Here's the world's shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: "Don't violate copyright law." If I had my way, every digital download from the music in the iTunes and Amazon MP3 store, to the ebooks for the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the games for your Xbox, would bear this – and only this – as its licence agreement.

"Don't violate copyright law" has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: "You are not about to get screwed."

The copyright wars have produced some odd and funny outcomes, but I think the oddest was when the record industry began to campaign for more copyright education on the grounds that young people were growing up without the moral sensibility that they need to become functional members of society.

The same companies that spent decades telling lawmakers that they were explicitly not the guardians of the morality of the young – that they couldn't be held accountable for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, for gangsta rap, for drug-fuelled dance-parties – did a complete reversal and began to beat their chests about the corrupting influence of downloading on the poor kiddies.

Well, they got it half-right: the fact that kids – and lots of adults – don't see anything wrong with destroying the record labels is certainly bad news for the record companies. Back when Napster started, the general feeling was that the record companies deserved to die for all the packaged boy bands, for discontinuing the single, for killing the backlist, for price-fixing CDs, and for notoriously miserable contracts for artists.

Then came the digital rights management, the lawsuits (first against toolmakers like Napster, then against tens of thousands of music fans), then the use of malicious software to fight copying, the procurement of one-sided laws, the destruction of internet radio. Brick by brick, the record companies built the moral case for ripping them off (and the movie companies, broadcasters, ebook publishers, and game companies weren't far behind). As the copyfight wore on, wrecking the entertainment industry became an ever-more attractive proposition.

A decade later and the record industry has finally brought back the single, and there seems to be some semblance of price-competition (contracts for artists and the existence of boy bands still go in the minus column of course). They've even got rid of digital rights management for the majority of music sales, and the backlist is much bigger than it was in the record-store days.

So now the pitch goes: "We gave you what you asked for, you've brought us to our knees. Now, please stop ripping us off and start buying music again – we're offering a fair deal." But anyone who examines the pitch closely can see it for what it really is: just more bait for yet another trap.

It's that pesky user-agreement. When you go into one of the few remaining record stores, there's no clerk beside the till chanting, "By buying this music, you agree to the following terms and conditions," rattling off an inexhaustible set of rights that you're surrendering for having the temerity to buy your music instead of ripping it off.

If the sales-pitch for a download is, "a fair deal", then it has to be a fair deal. The activities that these licence agreements restrict range from the ridiculous to the dubious, though I suppose reasonable people might disagree about the fairness of selling or loaning out your digital music collection.

But it's not the entertainment industry's job to tell me what are and are not fair terms of sale for my downloads. If loaning an MP3 should be illegal, let them get a law passed (they're apparently good at that – the fact that they haven't managed it to date should tell you something about the reasonableness of the proposition). The one-sided, un-negotiated licence agreement lurking behind the "Check here to affirm that you have read and agreed to our terms of service" represents a wishful (even delusional) version of how a purchase works.

If the pitch is, "this is a fair deal", then the EULA should be: "You can

do anything with this, so long as you don't break the law."

Not "Abandon hope, all ye who purchase here."