PEOPLE SELL THEIR SOULS ONLINE
Actually, this is not so funny but,
If you were one of the 7,500 or so people unlucky enough to shop online from British video game merchant GameStation on April 1, I have bad news for you. The company now owns your immortal soul.
Fox News online reports that a gag clause to that effect was added to the gamestation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."
Naturally the additional language was a joke, but it is also a telling social and legal experiment: No one reads online contracts like this. And who can blame you? If you read all of this junk, you'd never get anything else done. GameStation's own terms and conditions page is nearly 5,000 words long and that's without all the fire-and-brimstone language.
It's all in good fun, but thanks to this experiment we actually have some data about how many (or few) people ever look at documents like this.
GameStation requires users to read its terms of service before making any purchase, but as part of this experiment it added an opt-out checkbox at the end of the form, allowing users to retain their immortal soul and receive a £5 voucher for a future purchase. Despite the incentives, only about 12 percent of buyers checked the box.
That's actually a higher percentage than I had expected. I can't remember the last time I honestly made even the most cursory examination of a terms-and-conditions document, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
As the linked story above notes, there's a happy ending to all of this: GameStation later notified customers that it would not be enforcing its new soul ownership rights after all.
Actually, this is not so funny but,
If you were one of the 7,500 or so people unlucky enough to shop online from British video game merchant GameStation on April 1, I have bad news for you. The company now owns your immortal soul.
Fox News online reports that a gag clause to that effect was added to the gamestation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."
Naturally the additional language was a joke, but it is also a telling social and legal experiment: No one reads online contracts like this. And who can blame you? If you read all of this junk, you'd never get anything else done. GameStation's own terms and conditions page is nearly 5,000 words long and that's without all the fire-and-brimstone language.
It's all in good fun, but thanks to this experiment we actually have some data about how many (or few) people ever look at documents like this.
GameStation requires users to read its terms of service before making any purchase, but as part of this experiment it added an opt-out checkbox at the end of the form, allowing users to retain their immortal soul and receive a £5 voucher for a future purchase. Despite the incentives, only about 12 percent of buyers checked the box.
That's actually a higher percentage than I had expected. I can't remember the last time I honestly made even the most cursory examination of a terms-and-conditions document, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
As the linked story above notes, there's a happy ending to all of this: GameStation later notified customers that it would not be enforcing its new soul ownership rights after all.