Well, if you sign the contract and the contract is legally "fair" (i.e., you weren't coerced, nothing fraudulent took place, etc.), then it doesn't matter what you say. The EULA isn't the only thing defining what agreeing to the contract means. The general framework of contract law in your country defines it as well.
We can quibble over whether EULAs are enforceable contracts due to one reason or another, but you can't just say, "Well I don't agree with the meaning of the EULA, therefore I'm not bound by the agreement".
The contract should be signed before buying the software, not when a consumer has already paid for it or wasted his time and Internet traffic to download it.
Imagine if you bought something and then learned that you have to pay again to be able to use the item.
A contract should be beneficial for both parties. But EULA only limits consumer's rights without giving everything in exchange.
I agree that the fact that you only see them after the sale is a problem, though one that would be "solved" to some degree if every vendor could be reliably relied on to honor the terms that say "if you don't agree, return it to the vendor for a refund".
There are bunches of problems around EULAs, but the general concept of an agreement you must adhere to in order to legally use the product doesn't seem especially legally shady to me. Or at least not in the ways referred to by the commenter I was replying to.
And if you don't have an agreement, you have no right to use the software.
The execution of the EULA as a thing you don't get to see up front introduces problems, for sure. But I don't see anything blatantly illegal about an agreement that says, "you must adhere to these terms to use this software".
Define "use." What is it that I do not have a right to do? Look at other peoples' phone screens? I didn't agree to the iOS EULA. Can I listen to the music coming out of my partner's laptop? I didn't agree to any music app EULA.
>But I don't see anything blatantly illegal about an agreement that says, "you must adhere to these terms to use this software".
That is not an agreement. I often cannot agree to those terms, because I do not know what they are. And I will use the software regardless, because "use" means nothing specific unless we have an agreement on what that means as well.
EULAs are "agreements" that do not require agreement, that often bind someone to do something they cannot reasonably do.
We can quibble over whether EULAs are enforceable contracts due to one reason or another, but you can't just say, "Well I don't agree with the meaning of the EULA, therefore I'm not bound by the agreement".