TOS as a Service

Terms of Service are complete bunkum. We all know this, because nobody reads them. And because people often can't read them, because someone else signed up for them.

During my time on the IT helpdesk, I set up people's computers for them, including the software. So when Margaret from Accounts opened her new laptop, the accounting software sat waiting for her. Now riddle me this; who agreed to the terms of service?

Margaret did not agree to them, because she never read them. I installed all the software, and clicked all the buttons.

I didn't agree to them. Could I agree to terms of service on behalf of another person. You can't bind other people to contracts, at least, not by simply being 'the IT guy'. I also can't read them. Some of the terms of service have the same word-count as Shakespeare's Hamlet. If I submitted my time sheet, including 3 days to read the terms of service of one piece of software, nobody would let me set up another computer.

Did the company agree to the terms of service? That sounds more plausible, but there is no 'the company'. The company Margaret works for was often just 'Margaret', the independent person. Independent people often can't afford a full-time IT person, so they hire a company to help them out for a few hours each week. So in this case, we'd be back to Margaret as the person that I agreed would follow the terms of service. More nonsense.

Perhaps the MSP - the 'IT guys' company that provides these services promised to follow the terms of service? But that doesn't help much if Margaret violates them. If Margaret from Accounts somehow reverse-engineers the .exe and .dll files which make up the program, then launches a competing software business (which would clearly breach the terms of service) then could the 'IT guys' company be held liable for Margaret's actions? Clearly not. It's not our fault if Margaret decides to get into decompiling binaries in her spare time.

If some agreement exists here, who agreed to this agreement? Who's liable for what?