The basic gist of Easterbrook's argument is that in everyday life it is common to buy now and find out the terms later, and under the law and the UCC the sequence of money and accepting terms don't matter.
While the case has been stretched to the limit, and lots of research shows that users aren't reading the terms of service, the practice and the law in the US has only strengthened.
Sometimes not and yes. Online ticket purchases are routed through a protocol which has an earlier cut off time after which the ticket is in “airport control” and purchased or changes happen in-person. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/111197/what-does-...
"You" would be the company, and the submitter would assign all the rights to it. Interestingly, I looked and couldn't find any terms of service or company name.
Eric, the author, says he won't accept any puzzle submissions because of attribution and legal issues. This seems like the wrong outcome for people who want to make the site better but don't want credit, compensation, or attribution.
Has anyone seen a site using an IP assignment agreement which is the equivalent of "take my work, I don't want credit, and it's just for your site"?
The Creative Commons CC0 license comes closest, but one could scrape those puzzles and create a competing site, which I'd guess Eric wants to avoid.
So far CA DMV publishes autonomous miles driven without incident etc. It would be interesting to see commercial numbers driven - ie someone paid for a ride.