An entity doesn't need 'legal enforcement' for a supposed debt when they can threaten to or send someone to collections and ruin their credit/drain their time to fighting it, though.
See what? An irrelevant comment that doesn't address the fact that one doesn't get to magically wish away a corporation's claim (unjust or not) of debt against an individual? Because that's not how debt works ("just ignore it") and directly ignores the article:
"Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”"
So, I don't get where you or the other person in this thread are getting the idea that this is a non issue because you can just ignore the contract terms. I too wish this was a non issue for those involved and ignorable, because it's despicable. It's obviously unconscionable and a problem that these companies are attempting to extort money from disadvantaged populations (not the supposedly previously narrower, highly paid technical applications of the agreements) even if said agreements existed in a counterfactual universe in which a corporation pursuing you for debt was a non issue. Debt is not expensive to draft continuous demand letters against or to transfer to a collections agency. Plus, you know, the above paragraph in the article.
If you're at all the target audience for this website, you and your entire social circle are soft targets for debt collectors. You have a high credit score and care about it, you have bank accounts and non-retirement investment accounts, you may have home equity in a state that doesn't protect the hell out of it like Texas, etc. If you get sued for $20k and a judgement gets entered, odds are your creditor ends up getting the full $20k. If this isn't you then I apologize for stereotyping, but this does describe a majority of the commentariat here.
A lot of the subjects of these articles are from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and will have a very different experience. Their bank account either doesn't exist or has like a week's pay in it. If they have investments, they're in an untouchable 401(k). They may live in a state that forbids wage garnishment, and even if you get that their wages may already be garnished and immune to further action. You might be able to grab their tax refunds, but those might already be spoken for by other creditors. And to top it all off, bankruptcy court can at any time issue a stay of proceedings and follow it up with a discharge of debts.
In short, there's a reason why most consumer debts are sold on for pennies on the dollar. That's what you actually get from it - maybe you talk some poor sod into paying $20/mo on a $20k debt that you bought for $200. Especially against an intransigent target that rightfully believes the debt to be morally invalid, you can find it extremely difficult to actually collect on a debt.
Anyhow, my point is that attempting to enforce these contract provisions invites PR/legal/political blowback that far outweighs maybe getting a thousand dollars out of the small cohort that actually calls the bluff and makes them make them pay.
