You know those long blocks of text that show up before you play a game or register for a digital service? Those things are called End-User License Agreements (EULA), and these long blocks of unnecessary legal jargon and definitions can contain valuable information on how companies treat us as customers, as well as our data. But, I know that most people (including myself) just gloss over these documents, as they’re too complicated to read and the amount of time spent on it is incomparable to time better spent elsewhere. 

Companies know this fact and they use it to their advantage. Sometimes, they ridicule this fact by adding clauses to the EULAs, such as when the British video game retailer GameStation added a clause that states it has “a non-transferable option to claim, for now, and forevermore, your immortal soul.” Fortunately GameStation was generous enough to provide an opportunity to nullify this clause “if you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.” Many thousands of people didn’t read it carefully enough, though, and now GameStation owns their souls for eternity. Fortunately, this was a harmless April Fools prank that capitalized on the lack of public insight into EULAs, but other companies have more sinister interests in mind when drafting EULAs.

Popular apps and utilities such as Instagram, Discord, Sony’s Playstation Network, and Microsoft have instituted arbitration clauses somewhere within their EULAs and terms of services. Basically, if there is a major dispute concerning the product or company that the contract applies to, users forfeit their rights to file a class-action lawsuit to sue in court, instead, the dispute will be handled privately by an independent team selected by the company. This can leave users destitute and helpless at the hands of large corporations, as the bias of these independent teams is not known and since the user cannot hire an attorney to defend themselves, corporations are at a serious advantage. However, many times, if an arbitration clause is controversial enough it will be reported on the Internet so it doesn’t take precious blocks of time to scour over pages of hefty legal text to find potentially damaging clauses like these in EULAs with major companies.

In conclusion, think of EULAs as complicated and long nutrition labels. They tell you what to expect from the product and a little about the company, but they can also be misleading and many times overlooked. If you want to ensure that companies don’t have unfair advantages, reading the EULAs is the most direct way, but considering the size of these documents, I would recommend that you should look up controversial EULAs and terms of services related to the company and its products on the internet before registering for any new digital product. Who knows, maybe one day a company will have legal rights to your soul.