For suppose, if a intentionally long hundred page T&C page has a unintentional mistake, would that enforceable as well. And why do countries even bother signing agreements? Why is signature universally accepted way of confirmation?
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There’s two types of law.
The first is the law that the state creates, and includes stuff like “no murdering” and “pay your taxes”. The state has lawmakers to make these laws, and lawyers and other players in the justice system to act on it when it’s not followed.
The second is the type that business creates, like “I agree to charge you this much for my product” and “You can use my software as long as it’s used in this way”. These are driven by contracts, which are written up by lawyers in a way that their parallel “civil” legal system should be able to clearly understand. These contracts try to use very precise language that removes any confusion when another lawyer or legal system participant reads them, and that can make them really hard for us plebes to read.
Terms and conditions fit here. There’s so many words in them because they need to be CLEAR and need to cover EXCEPTIONS, stuff like “acts of God” in insurance clauses. And they need some form of evidence that the person entering into the business arrangement accepts them.
If there’s problems later and it goes to civil court, it’s much clearer and much easier to argue that someone accepted their role in them, and therefore that someone *should* have been aware of the contract’s contents when someone has “SIGNED” it with their own signature, than if they just hand-wave it away and say “what the heck is this” after being shown it later. The signature acts as evidence that an interaction with the contract actually happened”, so the signer can’t easily lie and say stuff like “hey I never saw that in my life what are you talking about, this wasn’t even sent to me!”
Signatures aren’t perfect, they can be forged. But there are electronic ways to make it FAR more likely that they haven’t been forged. So they’ve become the standard “proof” everywhere that someone was aware there was a contract, and someone accepted that contract, even if they might not have read it.
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