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Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

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Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#131

Post by cookiecaper »

alextheparrot wrote: post #107
coffeevradar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is fairly applied to Disney. There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small. In any case, it is a matter of law, just like earlier, shorter copyright protections were. It's totally legitimate to favor shorter copyright, but essentially any duration is an arbitrary one. It strikes me as odd that you would be interested in applying the law fairly while also referring to the law as a perversio…

Some would argue that the undefined duration does not match “limited times” and that the copyright is no longer “promoting useful arts”. While some of these questions have been answered in Disney’s favour in recent times, it is clear that the “matter of law” is anything but clear.

This was adjudicated up to the Supreme Court: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-618

tl;dr: 7-2 as long as there is some type of time limitation, Congress is free to extend copyright terms.

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#132

Post by nabla9 »

amelius wrote: post #102
OrangeMango wrote: post #40

At a rummage sale a few years ago, I bought a book published by Disney in the 1960s or 1970s which had instructions on how to make Mickey Mouse puppets. It also said to "have fun" making them. Selling things for a profit is a lot of fun. As far as I'm concerned, I now have a perpetual, transferable license to make and sell Mickey Mouse puppets. I even asked a lawyer.

This reminds me of a book called "numerical recipes in C", full of algorithms that were very useful except you couldn't really use them because the authors protected their use with a very restrictive license.

The implementations are short and simple for easy reading, so they are not the most efficient or practical. Early versions of the code had bugs, so you should not use the old versions of the book.

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#133

Post by mschuster91 »

Frost1x wrote: post #97
michaelhoffman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many organizations, legal boilerplate has nothing to do with what's reasonable in the law or even what a lawyer thinks is necessary.

Much text in business has become the ever growing wrapper for: "As the writer, I get as much monetary value as I can or at least make you believe as such and you give up as much monetary value as possible, or at least as much as I can scare or deter you from seeking. I also have no responsibilities and all rights, while you have all responsibilities and no rights." It's simply expanded out a bit more and often gives…

You are right, the amount of garbage legal stuff has expanded - but mostly as a result of people doing shit they're not supposed to do. Let's take the email footer... and an email directed to the wrong person: in ye olde times, the recipient would go "not my crap, delete it" and that's it - but now, there is a real risk the recipient uses the information and publishes it, leading to monetary damage or penalties (e.g. if it was information that must not be disclosed prior to a certain date).

The company can now sue the recipient or at least threaten him for disclosing stuff. Yes: the error is on the sender side, but in ye olde times the unspoken agreement was that you'd delete mails not addressed to you. Times have changed and so the legal boilerplate had to adapt.

A bit more common sense across the world, especially when it comes to the trend of resolving conflicts via courts instead of talking to one another and shaking hands, and there would be a lot less boilerplate and mind-bogglingly dumb disclaimers ("don't put any animals in microwaves") in this world.

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#134

Post by sovietmudkipz »

If anyone could pay legal claim to a twitter hashtag, wouldn’t it be the first person who used the twitter hashtag on twitter?

I would imagine it would go to that person through the default sort of copyright of artistic work (the concept).

Maybe that’s technically forfeit by twitter’s usage terms of service (ToS)? If so, does twitter’s usage ToS supplant Disney’s claim (generated from twitter user @DisneyPlus)?

I wonder if Disney coordinated with the originator of the hashtag before sending this tweet.

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#135

Post by matheusmoreira »

coffeevradar wrote: post #98
ballenf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the precedent that Disney is setting here. Will be a little harder for them to argue against my Tweet next month: "Walt Disney World was awesome! Thanks to all the hard workers who made the day special. By replying to this Tweet, Disney Corp. hereby agrees to abide by the copyright laws in place as of the release dates of its motion pictures, instead of the longer dates obtained through perversion of the legal…

Copyright is fairly applied to Disney. There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small. In any case, it is a matter of law, just like earlier, shorter copyright protections were. It's totally legitimate to favor shorter copyright, but essentially any duration is an arbitrary one. It strikes me as odd that you would be interested in applying the law fairly while also referring to the law as a perversio…

> There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small.

The public did not benefit in any way from its extension. Quite the opposite: every time the duration of copyright terms is extended, the public is robbed of its rights so that corporations which have already made billions off of their copyrighted works can make even more money. When was the last time some copyrighted work entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. When people think public domain, what comes to mind is renaissance art and classical music. The truth is everything created in the 80s and before should already be in the public domain and that's very generous, more than enough time for companies to get rich off of their creations.

The original social contract behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for some time so you can profit and then it will enter the public domain". Works aren't entering the public domain because every time Mickey Mouse is about to become public property Disney spends millions lobbying the government in order to extend the copyright duration. Copyright is effectively infinite despite what the law says. So why should the public recognize copyright as legitimate to begin with?

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#136

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #92
tomcooks wrote: post #57

How do you fuck up so bad marketing to one of the biggest fanbases in the universe?

You start by making a trilogy with no coherent story across the three movies that ends by basically undoing the first two trilogies and go from there. (For the record I enjoyed the last three movies as general fantasy movies, they just didn't fit all that well into the mythology).

[deleted]

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#137

Post by lifeisstillgood »

OrangeMango wrote: post #126
ballenf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That book isn't an example of a contract, unlike the crazy Disney tweet. The book terms form a license. Backed by the purchase price of the book. Disney's likely argument is that only original purchasers of the book are covered by the license, that non-transferability was implied.

Yeah, so my thought when I bought it was to offer to sell it back to Disney for $25k or something. I could most likely get a pro-bono defense while Disney would pay a lot more than that in a lawsuit which I would most likely win. Most likely. I still haven't acted on it yet.

I could fly to Moscow and defeat the Russia Mafia in unarmed combat. Or I could blackmail Disney in a lawsuit.

The Russian Mafia think my chances better beating them than Disney.

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#139

Post by qubex »

ballenf wrote: post #80
londons_explore wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would pass the "meeting of minds" test of contract law...

That book isn't an example of a contract, unlike the crazy Disney tweet. The book terms form a license. Backed by the purchase price of the book. Disney's likely argument is that only original purchasers of the book are covered by the license, that non-transferability was implied.

That’s interesting, though... does that mean that in your understanding of the scenario (IANAL, you might or may not be) the original buyer might have a shot at making that argument?

Re: Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

#140

Post by hombre_fatal »

na85 wrote: post #4
ravenstine wrote: post #3

Just for #MayThe4th? It would be a real stretch in the first place if they made this statement about #MayThe4thBeWithYou, but just #MayThe4th???

Makes me want to set up a twitter bot that tweets things that are purposely against Disney's bullshit TOS and tags it with #MayThe4th.

Well, the point of their clause is to make it harder for you if you want to sue them for including your tweet in their marketing material. Not so they can go after your tweet.
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