In the intellectual property case that's basically irrelevant -- I can download a piece of software or, say, a movie without agreeing to any contract, but it still will be illegal for me to redistribute it.
With the air ticket you do agree to a contract, but here you need to dig a bit deeper.
Not all contracts are created equal. There are basically two kinds. The first kind is a contract you actually negotiate and fully understand, one where what lawyers call "the meeting of the minds" occurred. Let's call it a negotiated contract. The other kind is known as an adhesion contract and let me quote:
A standard form contract drafted by one party (usually a business with stronger bargaining power) and signed by the weaker party (usually a consumer in need of goods or services), who must adhere to the contract and therefore does not have the power to negotiate or modify the terms of the contract.
These two kinds of contracts are different, both legally and morally. Courts, for example, are generally hesitant to rewrite the terms of negotiated contracts, but have much less scruples about changing or just throwing out parts of adhesion contracts.
Generally speaking, adhesion contracts are not so much about setting out rights and obligations of the parties to the contract, but rather about shifting the balance of power in the possible future disputes.
Most everyone breaks adhesion contracts all the time because they are essentially designed to be broken so that the consumer always ends up the guilty party and pressure can be applied to him. It's just exercise of power, is all.
I can download a piece of software [...] without agreeing to any contract
Well, sure. And if someone wants to sell you a car but only if you sign a contract saying you'll never drive it over 40mph or something, you can always steal it instead. (I am not suggesting that illegal software copying is the same as theft in any respect other than that both are illegal.) Why is this relevant?
adhesion contract
Yes, I agree, adhesion contracts are icky and often unreasonable and widely ignored. But it is still the case that with both software and airline ticket...
I was going to wait to post this for reasons, but realized that was pretty dumb when the difference of a few weeks could literally save people hundreds, if not thousands of collective dollars.
If you fly regularly (or at all), you may already know about this method of saving money. The method is quite simple: instead of buying a round-trip ticket from the airline or reseller, you hunt down much cheaper one-way flights with layovers at your destination and/or your point of origin. Skiplagged is a service that will do this automatically for you, and has been in the news recently because the creator was sued by United Airlines and Orbitz. While Skiplagged will allow you to click-through to purchase the one-way ticket to your destination, they have broken or disabled the functionality of the redirect to the one-way ticket back (possibly in order to raise more funds for their legal defense). However, finding the return flight manually is fairly easy as the provide all the information to filter for it on other websites (time, airline, etc). I personally have benefited from this - I am flying to Texas from Southern California soon, and instead of a round-trip ticket which would cost me about $450, I spent ~$180 on two one-way tickets (with the return flight being the "layover" at my point-of-origin). These are, perhaps, larger than usual savings; I think 20-25% is more common, but even then it's a fairly significant amount of money.
Relevant warnings by gwillen:
Additionally, you should do all of your airline/hotel/etc shopping using whatever private browsing mode your web browser has. This will often let you purchase the exact same product for a cheaper price.
That is all.