It certainly seems to be true that courts in the UK have shied away from questions of whether any given level of consideration is sufficient, favouring a simple finding of whether there was any consideration or not. My intended point was more that while obvious nominal consideration explicitly written into a negotiated contract might reasonably be interpreted as a demonstration of intent to enter into a binding agreement, in this case I'm not sure how well that argument works. In other words, it's not just about whether 1p constitutes consideration, it's about whether that nominal consideration demonstrates an intent to commit to the deal. It would be interesting to hear what any actual lawyers thought about this argument, but sadly it doesn't look like we'll find out here.

Not in the UK.

Indeed, but arguably the purpose of recognising nominal consideration is that such consideration is a demonstration of intent to create legal relations.

We're talking about a commercial deal here, so presumably if money actually changes hands there is a strong implication that a deal was intended even for nominal consideration. I'm just wondering whether the accidental 1p pricing case is so far from reasonable by the objective observer standard that a lawyer could argue it. (I don't know the answer to this, nor claim to; as I said, I'm not a lawyer, just someone who's come across some of the issues.)

Yes, yes, something about peppercorns.

It remains necessary for there to be a meeting of the minds for a contract to exist, and I still can't see how an objective observer would conclude that a merchant intended to sell expensive goods for consideration of 1p.

This has become a significant issue for my friends and family this holiday season, to the point that in some cases we have just walked away from the Amazon ecosystem entirely and bought elsewhere.

If you can change prices so fast that a customer can't look up something we're interested in buying, call their partner in to check it before confirming the order, and then add it to a basket, and the price change can be literally doubling the price from a good deal to a complete rip-off, then the experience of shopping with you is going to suck.

Throw in the inherent risks with any on-line purchase of stuff not turning up on time or being damaged on arrival -- both things I've heard widely reported in recent weeks in the UK, including specifically in connection with Amazon in some cases -- and going back to the High Street to buy anything you can from a bricks and mortar store is quite an attractive alternative.

If only the people going to High Street shops to browse and then getting their phones out and ordering from Amazon hadn't killed off 90% of the good shops. :-(

FYI, I don't think your description of how contract law works is correct across all of the UK. For example, consideration is treated differently in Scotland.

In any case, for a transaction literally charged at 1p, one might reasonably argue both that this is not sufficient to constitute consideration and that there was no meeting of the minds given that an objective observer would obviously not expect expensive merchandise to be sold for only 1p under these conditions.

(I'm not a lawyer, but as someone who runs businesses including on-line transactions I have spent plenty of time talking about these issues with people who are. Actual lawyers are welcome to dive in and correct me.)

The GP post didn't say anything about taking your payment. Contractually speaking, that is often a more significant act than merely showing a web page or sending an e-mail acknowledging an order.

And that sometimes makes things interesting in the case of responsible retailers who don't charge your card until they are ready to ship, because you're in a kind of limbo as a customer if you've placed an order but the merchant is delayed before sending it.

As I understand it, Amazon is generally reasonable about how it handles these situations. For example, if you have placed an order but it hasn't shipped and been charged yet, you can probably change or cancel it. But you have to watch out with less scrupulous trading partners, who will happily try to eat their cake and have it by claiming your order is final yet also claiming that have no obligation to ship it until they take the payment.

For those who understand, no explanation is necessary.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Realise this fundamental truth, grasshopper, and you will reach enlightenment and celebrate in the glory of the smashing orangey bit.

...Not having any particular stake in this argument, are we quite sure that's Tyrell's intended meaning, something so mundane? I think Tyrell is more taking about stuff like this:

...i.e., Roy's greatness and accomplishment as a person. At that point, Tyrell wants to sooth Roy and make him accept his place by calling him amazing. Simply saying "well, that's the cost of bein' so darn strong" conflicts with his next line: "And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy."

Only if they don't index anything. How are they to magically know who owns copyright to every page on the web?

Take your post for example. How does anyone know you wrote it? So, if someone sends a DMCA complaint against it, then Google should not index it and Slashdot shouldn't publish it because no one can lie in your holy DMCA complaints?

Yes, then shortly after they introduce the backdoors, Russian and Chinese "hackers" will exploit them to steal everyone's credit card info, ssn, secret blueprints, celebrity nudes, and etc. But of course, no one in the media will make the connection between the backdoors and breakins.

Given the precautions I take and the checks I made at the time, including scanning the machine in question for malware using an independent, known good boot disc, that seems unlikely. It would require a firmware-level infection or a stealthy infection that could hide from multiple malware scanners, either way exhibiting no apparent symptoms before or since, to cause the clash you're suggesting.

And we're currently exploring our options for a move, due in no small part to the poor on-line banking at the current place. Sadly, it turns out that many of the alternatives are also bad one way or another, and in almost every case it takes a crazy amount of effort even to arrange a sensible discussion about possibly moving new business to a bank. Since we're talking about small businesses here, so the same people who need to deal with the banks also need to do real work that brings in revenues and pays everyone's salaries, it's a painfully slow process.

It would be interesting to see what specialist lawyers in various jurisdictions would make of that argument.

If when you use the software you also rely on any permission granted by the EULA that you wouldn't otherwise have, this could be instant game-over if it was considered to imply that you had agreed to the EULA as a contract for that reason instead. And if you explicit agreed to the EULA to download the software in the first place, that's probably instant game-over as well. But if you were relying on the EULA only as a licence, not as a contract, and you were not doing anything that requires more than that licence, it does seem like claiming that you infringed copyright instead might be a reasonable position.

However, a more promising alternative, rather than accepting that you've done anything wrong or consented to anything dubious at all just because some dubious EULA term claimed you did, might be to consider recent changes to the legal position in some jurisdictions. Particularly in Europe, many of the usual complaints about EULAs have been considered more thoroughly in recent years, and in some cases laws have been or are being changed to clarify consumer rights in terms of software, downloaded content, and related areas.

That debate typically starts with the perennial question of whether an EULA necessarily creates any binding contract at all, and if it does, whether the terms of such a contract are fair. It looks like the direction we're heading, at least in Europe and more specifically the UK, is that EULA-as-contract can be valid as a general principle, but then those agreements are also subject to the full weight of consumer protection laws just like any other consumer contract. That means a general requirement for fairness in the terms, various more specific protections like prohibiting certain exclusions entirely, and hopefully also the power for regulators to step in preemptively where unfair terms are present, even if those terms are void anyway, so no more incorporating scary-sounding but unenforceable terms to try to divert consumers from exercising their legal rights.