Hacker News Reader

Comment by BitwiseFool | Hacker News Reader

I don't see this holding up - especially because it's ripe for abuse. What's to stop me from making a TOS for my own hashtag?

View on HN

For it not to be held up, someone has to take Disney to court and win. Good luck with that. It's the whole single-digit millionaires don't have effective access to legal system, turned up to 11. I can only see a double-digit billionaire having the resources to fight this to the end.

Not convinced you'd even a lawyer to fight this though. It's just so obviously wrong.

Not quite. For this to hold up, either:

- everyone has to silently acquiesce to this,

- Disney has to actually file a court case against everyone who violates their "terms" and win them all.

I think they're trying for the first option. Suing thousands of people for stupidly unreasonable reasons is not a good look, especially for a company where image is everything.

Why would Disney have to sue anyone? The violation will come from Disney, not thousands of people.

Disney is saying they have the right to use any tweet containing the hashtag, including your name (and probably profile picture). If they use your tweet and you don't like it, you can sue them for copyright violation or using your name in advertising. However, there is no way in hell you can win that suit, because it is Disney and it will take years or decades and millions of dollars to fight it in the courts.

So if they use your tweet in advertising without your consent, your options are (1) to give up and move on, or (2) to spend the rest of your time on earth and all the money you have and will earn to fight them in courts.

Ah, I see.

Another option is to collectively create such a massive backlash that they don't dare do this again. Maybe also lots of bots flooding the tag with text that can pass automated screening but is utterly unsuitable for them to publish?

What a pathetic option: we are so powerless that our only recourse is to complain

Yeah it sucks. The real solutions are all political in nature. My hope is that this kind of collective action might ultimately help create the political will needed to doggedly persue IP law reform.

I have an anecdote about this. I worked at Disney for some time and a coworker was an avid 2nd amendment person. They left their firearm in their car as is legal for any employer with a very short list of exceptions. I think munitions development is one of the exceptions, and Disney qualifies because of their massive fireworks shows. I'm very foggy on these details as it's been many years since. Anyways, he was chatting it up with a security person and it came out in convo that he had his firearm in his car. He was immediately fired and removed from the property. He tried to fight it in court.

Now this individual was remarkably stupid just as a general person, regardless of this event. I don't have any interest in debating the merits of what happened to him one way or the other.

However, it was interesting that the Disney lawyer explicitly informed his lawyer that their strategy would be to just bleed him dry into bankruptcy by getting continuances and stuff forever into the future, which would force him to keep paying his lawyer to show up and do stuff, but would never move the case forward.

If Disney explicitly told this guy's lawyer that was their plan, his lawyer would be game to let them drag it out because he'll get all his attorney's fees back at the end on Disney's dime. You have to legitimately believe you can succeed in court, you cannot just file stuff to slow the process.

Now maybe they just implied that or something, but I very much doubt the story happened exactly as described.

In order for the drag it out and get attorney's fees back plan to work, you have to be really confident you'll win. I doubt that was the case.

Hmm, maybe that was what the plaintiff lawyer said to encourage the guy to drop a case he didn't want to do anymore after learning more of the details.

Often employee-side lawyers take cases based on contingency fees or shared/blended deals that mix hard money with contingency fees. If the case turns out to be a turd, some lawyers do just about anything to get out of it.

On the other hand, Disney's lawyers would have unlimited budgets and would be incentivized in stringing out the case as long as possible to get that sweet Disney money. They would have no interest in encouraging an early settlement unless they thought they would lose.

This is why you only live in states with single-party consent recording privileges and document everything these sleezeballs say. Then hand it over to the judge.

That sounds nice in theory, but the second order effect of that kind of thing happening a lot would be the megacorp lawyer doesn't warn you first. Then, after you are bankrupt, you may or may not figure out what they did to you. But you still lost and you're still bankrupt.

But then your employer pulls out the recording of all the awkward things you said at work.

I'm sure the lawyer actually said something much more nuanced that meant more or less the same thing but didn't rise to the level of an actual threat to subvert proceedings in bad faith. Anything that is said between counsel is admissible in court, and if the Disney lawyer did that, not only would that hurt their defense, it could mean ethics complaints and sanctions for the lawyer, personally.

What if Alice and Bob get together and decide that one of then does the same thing like Disney, and the other takes the other to court in order to create a precedence.

Same outcome, just Disney is not involved.

Disney's strategy here will obviously be to just honor any and all complaints and take that content down.

They gain nothing from a fight, and there are plenty more Star Wars fans out there who would be happy to have their tweets promoted by Disney.

"By creating digital advertising, you agree to pay me, in perpetuity, all profit generated." - Me

There's clearly no legal standing for a 3rd party organization to make blanket agreements for platforms they don't own.

I've been thinking about this all morning and the platform isn't the problem. After all, plenty of software is based on using someone else's platform to form legal agreements.

The problem here is the requirement of Consideration in contracts. Twitter can bind me to their TOU because they give me the ability to use their platform. Disney can't, because they can't stop me from using #MayThe4th on Twitter - there's no consideration from them to me, so there's no contract.

If you could trademark dates, however...

The whole patent and copyright system is ripe for abuse and it never stopped anybody

You don't have millions of dollars for lawyers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com