In contrast, American contracts are often terribly long, difficult to process, and difficult to understand. Knowing these variations based on country, can help you make better product choices, in connection to contract compliance.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)-
  It has the potential of making contract processing a great deal easier for users. Using Google's free NotebookLM AI service, you can put forward the following kinds of query concerning a contract:

1. “Please quote all the texts that relate to any of the following: user obligations; the date of the terms or when they were last updated; the laws, such as the national laws, that apply to the terms and agreement; under what and which jurisdiction, the terms are; other terms and documents that are incorporated by reference, into the agreement; which statements and documents make up the agreement, and which do not; how to interpret the agreement, including how to interpret in case of conflict between two or more statements in the agreement; the heading used for any definitions section; any text that redefines previously defined terms.”

2. "Please summarise all the user obligations in a compacted and brief way that apply to users who are merely reading content on the website without using the content in any other way (such as by copying and pasting it) for non-commercial, personal purposes."

3. "Does the contract prohibit hyperlinking to the website at all?"

4. "Am I allowed to use the Product of the contract, for commercial purposes?"

• Use a Default Contract Choices (DCCs) document.
  I've recently updated my DCCs document. I place it in the public domain for you freely to use, change, and even maybe monetise (if you change, please use an ID sufficiently distinguished from the “DCCs-’MJF...’” ID): PDF; ODT. The previous version I was using, was dated about a decade ago: I've established a long-standing pattern of using a DCCs document to help with contract compliance.  A DCCs document contains all the default choices you make concerning contracts, possibly very well presented so that it's easier to understand your default choices. Then for any contract you encounter, in your notes, you only specify what extra user obligations you have, that are additional to the user obligations indicated by the DCCs. By doing this, you can maintain a lean set of notes for each of your contracts, and make contract compliance much easier. With AI, there is the potential to make a DCCs document even more beneficial. For example, you can post the following kinds of query to Google's free NotebookLM AI service, concerning your contracts:

  1. “Please quote all texts in the contract that have no functional equivalent in the DCCs. Do this thoroughly and intensively. In particular: use footnote explanations to enhance your understanding of terms and phrases; if contract says headings do not affect the interpretation of the contract, bear this in mind with respect to underlying obligations; focus on whether the user is required to perform or avoid the same underlying action, regardless of the terminology used ('Sides of the Bargain'); mentally verify what is covered before deciding what is unique (perform a 'Positive Check' first).”

  2. “Please quote all texts in the contract that have a functional equivalent in the DCCs”  (useful for checking AI’s processing contract and DCCs properly).

  3. “Drawing on the DCCs as a high-readability framework for 'easier processing of obligations', please summarise only the user obligations in the contract that have no functional equivalent in the DCCs.
     To ensure accuracy and avoid terminology-based mistakes, please apply the following rules from the sources: whilst you should generally use dictionary definitions, use footnote explanations to enhance your understanding of terms and phrases; if contract says headings do not affect the interpretation of the contract, bear this in mind with respect to underlying obligations; before listing an obligation as unique, thoroughly and intensively verify it is indeed functionally prohibited by the DCCs.
     Provide the final summary of truly unique obligations in a compacted, brief, and plain-English way.”

See under "Contract Compliance using Default Contract Choices document [“DCCs-’MJF...’”]" heading below (might be at bottom of page), for a table simplifying contract compliance through showing what additionally is needed for compliance for people who are already following my “DCCs-’MJF...’” Default Contract Choices.

• Possibly leverage TOS;dr project
  TOS;dr stands for "Terms of Service; Didn't Read". They say the biggest lie on the internet is saying that you've read and agreed to terms and conditions. They try to list succinctly important points of a contract, for a variety of contracts, and they allow their lists to be amended by users. In theory, their project should generally be helpful for contract processing.

• "Writing customer-friendly terms and conditions" article

• Last feedback I gave on improving terms and conditions

• My user-friendly reformatted version of [Creative Commons] CC BY-SA 3.0 licence [PDF, ODT]

• Plain Language Guide Series hosted on digital.gov

• Plain English Campaign's free guides

• SEC's Plain English Handbook