The iTunes terms and conditions are now a comic book


When it comes to accepting the terms and conditions of products like iTunes, most people just tick the box saying they've read the fine print and move on, resigning themselves to the fact that they might have just signed over their firstborn child to Apple since, to be fair, who actually takes the time to read all of that?
But for artist R. Sikoryak, the iTunes terms and conditions posed a challenge, not just to read through the entire 20,000-word document but to illustrate it in panels, paying homage to different comic artists in a 94-page book, iTunes Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel. The text, naturally, is taken only from Apple's iTunes agreement, and features none other than Steve Jobs as the protagonist of the "story" — if you can call it that. "The text is anti-narrative. It doesn't lend itself to illustration," Sikoryak told Slate.
Unsurprisingly, spending so much time with the terms and agreement statement led Sikoryak to discover oddities in the document, such as a part "about terrorism and not creating weapons out of the things you discover." That being said: "A lot of people assume that there's something malicious in making them so long, that they're trying to prevent you from reading them. But I think it's just lawyers trying to cover [the company's] asses," Sikoryak explained. Your firstborn child is safe, after all.
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Read more about the project at Slate, and take a look at iTunes Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel, published serially on Tumblr.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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