IANAL (but my wife has a JD): it's a fine line; on the one hand, the legal principle of "meeting of the minds" might make the judge rule that the "basically" illustrates the true intentions of the contractual clauses. On the other hand, as you say, judges are often unsympathetic to pleas of ignorance. What you sign in the contract is generally the contract. Most of the time, what this probably means is that judges will take the "basically" summarized version when they feel the contract is egregiously inequitable, and otherwise defer to the legally binding wording.
It's difficult to compare Terms of Service with typical contracts. In the first place, nothing is being signed, and anyways judges are fully aware that no one reads the TOS. I can imagine a reasonable judge ruling that no one would have read the full TOS, and so the "Basically" column is more binding.
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IANAL (but my wife has a JD): it's a fine line; on the one hand, the legal principle of "meeting of the minds" might make the judge rule that the "basically" illustrates the true intentions of the contractual clauses. On the other hand, as you say, judges are often unsympathetic to pleas of ignorance. What you sign in the contract is generally the contract. Most of the time, what this probably means is that judges will take the "basically" summarized version when they feel the contract is egregiously inequitable, and otherwise defer to the legally binding wording.
EDIT: fixed typo.
It's difficult to compare Terms of Service with typical contracts. In the first place, nothing is being signed, and anyways judges are fully aware that no one reads the TOS. I can imagine a reasonable judge ruling that no one would have read the full TOS, and so the "Basically" column is more binding.
As always, IANAL.
I feel the current state is summed up pretty well on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap