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Fine Print Says Game Store Owns Your Soul
mr_sifter writes "UK games retailer GameStation revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of customers, thanks to a clause it secretly added to the online terms and conditions for its website. The 'Immortal Soul Clause' was added as part of an attempt to highlight how few customers read the terms and conditions of an online sale. GameStation claims that 88 percent of customers did not read the clause, which gives legal ownership of the customer's soul over to the UK-based games retailer. The remaining 12 percent of customers however did notice the clause and clicked the relevant opt-out box, netting themselves a £5 GBP gift voucher in the process."
for sufficient definitions of "unconscionable contract".
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
My soul has been pissing me off.
I mean for real, stop whining - I know - I'm slowly killing you with violent video games - give it a rest already.
I can help you keep idle off the front page, but it's going to cost you something... precious: your Slashdot user ID. Mwahahahaha!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Dear GameStation, I would like to inquire as to the price of my soul. ... and if you have a chance, could I have a quote on the soul of "1337gAm0r122" from your forums
.
Best Regards,
Joe
"I'll throw in my sense of decency for an extra $5 - It's a Bart sales bonanza, everything must go!"
If you want me to read it, make it readable.
1. NO legalese
2. One page maximum length
Putting a 30 page wall of text full of legalese and word games does NOT constitute a useful document. I'm paying for a product, not to play lawyer.
If they can find a way to collect it they can have it
Totally offtopic, but why would a user with a four-digit id want the user id from a five-digit user?
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Considering that I do not have a "Soul" I fail to see the threat.
Would you like my pet Unicorn with that?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I sold my soul to rock 'n roll a long time ago. Suckers!
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
If I agree to sell my soul, am I then liable to God for conversion?
Funny how everyone picks up on the 'aint no such thing as a soul' and no one comments on how this is quite an interesting way of showing how nobody ever reads the terms (me included), and encouraging people to do so. ... of course, on the other hand you could call it cheap cynical publicity... as if reading the terms and conditions ever made a difference.
Maybe to feel younger again?
- Raynet --> .
Return to the foul, eldtritch depths from whence you came, Beast from Beyond! The stars are not yet aligned and your time has not yet come! Back! Back I say! No Slashdot User IDs for you!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Good. We're not here to amuse the remaining dumbos who have remained in the mental iron age.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is an important problem. And this was a really great way to highlight it. Huge props for Gamestop for doing this, instead of profiting from it.
The real problem though, is not people not reading it. The problem is, that in practice it’s impossible to read all the terms of all the contracts.
First they are deliberately written in undecipherable legal code. Something that should be illegal, but isn’t because it’s so hard to define.
Then it’s way too much. You would have to read a multi-page small-font document, every time you pull out your wallet. (Yes, the terms can change in the two days between you going to the same shop to buy your food.)
And finally, the whole thing is also deliberately made hard to access. How often did you go into a building with house rules, or signed a contract that mentioned them or some other external document, but they never handed them to you, and even acted annoyed and insulted, when you pointed it out, and demanded the document?
It is 100% crystal clear that pretty much all companies do not want you to read any of it, for the very purpose of them biting you in the ass as soon as you trip over the tiniest irregularity. Or even without doing anything.
Most contracts basically go like this:
[big font] WE MAKE YOUR DREAM COME TRUE FOR FREE [/big font]
[tiny font] There is some hidden document in the lower drawer in the basement of a building on the other side of the world, that is part of what you sign [tiny font]
[hidden document] We give you NOTHING, but take from you EVERYTHING! [hidden document]
And that is no different than mob tactics. In fact I say it out loud, and call every major corporation on this world a criminal mob with the sole purpose of making as much money as possible, even when it means walking over more dead bodies than the Nazis. ...hell, Microsoft is a silly small fish in that area, when compared to those. But still way above the line of acceptable moral behavior.
Examples: Monsanto, Haliburton, Eli Lily, Shell, Elsevier.
They all have private armies. They all have revolving doors with every big government. They all make huge profits with lies, death and deception.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
TFA mentions that this was done on April 1st.
I don't usually consider April fools jokes publicity stunts, but I suppose I can see how they could be taken that way.
this is not idle. this is a very serious and important issue. it proves how useless and detrimental current legal contract system is. it is infeasible for any user/customer to sit and read 4-5 pages of text and then to weight it and then to agree. EVEN if you did that, chances are high that you would still fail to assess it properly, because most require extensive local legal knowledge. The article shouldnt have been in idle. its some important issue that affects everyone and every business.
Read radical news here
In Canada you can't be held to a contract unless your of legal age. Since the majority of the target audience of console games is under 20 most of the people agreeing to the EULAs can't be held accountable, at least in Canada.
Hopefully as a result of that the Sony EULA, you agree to by just taking your PS3 out of the box and starting it up, will be tried by a court. Maybe there's a couple of judges out that will agree EULAs are unreasonable for people to be able to read and just clicking an OK button isn't sufficient indication someone read or understood it. EULA should be something that an average member of the target audience can read and understand. Since according to all the statistics I've read about a large population of kids coming out of high school can't read, there would be no more EULAs
Sorry the pot I'm smelling from the school next to my house must be giving me crazy ideas.
1. Be no more than 800 words (2 pages or so)
2. Contain no latin or other legal terms that the average High School Graduate does not understand.
If the contract is longer or uses other words, than non-lawyers can NOT be expected to understand them anymore than I could be expected to understand a page in French.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I'm really surprised that 12% actually read the TOS enough to opt out of the soul ownership clause. I would have expected a much lower number.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
But seriously, I don't know why having "fine print" in contracts is even legal. For any "reasonable person" it's obvious that having fine print is an attempt of one party to have the other not to read the print, which is a fraud at best. Seriously, what a honest person would need a fine print for? Conservation of paper?