Thursday, January 26, 2012
Obfuscating Language
I am so tired of seeing obfuscating language on packaging. "33% more!" 33% more of what? It isn't until you look under the little fine print in the asterisked text that you see that it's 33% more than the smaller bottle. Such a great deal. It only costs 33% more... The same goes for EULAs on software. The language is so obfustcating, hardly anybody knows what they are actually agreeing to. While not a purely grammatical issue, it is ridiculous that they are able to hide gems like this in EULAs on the third or fourth page, by which point most people have given up due to the density of the wording of the entire agreement.IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THE BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER IN THIS SECTION 15, YOU MUST NOTIFY SNEI IN WRITING WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE DATE THAT YOU ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT. YOUR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION MUST BE MAILED TO 6080 CENTER DRIVE, 10TH FLOOR, LOS ANGELES, CA 90045, ATTN: LEGAL DEPARTMENT/ARBITRATION AND MUST INCLUDE: (1) YOUR NAME, (2) YOUR ADDRESS, (3) YOUR PSN ACCOUNT NUMBER, IF YOU HAVE ONE, AND (4) A CLEAR STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH ANY SONY ENTITY THROUGH ARBITRATION."This is taken from the SONY PSN agreement, and is far enough in that most people would give up on trying to read this far. It is far from the only example of abusive EULAs that hide behind pages of obfuscating language before getting to the important parts.
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