Wow.

From their terms of use: "Disney DTC LLC and/or its affiliates and subsidiaries (collectively, “Disney” “we” or “us”) are pleased to provide to you certain websites, software, applications, content, products, and services (“Disney Products” and “Products”), which may be branded Disney, ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, FX, Fox Searchlight, 20th Century Fox, National Geographic, or another brand owned or licensed by Disney."

What Disney is arguing is that their Twitter account is magically a "Disney Service", and that by tweeting at them, and using a specific hashtag, you are magically using their service, which would then bind you to their terms of service.

Fuck right off. That's not how this works.

I understand what Disney wants, it wants to use other people's tweets in their own promotion materials. That is fine, provided they ask permission from the authors of said tweets. But since they're lazy fucks, they're trying to pre-emptively argue that if you use that hashtag, they already asked, and you already said ok, so they don't have to go through the hard, hard, work of actually asking people and documenting their consent.

To expand on why this is bullshit: Disney's terms of use state among other things that: "[...] you may not submit or upload User Generated Content that is defamatory, harassing, threatening, bigoted, hateful, violent, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, or otherwise offensive [...]"

So Disney is claiming that if I reply to their tweet and use the hashtag, and if my reply contains content that is ok according to Twitter's terms of use, but not ok according to Disney's terms of use, I am magically violating Disney's terms of use. Despite me not using an actual Disney service, despite them having zero control over my tweets, and despite me not accepting their terms of use in the first place.

Hell no.

I'm not saying you all should reply to that tweet with your best Chewbacca furry porn. But you totally should.

Did Twitter put them back to their place or they don't want to lose the ad revenue and let the muggles fight them off?

Nothing's going to come from this, and Twitter doesn't need to care, because the conflict is about Disney using other people's tweets in their own marketing material. Twitter's rights aren't being infringed if Disney does that, because Twitter doesn't own people's tweets.

The only way to challenge this is for you to tweet something to Disney that they then use in their marketing material. That allows you to send them a cease and desist, because you didn't give them permission to use your tweet in that way. At that point Disney is just going to say "ok", shitlist you, and stop using your tweet, because that's cheaper than any alternative.

This is just overreaching bullshit CYA legalese that's never going to get challenged in court.

So basically Disney, like an entitled rich jerk, gets to fondle the help because they're wealthy, and if the help complains they get an apology and dismissed.

This is what unfettered and auto-extending copyright enables.

> Twitter doesn't own people's tweets

How do you figure?

By reading the Twitter terms of service.

"You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content (and your incorporated audio, photos and videos are considered part of the Content)."

(Twitter certainly isn't unique here, this is the gold standard for user-submitted content. Users always own their content, but grant the service an unlimited royalty-free transferable license to copy, process, display and "perform" the content.)

Jack Dorsey was on the Disney Board until 2018, so probably not.

I just noticed Google does the same:

>Will Google use my social media posts to promote Code Jam?

>If you share or post content on any Coding Competitions social media page(s) or tag a post with a Contest hashtag (e.g. #CodeJam) on your social media account, then Google may feature your Social Media Content in marketing and promotional materials for any Coding Competitions Contest. Learn more in the Coding Competitions Terms.

Guess it is more binding when they write that on their webpage than on their social media

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 system by Disney and its lobbyists."

In all seriousness, I'm sure Disney never thinks for a moment that the law would ever be applied fairly to them or that this tweet could come back to bite them.

This reminds me of the Russian gentleman who received an offer for a new credit card but didn’t like the fine print. So he changed it. And mailed the contract back to the bank who... didn’t read the fine print and accepted the terms.

When he sued the bank to enforce his contract for a no-fee account with an unlimited line of credit at 0% interest he won. Fortunately for the bank he was prudent in his spending despite his access to unlimited funds so he hadn’t racked up much of a bill.

Story here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/read-the-sma...

Except he didn't win. I believe he lost in appeal as it was deemed he acted in "bad faith".

It seems the case was eventually settled[1] for an undisclosed sum.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkoff_Bank

I mean, why wouldn't you be able to form a contract through tweets? You can form a contract through any medium you want, especially just to give permission to Disney to use your tweet.

I don't think Disney is setting any precedent or anything else weird by saying "send us messages you want us to publish, by the way here are the specific terms we want to use" on Twitter, they've been doing that for a long time before twitter even existed. Think about America's Funniest Home Videos, they did exactly this for decades but over TV.

Your tweet fails to give Disney any "consideration" so it's not going to be a valid contract and not because it's in a tweet. Offer them clearer terms and a dollar and then maybe you'd have a point. Right now they offer you a chance to see your tweet in some marketing materials, better than nothing right?

Lastly, this is incredibly specifically scoped. Does anyone tweeting "Love the new movie #MayTheFourth @Disney" really expect Disney not to want to use it? They are going to have someone review the tweets before they use them. How could this possibly come back to bite Disney?

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 Walt Disney Corporation, which can be found at https://disneytermsofuse.com/ . This is ridiculous because nobody needs Disney's permission to use Twitter. If somebody were to use Twitter to express to Disney a desire to enter into a contract that might be valid, but Disney can't unilaterally declare that anybody who sends a communication to them over a given medium is unconditionally agreeing to be bound by their terms of use.

> This might also be enshrined in Twitter's ToS.

It isn't.

Twitter's ToS gives Twitter a license. But not third parties on Twitter.

Disney could buy a license from Twitter who would be able to use the rights they're granted by their ToS, but they would need another contractual agreement to do so.

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, then the contract would be null. I just don't see that happening though.

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.

>They are not out here trying to trap helpless children into a contract

Yes they are. Did you not read their tweet? They literally called it a contract and said that they believe anybody who replies to them with that hashtag is agreeing to its terms. Their choice not to exercise the rights they are granted by that contract doesn't mean that there isn't a contract.

The only thing that does mean there isn't a contract is that their logic is bullshit and they can't unilaterally decide that somebody else has entered into a contract with them.

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.

why not go nuclear?

"Walt Disney World was awesome! Thanks to all the hard workers who made that day special.

By replying or retweeting this Tweet, Walt Disney Corp. hereby agrees in perpetuity to sell to the owner of this twitter account for $1, per motion picture, an unlimited, license for any purpose."

Why not go pandemic?

> Walt Disney World was awesome! Thanks to all the hard workers who made that day special.

> By retweeting or mentioning this tweet, Disney agrees to grant every natural person that likes this tweet unlimited redistribution rights and has to pay each liking twitter account 1000 EUR per month per unique click.

well you do want a small chance the judge will side with you.

In practical terms both versions likely have zero chance of success. Sadly.

Although scientifically speaking, the rounding off error of your original formulation is bigger :)

Better trying to find another E-Corp willing to do the same and stack both against each other.

Even if copyright law wasn't perpetually extended for Disney, it would likely change little. People want original Disney movies, theme park experiences, etc. That's part of "the magic". Plus, Disney has many works that aren't anywhere near entering the public domain. They seem to have positioned themself for the situation where the extensions do not continue.

Ironically one of the things the 1886 convention was intended to counter was publishers printing works without permission. It was about AUTHOR'S rights. In subsequent versions this has been transformed in something very different.

Copyright was not always as it is today.

Copyright was first and foremost created to reinforce censorship, which tends to collapse when the means of (re-)producing "creative works" become cheaply available to the masses. It is older then liberalism: the right to copy a work was a right of the publishers given to them by the monarch, with the intent to limit who can publish what and under the threat of violence when disobeyed.

Transforming this "copy-right" from a right given by the monarch to a right given by the authors was a key event on the way of Liberalism replacing Monarchism and changing all common law to be based on human rights. One should notice that this "exclusive right to copy" restricts the right to use such "intellectual property", which is why Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive must be opposed unless, at least, fair use is granted.

Early modern copyright was even more restrictive: its intent was to restructure what became an uncontrollable market: having authors license their works exclusively to some large publishers starved the small presses and ensured a controllable elite that would not dare to print seditious materials. Owning an unregistered printing press was illegal under the threat of violence. It is naive to belief the primary intent was to prevent harm to the income of the authors. Until today the right to copy is mostly a right of the publishers. Authors sign it away and consumers do not get it.

Certainly with some companies with Bot's - this would get very interesting indeed. Dear @{company} by replying to this tweet you agree.........

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 perversion.

> 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?

This! Disney has morphed copywrite without any input from the public. What sort of contract is valid if only one party changes the terms and the other never agreed to it?

I'm not a fan of copyright law, so don't take this limited factual response as an attempt at a general refutation of your points.

>When was the last time some copyrighted work entered the public domain?

January 1st, 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_public_domain

So, things made about 100 years ago are finally making it into the public domain..

I don't know.. I mean yeah, but something strikes me as really wrong about that.

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.

Eldred vs Ashcroft held that the CTEA (Sony Bono act) was constitutional.

This is a good point worth bringing up, since the GP seems to imply it isn't with reference to the wording of the constitution's Copyright Clause.

However, it doesn't answer the moral question of whether congress should have passed that law, or whether congress should pass laws to change copyright term lengths to be shorter. That's not the role of the court.

Cool, so why not set the limit to the heat-death of the universe and be done with it?

> Cool, so why not set the limit to the heat-death of the universe and be done with it?

Presumably SCOTUS would say that an effectively-infinite timeline is not "limited" within the Constitutional definition of the word. Eldred v. Ashcroft basically tried to argue that continual decades-long extensions amounted to this, but the Court was not convinced.

The supreme court agreeing on something is a solid piece of evidence that something is correct, but it's very far from ironclad. Especially when it's not unanimous.

Somehow, to me, it's even slimier when it's a subset of posts is a targeted hijacking of an injoke made by fans for fans that predates their ownership of the property. It's not blanket maliciousness against all users, it's targeted maliciousness to steal from them.

What is Disney stealing in your mind? the tweets or the hashtag?

They are taking ownership of the idea of May the 4th. If this seems ridiculous, then don’t look at Disney’s business model. They dish out billions to buy the rights to ideas as flimsy as this one.

@DisneyPlus: I agree you may reuse this tweet and any tweets my affiliates send to #MayThe4th, subject to our standard licensing fees. A list of the fees and affiliates is freely available, subject to a thirty day processing delay.

I took this as more like when you write a letter to a magazine and they say to write "Ok to print" so they can use it later. If you send them a message for use in MayThe4th celebrations, they can then use it in promotions.

Except that tweets aren't sent to Disney. They're sent to all Twitter users.

For some reason I don't see a reply link on lewisgodowski's comment.

> Couldn't replying to their tweet be considered sending it to Disney?

Disney apparently does "consider" that to be sending it to Disney. Since Twitter doesn't belong to Disney, I don't see how that could have any legal relevance. Twitter has its own terms of service.

(I am not a lawyer.)

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.

Even ignoring the rest of your logic - replies are different from mentions and can be inferred only by context of the tweet and not simply the presence of @disney in the tweet.

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".

You're really twisting words here. No that is not what is happening. I never agreed to any exchange. I should be able to tweet at Disney with that hashtag and not agree to their ToS. Nothing about a hashtag implies consent. It is not their service to set terms for. I already agreed to the twitter ToS. I shouldn't have to be worried about accidentally agreeing to terms just because I used the right combination of hashtag and twitter user.

> The above legal language applies ONLY to replies to this tweet using #MayThe4th and mentioning @DisneyPlus

Couldn't replying to their tweet be considered sending it to Disney?

> > The above legal language applies ONLY to replies to this tweet using #MayThe4th and mentioning @DisneyPlus

> Couldn't replying to their tweet be considered sending it to Disney?

Is replying to a column in an opinion piece sending it to the author or the newspaper?

Tweeting is (generally speaking) a public performance, not something which is "sent" to someone. The same applies to most open platforms, including Hacker News comments like this one.

Except the phrase "Ok to print" is unambiguous consent. And should it occur somewhere where it is ambiguous what is being meant then it doesn't count as consent.

Sending a tweet to Disney with a generic hashtag can't be considered consent in any way, shape or form. What guarantee does DisneyPlus have that everyone sending them a tweet with hashtag #MayThe4th is intending that to count as consent?

Yeah, that's what it reads like for sure.

Shouldn't they be negotiating with Twitter for that though?

Now the interesting question is whether they were simply lazy in the language and this was their initial intent or if the 5 hours of the original tweet being ratioed motivated a change.

The new clarification is absolutely better to not claim ownership over the entire hashtag, but it is questionable to claim in one tweet that any replies made to a different tweet are an agreement to a private TOS.

I know there is a rally around this happening now, but I think it's pretty obvious that Disney was simply saying if you reply to their message with that hashtag then they want to be able to re-post your message as part of their marketing.

Of course the way they said that could have been worked on.

Yes, that was their intent.

But the over-lawyer-ification and impracticality of opting out of corporate terms of service is an widespread problem. This is an interesting expansion of that problem, so it deserves highlighting.

Disney being excessive in claims to IPR. Who else is shocked. /s

Yes, obviously, but why would anyone need to consent to disney's own private terms of use on a different website for this? That's the shady part here. There could be anything in that TOS, and this tweet will trick a lot of people into agreeing with something they didn't read and shouldn't have to.

If Disney were embedding tweets, it would likely already fall under twitters license for redistribution of content (aka hosting.)

However, if Disney plans to copy and paste the tweets into another graphic, they felt they wouldn't have the appropriate license to reuse text copywritten by others, without this odd TOS.

The one thing about this that plays into Disney's favor, is the attention probably reduces someones honest ability to say "I never saw the agreement tweet."

It would have been fine with me if they didn't include the part about agreeing to their own private terms of use on a completely different website. What a strange way to trick people.

Other than that it just seems like a way to ask people to allow them to use replies in a video or something.

Edit: But wait, this is actually STILL ambiguous! On twitter, a 'mention' happens automatically when you reply to a tweet, because it includes the name of the account replied to, so it's not clear whether you actually have to tag @disneyplus or not.

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!