Answer this question honestly – do you read the small print when you buy games on the internet?
High Street retailing giant GameStation decided to put this to the test and inserted a new clause into their terms and conditions earlier this month that granted them legal rights to the immortal souls of thousands of their online customers. Here, in darkest legalese, is how they got away with such a heinous act:
"By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamestation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."
GameStation’s fiendish clause specified that they might serve such notice in “six foot-high letters of fire” too, but also offered customers an option to opt out, rewarding them with a £5 money-off voucher if they did so.
Alas, hardly anyone noticed the clause, let alone the substantial bonus for spotting the gag. More to the point, the fact that it passed more or less unnoticed raises an important issue – too few people actually read the small print when they make online purchases.
According to GameStation, around 7,500 customers carelessly signed their souls away on the day. Were you one of them...?
Heh! Brilliant!
I never bother to read them, but I don't buy online games so my soul remains mine and mine alone - MUAHAHAHAAA!
I do read things I sign for very carefully though.
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: 'This glass is half full'. And then there are those who say: 'This glass is half empty'.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: 'What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!
No one ever reads these things. It's like license agreements, everyone always just clicks accept because otherwise they can't get what they want. I never buy anything online from GameStation anyway, I only use them for pre-owned games.
It will be fun to see how a court rules on the validity of the contract if someone bothers to bring a suit about it.
Quite a good marketing ploy. Maybe it'll also do some good by raising awareness of the problem with not reading terms, and the problem of excessively restrictive contract terms in general (e.g. in software EULAs).
Though I don't think the majority of people will really start reading license terms without some initial training in deciphering them. From a consumer-protection standpoint it would make sense to require summaries of the terms' effect in plainer language, which I have occasionally seen done voluntarily (e.g. for the Creative Commons licenses) but isn't really the norm.
I actually do frequently read/scan license agreements and other contract terms if I'm not familiar with the company, service, website, etc.
It doesn't really take too long if you've read them before since most of the clauses (and the language in which they're expressed) in any particular agreement are fairly standard.
I'd have no problem signing a contract to "sell my soul" because it's meaningless to me.
If you do something that hurts others in order to get something you want, then you're effectively "selling your soul". As you arguably are when you assent to a contract that gives another entity what could be called an undue degree of control over your actions. But otherwise it's just talk and talk is cheap, often to the point of being worthless.
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
