>>>My fundamental view is this: You agreed to someone's terms personally as an individual, or as an agent acting on behalf of your corporate entity, guiding and directing that entity by your choices. Abide by them.
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>>That is absolutely incorrect.
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>"Absolutely incorrect." That's a powerful statement.
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>>The law protects both parties. There are many employers who put clauses into work agreements that are against the law...
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>Consider the position you're supporting here. You say, "Go ahead and sign something or agree to something you don't believe in because if it ever comes down to it (like going to court), chances are you'll be okay." That's no guarantee, but consider an alternate position:
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>Suppose upon reading the terms of Microsoft's EULA, for example, we concluded we disagree with those terms because, let's say, we want to be able to implement repairs to damaged software that is impacting us or our business, and the inability for us to decompile or reverse engineer the software to identify how it's designed to be able to apply patches is explicitly forbidden, so we say, "No. I do not agree to those terms," and move on to the next product that's available.

Exactly this is how it is being handled and it is provided as such by the legal system of most advanced societies. This is law, because of several very important reasons. First of all, some employers have a clause in their contract that prohibits their employees to do any outside work. This clause is not legal and therefore void. However upon signing my contract I may not be interested at that time in pursuing another work apart from the main employment, therefore I don't consider this a breaking issue and sign the contract. It could be that a few years later the situation changes and I do need or want to pursue another profitable job on the side. Then it gets interesting, because at this point the law protects my interests. The employer has no right to rule over my time outside of the time I spent in the company. This law has been created so the employers cannot strangle the opportunities of its employees.

Secondly, there may be a big difference in power between two parties. I may not have much choice in signing the contract, because at this point I depend on the conclusion and have no alternative, either because of financial issues or circumstances I have not fully under control. The party with more power can make the rules and I can only agree or disagree, but I do not have a real choice. Many people have been subdued and suppressed in history because the less powerful people had no or little protection. In our modern civilisation this has changed, so the law gave more rights to the working class and protects its interest against large corporations or even against the government. So they cannot rule up contracts as they wish, they too need to follow certain rules and cannot block the advances of other people only because they have more power or more money.

I find this an important aspect, and if it were not so, we would still live in the middle ages where the rulers would determine our fate. Many great people have fought for their rights and in hindsight have received justice.