Game company acquires thousands of souls!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Thousands of online shoppers gave their souls to a British computer game retailer, by clicking “I agree” on a contract that read in part (source is FoxNews) :

Shoppers were given the option to retain their souls by ticking a box (and given a cash voucher if they did so) but only 12% did this. The retailer intends to e-mail the shoppers to rescind any claim on their immortal souls.

Comments:

  1. One can hardly blame shoppers for ignoring boilerplate which is usually confusing, meaningless or both.
  2. Isn’t there a legal doctrine which nullifies “absurd” clauses in contracts?
  3. Will the shoppers be pleased at the joke, and perhaps thankful that Gamestation.co.uk called their attention to a danger? Or will they be annoyed and take their business elsewhere?
  4. What if a U.S.A. retailer tried this instead of a U.K. one?
2
  1. Is this website secretly an agent of Satan?
3

I’m guessing you noticed the date in the quote you gave.

1: I have heard of a small level of controversy here in the UK about these click-through license agreements on software. Some lawyers are wondering if they would be enforceable in a British court of law. It comes down to whether or not an average customer is capable of understanding the agreement, and how important it is. Who is going to be brave enough to launch the first court case is another matter.

It’s not the first time this has happened. A few years back a magazine (PCZone I think) had a clause on its cover disk that allowed the magazines employees the use of the customers house for a fortnights holiday, if they accepted the agreement.

2: There is now a law that prevents a contract from containing “unfair” stipulations, I guess it depends on how much the gift voucher was worth.

3: Most of Gamestations customers will get the joke. The Daily Mail on the other hand…

4

We covered this. And yeah, they definitely gave incentive to read the agreement. I’ll admit I’ve stopped reading the agreements for major software, because typically I don’t have a choice; if my workplace requires me to use X software, then I have to use it. I’ll still skim the agreements for smaller, personal use software, just to look for anything odd - assuming I would even understand something like that if I did come upon it.

5

There’s actually software out there that will parse the agreement, looking for anything non-standard.

Also, I’m going to respond to something in that thread, since I’m guessing we don’t want to reopen it.

Well, I was basing it on separation of Church and State. But this is a British company, so that won’t work. :eek: