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It's still long enough that it needs a table of contents with links, as well as long enough that the only people reading it are people looking for legal recourse.


Yes, but instead of being a giant, monolithic wall of pain, it's now broken down into much less daunting chunks of text.

I caught myself actively reading the agreement like it was a blog post. The questions helped frame what I was about to read, and made the answers feel a lot more accessible.

(It also helps that the answers seem like they were written for normal people to understand. They're a little wordy, but in a thorough-yet-not-quite-legalese-y kind of way.)


I'm not sure why you expected any different, better formatting doesn't make a boring content any less boring; if you don't enjoy legalese pretty colors and bold sections aren't going to change that.

Still, a lot better than a lot of other TOS out there that you can't properly read even if you want to because ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE.


They could have gone with the CC approach:

For humans: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

For lawyers: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

Granted, Microsoft's lawyers probably wouldn't approve (because people might argue that they're agreeing to the simplified terms that have wriggle room and not the iron-clad legalese).


I think that works for CC because the people using the license are using the license and not the summary. It's ok if a third party to the licensor provides a summary.




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