I'll skip over the "quit you're whining" typo, funny though it is (and as close to my pet peeve of "its" vs "it's" that so many people get wrong) to get to the meat of your arguement as I hear it. Your argument as I hear it is that as long as the terms are presented before the sale that it is pure "buyer beware" and the buyer is to be blamed for agreeing to bad terms if that happens.

I understand such logic, but I disagree with it when we are talking about the consumer market, the mass market. Free enterprise is a great thing, but if every possible purchase came with a EULA, one alternative is that commerce would grind to a halt while everyone took the time to read every agreement for every item they purchased -- and companies certainly change licenses periodically so you would have to read it at every purchase to make sure it had not changed. The other alternative is that consumers would widely disregard the licenses and get trapped by what terms were found to be legally enforcable.

I am the sort who reads the full text of just about every form I ever have to sign and any license I ever have to agree to. I will admit that I am doing this less often in the software world because there are simply so many licenses to read, and we're talking 5 to 30 minutes of reading per software install nowadays. I don't have that kind of time. The problem with software EULAs ... sorry, one problem with software EULAs, is this time factor. Each EULA for each release of each distinct software product is different. That means you have to read them all, or simply choose to not purchase software. We'll pretend for the sake of argument that you can always find the full EULAs before purchase or at least are presented with the full EULA at the time of install.

Remember that we are talking about the mass market here. There is no EULA to purchase a CD or a DVD. Not to purchase a toaster. Not to purchase a computer hardware component. Not to purchase a wide screen TV. Not to purchase clothing. Not to purchase a movie ticket or buy a book or borrow a book from a library. Not to purchase dinner at a restaurant or attend a concert or other performance. I could go on endlessly, so I won't.

Note that software EULAs are usually longer than the documents I had to read and sign to purchase my house and my car! (And in both of those circumstances, I was able to negotiate up front, I knew all of the terms before it came time to sign any papers, and so on.) Software EULAs are substantially longer than everything I had to sign to get any job I have ever had. They are longer than any lease I have ever signed. Oh, and again, for leases and jobs, there is at least some ability to see everything up front and to negotiate.

The thing about the mass market, you see, is that there is no negotiation. That fact is part of what makes EULAs so onerous. If the rest of mass commerce followed the example of computer software, we would spend all day reading license agreements and no time spending money. That is what you seem to not see. Imagine if for every transaction, you had to sign a license agreement. Say you buy a donut and the moment you first bite into the donut (and cannot return it) you are presented with a license agreement you are presumed to have agreed to by biting into it. (This is the case for the EULAs on any web site.)

Finally, you talk about how wonderful free enterprise is, that if people object to something, the market will replace it. Yes, that always happens, but not quickly. People have to object a lot and be inconvenienced a LOT before this will happen. It will always happen, in time. But your argument is made rather moot by the large amount -- wait, I mean nil amount -- of software available without a EULA. Free enterprise is not perfectly efficient. There is a delay time built in to consumer response. Information is not perfectly available (especially when the terms in a EULA prevent free speech).