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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

#341

Post by henryfjordan »

shakna wrote: post #313
henryfjordan wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unilateral contracts are a thing, when one party makes an offer that is only accepted by performance. As the offeror, Disney can invite acceptance of their contract however they want, including via replying to their tweet with a special hashtag. They made the requirements pretty clear and stringent enough that I very much doubt anyone is at risk of accidentally entering into that contract, but if that does happen, th…

It has happened. People replying to the tweet, with the hashtag, but trying to discuss the intent with Disney are clearly not attempting to enter into the contract. The problem is Disney co-opting two regular parts of Twitter's service, and then claiming that represents a Disney service. It isn't, and can clearly be used for purposes beyond establishing a contract.

Disney has someone reading these tweets and selecting them for marketing materials. That is the service, not Twitter itself.

You can set up a phone line or P.O box with the same terms of service agreement. Twitter is not sacred. You can call that "co-opting" those services I suppose, but I don't see why that's a bad thing. Services exist to be used.

Disney is going to use some common sense when reviewing these tweets and filter out the trolls and people disputing the terms. They are not out here trying to trap helpless children into a contract, just make some marketing materials. Again, this is not the first time this has been done and is not controversial. Maybe I underestimated the number of troll tweets, but I'm sure Disney will figure it out just fine.

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

#342

Post by pbhjpbhj »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #124
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, is a tweet long enough to be a work for copyright purposes? Anyone know of any copyright caselaw around tweets? I can imagine some poems being complete works and fitting in the character limit, perhaps.

Stanford has a good webpage about short works and copyrights[0]. I’m sure 512 byte demo scene programs are copyrighted, and with Twitter raising the character limit, I’m sure some could be copyrighted. [0]: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection...

Thanks, a useful review of US copyright here.

>A similar style of nonsense “code words” prompted Judge Learned Hand to write, “Conceivably there may arise a poet [...] //

A US judge really is called "Billings Learned Hand", surely a case of nominative determinism.

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

#343

Post by CryptoBanker »

SteveNuts wrote: post #239
ww520 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reinvention is ok in term of copyright. Patent would prohibit it.

What would happen if I patented "left pad" in a bunch of languages?

Your patent would be rejected presumably

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

#344

Post by baxtr »

jankassens wrote: post #214
baxtr wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I believe, unfortunately, from a legal perspective they have to if they plan to use the reply for a marketing thing...

They could contact the authors and ask them for permission explicitly instead of saying in a random tweet somewhere that a hashtag opts you in to agree to anything.

Fair point!

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

#345

Post by miscPerson »

henryfjordan wrote: post #304
snickerbockers wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney probably does have implicit permission from anybody who tags them and uses that hashtag to use their quotes for a social media project, since Twitter is generally considered to be a forum for public discourse. This might also be enshrined in Twitter's ToS. That's not the problem. The problem is that they claim that anybody who tweets at them and uses their hashtag is entering into a contract agreement with the…

Unilateral contracts are a thing, when one party makes an offer that is only accepted by performance. As the offeror, Disney can invite acceptance of their contract however they want, including via replying to their tweet with a special hashtag. They made the requirements pretty clear and stringent enough that I very much doubt anyone is at risk of accidentally entering into that contract, but if that does happen, th…

What if you send back modified terms?

“@Disney #MayThe4th This tweet enters into Disney’s offered contract, except that Disney agrees to pay $100,000 for the license to optionally publish this Tweet and to include it in Tweet analysis corpuses. If Disney doesn’t explicitly object within 48 hours or collects this tweet as part of a database, they accept this modification.”

IANAL, genuinely curious.

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

#346

Post by thayne »

philpem wrote: post #325
thayne wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would be an invalid patent (or at least should be), because 1. There is prior art 2. it is obvious to a domain expert But given the US patent office's track record, I wouldn't be too surprised if you were able to get a patent. Just don't expect it to hold up in court.

But then, if you're patent trolling - does it even need to hold up in court? IF cost_of_settlement < cost_of_court_action THEN pay_up(); /* ? */

Yep. Until you threaten someone willing to stand up to it, even if it is expensive.

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

#347

Post by komali2 »

jedberg wrote: post #152
komali2 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cool" parts were cool. The fights were way better than the clone wars trilogy. The return to using puppets and other physical props was great. Trying for a strong woman lead - excellent. The characters - garbage. The story - trash. Spiking a star destroyer with a FTL ship - universe-ruining, but it certainly sounded dope. It didn't "ruin" star wars though. Nothing can ever change how great the first (first-made)…

> Spiking a star destroyer with a FTL ship - universe-ruining, but it certainly sounded dope. They addressed that in Episode 9, with the throwaway line: "You can't do a Holdo again, that's a 1 in a million chance!" > Well, nothing other than destroying all original copies They'll have to pry my OT Laserdisks out of my cold dead hands.

Do you seriously have the OG Laserdisks? Those are crazy rare - for the good of the people you should make their digital content uhhhhhhhhh "available" as it were ;)

If a Holdo is a 1 in a million chance, it's weird that it worked again in the orbit of Endor, as we see at the end of the final movie...

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

#348

Post by henryfjordan »

justusthane wrote: post #336
henryfjordan wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you and I tweet back and forth agreeing that I'll sell you a sandwich for $5, that's a contract. No court is going to hear an argument that I was talking to Twitter and then Twitter was talking to you so it doesn't count. Anyone tweeting @Disney is clearly "sending it to Disney". Also I think there's a time delay on seeing the reply link on replies to your own comments.

In your example, I would be Tweeting you explicitly saying “I’ll give you $5.” Maybe that’s a binding contract. That’s not what Disney is doing. What Disney is doing would be like if I said “Anyone who Tweets at me owes me $5.” That’s obviously not a binding contract.

Disney is saying "in exchange for a chance to spread your message in our marketing materials, you agree to our follow our ToS".

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

#349

Post by henryfjordan »

miscPerson wrote: post #345
henryfjordan wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unilateral contracts are a thing, when one party makes an offer that is only accepted by performance. As the offeror, Disney can invite acceptance of their contract however they want, including via replying to their tweet with a special hashtag. They made the requirements pretty clear and stringent enough that I very much doubt anyone is at risk of accidentally entering into that contract, but if that does happen, th…

What if you send back modified terms? “@Disney #MayThe4th This tweet enters into Disney’s offered contract, except that Disney agrees to pay $100,000 for the license to optionally publish this Tweet and to include it in Tweet analysis corpuses. If Disney doesn’t explicitly object within 48 hours or collects this tweet as part of a database, they accept this modification.” IANAL, genuinely curious.

There's the famous case of a guy doing that to a bank in Russia and winning, so it's not unheard of.

In this case Disney offered a contract that you enter into via tweeting a reply. If you send back modified terms then Disney has the chance to review the new contract and reject or accept it. If a human saw your tweet and still included it in whatever marketing materials they are creating then you might have a good case.

Just as Disney would need to argue that you knew you were being bound by their ToS when you tweeted them, you need to show they accepted your terms. The part of your example about a time limit wouldn't fly for that reason. Both sides also have to think the contract is reasonable (not a joke). If you put a bajillion dollars as the price, there's no contract. I'm not sure if $100k for a tweet is believable.

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

#350

Post by slg »

retpirato wrote: post #338

You realize the tweet right below that one clearly states that it only applies to tweets containing a specific hashtag, right? "The above legal language applies ONLY to replies to this tweet using #MayThe4th and mentioning @DisneyPlus. These replies may appear in something special on May the 4th!"

Check the timestamps. There was roughly 5 hours between the original tweet and the followup. This was posted to HN before the followup. Also as you can see from the conversations here, people still find the move questionable even after the disclaimer was posted.
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