Grooveshark Wants To Judge Your Soul

from the judgement-day dept

Thu, Sep 23rd 2010 3:17pm — Blaise Alleyne

Dante Cullari made an observation on the Music Think Tank Open blog last month that seems to have gone unnoticed: Grooveshark's privacy policy has a "soul" clause. Unlike other "immortal soul" clauses, I don't think Grooveshark's is intentional.

"This [personally identifiable] information may also be kept longer than 6 months by EMG if a user is found by EMG's soul judgment to be suspect of carrying out illegal, unlawful, or dangerous actions with or in this service. Prior to keeping IP address information for more than 6 months, the user will be notified via email about their suspect status."

The privacy policy still says that, though Dante also grabbed a screenshot.

Somehow, I don't think Grooveshark actually intends to judge a person's immaterial soul for evidence of suspicious activity. But, lest you think it's a lone typo, the phrase "soul purpose" also appears later in the policy.

"EMG may allow 3d parties to place cookies and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons, clear GIFs, web bugs, tracking pixels on the Site for the soul purpose of allowing that 3d party to record that a User has visited the Site and/or used the Service."

I think they meant "sole." Somewhere, in the depths of my own soul, it feels like somebody was relying on spell check a bit too much...

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Filed Under: souls, typos
Companies: grooveshark

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2010 @ 4:05pm

Clbuttic
It's a clbuttic mistake.
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Robert Ring (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 4:22pm

Comic Book error
I recently bought a collected edition of the comic Existence 2.0/3.0 (published by Image), and it had a pretty funny error, too, though this one was a little worse yet not quite as funny. On the inside flap it says, "No part of this publication ... without the express written permission of [Creator]." I got a minor chuckle out of it.
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- Robert Ring (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 4:23pm
  
  Re: Comic Book error
  Ehh, just to clarify, the ellipsis was my own. The brackets were theirs.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2010 @ 5:04pm

"Grooveshark Wants To Judge Your Soul"

Well, at least they don't want to sell it.
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Angry Puppy (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 6:15pm

Not so Bad
We had a user manual for a general ledger reporting application that went out with every instance of "count" and "accounting" missing the "O". I would have preferred a mildly amusing homonym like this instead.

The same geniuses also put together an advertising capaign for a civil engineering product who's copy read: "Laying pipe can be an expensive proposition..." combined with a picture of a huge pipe being lifted to a 45 degree angle. I never did figure out if it was intentional.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 23 Sep 2010 @ 6:17pm

Lulz
That this was reported by somebody named “Dante”.
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- Blaise Alleyne (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 10:32pm
  
  Re: Lulz
  "That this was reported by somebody named “Dante”."
  
  Ha! Didn't even catch that... :)
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TtfnJohn (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 8:39pm

"EMG may allow 3d parties to place cookies and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons, clear GIFs, web bugs, tracking pixels on the Site for the soul purpose of allowing that 3d party to record that a User has visited the Site and/or used the Service."

I suppose it's 3D parties as opposed to 2D parties inhabiting the flatworld who are placing these cookies and other tracking devices.

Someone better get Grooveshark to proofread their copy.
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- Blaise Alleyne (profile), 23 Sep 2010 @ 10:32pm
  
  Re:
  "I suppose it's 3D parties as opposed to 2D parties inhabiting the flatworld who are placing these cookies and other tracking devices."
  
  I was wondering about that one too... couldn't tell if that's some uncommon short-hand I've never seen or yet another typo... they do use both 3d and 3rd in the policy. Oh, Grooveshark.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 3:48am

thank "god" i dont believe in a soul
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sum guy, 24 Sep 2010 @ 3:57am

what is the point of this post? that somewhere in the 6000 page document lawyers have turned privacy policies into, they made a typo? i come to techdirt for interesting and insightful news and commentary on tech issues. i kept reading further into the article to get to the part where it became interesting or insightful but, unfortunately, for the first time since i started visiting this sight i feel you have wasted the time it took for me to read it. maybe you should think about working for lolcats instead of techdirt.
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- Jay (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:45am
  
  Re:
  It might be well advised to look at other articles if this one does not satisfy you. I'm sure they'll come later.
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Altaree, 24 Sep 2010 @ 7:19am

Slow today?
Slow news day?
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btr1701 (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 7:24am

Souls
> Somehow, I don't think Grooveshark actually
> intends to judge a person's immaterial soul

Don't you mean "immortal soul"? Most people who believe in them don't consider their souls to be immaterial.
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Overtkill (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 9:42am

Folks flunking English.....
Cute story.

I suspect that there are many 'souls' on the interweb that flunked English. :)
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John85851 (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 12:21pm

How many people missed the typo?
I think the more interesting thing is that these kinds of Terms of Service documents usually have to pass through an entire legal team. How did every single person, from the writer, to the editor, to his boss, to the legal department, miss this?

And, as has been said numerous times, if the company doesn't can't be detailed-oriented enough to know the difference between "sole" and "soul", can they really be trusted to perform the service they offer on their site? ;)
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- reepicheep, 28 Sep 2010 @ 4:19pm
  
  Re: How many people missed the typo?
  Oh, I don't know...
  
  Do you have to pass a spelling and grammar class to listen to music?
  
  "No, Sally, you could not spell the word reindeer correctly. YOU HAVE LOST THE USER OF YOUR EARS."
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