My friend and I were flipping through a local newspaper the other day and came across an article about Emiratis jailed for failing to pay off their loans.
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The featured men were calling for donors and charities to pay their debts so they could be released after serving their time, go back to their families, and start over.
"Thank God I'm not bound to serious legal agreements," exclaimed my friend. I could not agree more.
But being the pensive soul that I am, our conversation played on my mind, as I was trying to adjust my biological clock to Abu Dhabi time, and get a good night's sleep.
In between tossing, turning and kicking of my blanket, I realised how wrong my friend's statement was. We are bound to legal agreements, almost every single day - so many over the years that we lose count of them.
My friend and I are not alone in this.
Almost everyone we know, including our siblings, friends and neighbours are bound to these agreements as well.
Just consider the number of legal terms we accept almost every day for our entertainment purposes alone whether it is for registering a new email address or downloading the latest version of RealPlayer.
Once, in the pre-iPod era, if you wanted the latest Backstreet Boys album, you had to walk into Virgin Megastore in Dubai or any other music store, pay your money and walk out with the CD or tape that often came with a poster of the band.
The same applies if you wanted to purchase a new best-seller.
Unlike today, when you can read it a few minutes after buying it online, you had to walk to your local bookstore, get the book, and get back home. Of course copyright had its limits on what you could do with your purchase, but you did not have to sign any thousand-word legal agreement, that I bet few read through before clicking the "I Agree" button.
Nowadays, according to the "conditions of use" by Amazon.com, if you visit or shop at Amazon.com, you accept these conditions.
The conditions are even more severe if you choose to read an electronic book using an e-reader such as Kindle or iPad, because if you do not accept the agreement, then you are told you may not use the Kindle, any reading application, any digital content, or the service.
If you think 2,000 words are a lot to read, let alone comprehend, then I am sure many of you would be overwhelmed by the 15,000 words of fine print you signed up to when you bought music or digital apps from Apple.
What frightens me more is the idea of my little brother agreeing to accept legal conditions that his mind is not able to digest yet, just to download the latest version of a game on his iPhone.
Of course agreeing to any of these terms is voluntary, in theory.
You could always just go down to the mall, treat yourself to great music or whatever, and grab some junk food while you are at it.
But then again, why would you bother to get dressed, drive your car, park, and walk inside a crowded mall, when you have the option of buying your desired products online?
With so many transactions taking place on the internet, I think most of us make more legal agreements during the course of a few months than our parents made in a lifetime.
If you have bothered to read the terms of service for Google, for example, you will know that users under the age of 17 are prohibited from using the search engine and the Google Mail service.
I started using Google when I was barely a teenager, just like my brother now, as did all my cousins - meaning that we all violated Google's terms.
I have also received friend requests on Facebook from my little cousin's friends who are barely 11. That is also a violation of Facebook terms that states the service should not be used by people under 13 years old.
But how serious is that? Will we all be sued?
The US federal computer fraud and abuse legislation considers violating terms of service agreements including underage use of the search engine to be a crime.
Just imagine if the US justice department had infinite time and resources to track down each and every violator.
Come to think of it, the likes of Google and Hotmail could be making millions out of us violators.
*Manar Al Hinai is a fashion designer and writer. She can be followed on Twitter: @manar_alhinai
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