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Software Licences: Selling Your Soul
Did you just agree to give your soul away? Really? Did you read the last licence agreement you agreed to? You may have done just that but you’ll never know. It’s time to rebalance consumer protection laws.
Let’s be honest, how many of us are guilty of clicking the “I Accept” button without bothering to read the licence agreement?
If you’ve joined an online service, or installed an app on your smartphone or computer, then you would have had to interact with a click-wrap agreement before you can access the product or service.
For a vast majority of users, skipping over the details and clicking the “I Accept” button has become a reflex action.
After all, who has time to wade through pages of legal text?
We all have busy lives, so that’s a perfectly reasonable excuse. But at some point you have to wonder, “what did I just agree to?”
Who’s going to notice?
I am not aware of any empirical studies that measure the number of times users read these legal texts, but there was an interesting experiment in 2010.
As part of an April fool’s prank, GameStation decided that they would insert the following “Immortal Soul” clause into their terms and condition to see if customers notice the change.
