Despite the global embrace of electronic commerce, there has been a surprising lack of attention to the host of new legal issues raised by online contracting. The attempts by the ALI and NCCUSL to clarify this uncertain legal landscape through the creation of a new uniform set of default rules for online transactions, first in the guise of U.C.C. Article 2B and recently as the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, come up well short. Not only do these paper codes favor merchants, but they rest on a faulty premise: that a traditional, comprehensive, fixed legal framework, dictated by real space notions of contract law, should mold the future of online transactions. As an alternative, this paper offers a code-based contracting regime called C3C, Code for Cognizant Contracting which, similar to P3P, would provide consumers and merchants with the ability to actually negotiate and consciously agree to contract terms that matched their specific preferences. In light of the yet-untested nature of this technology, however, this paper is left to speculate about the potential costs and benefits of a C3C reality. The analysis ultimately suggests that a code-based framework such as C3C might not only eliminate the current legal uncertainty associated with online transactions, but could also provide a solid foundation for more efficient online contracting in the future.