Wednesday, October 5, 2022

You'll be hearing from my space lawyer...

The other day, Raw TV, a London-based production company, came by the bookstore in which I work to do an interview with the owner about how Amazon is a cancer on the industry and ruining everything. Or something like that, I'm paraphrasing. Anyway, they asked us to print out and then post this notice on the entrance:
You're trying to read it aren't you? Well stop squinting.
I'll tell explain the part that gave me pause.
Is this how Fred Astaire ended
up in that vacuum cleaner ad?
It's, I understand, a fairly common legal notice designed to cover the asses of the production crew should someone take issue with being in the background of B-roll or whatever. And I have questions. First, are they even serious with this? Like, that's my hand in the frame for scale. and the font is, I don't know, eleven point? All caps sure, but I make it a point to ignore things written in all caps. And it's not exactly eye-catching. One might quite easily breeze past the door without examining every piece of all caps paper scotch taped to it and in doing so have waved all rights to the use of their image. 

Have you very stopped to read a Prop 65 warning? No, me neither. In fact, I suspect no one has. Ever. And they're about cancer, so why would we stop for this? 
Um...if something at Starbucks or whatever causes cancer maybe
get rid of it instead of just posting a sign with the vague warning
that something, somewhere is slowly killing us?

Hers's some of the language in this iron-clad contract everyone who's ever walked past it is now bound to forever:

"Fool! There's no escaping our lawyers."
-A Raw TV spokesperson
"By entering this area, you hereby irrevocably consent to the use of your photograph, image, voice, and likeness in the production, and in promotion thereof, in any and all media, throughout the universe, in perpetuity, without payment."

-some piece of paper you 
may have walked by once

The universe itself will one day run out of
thermodynamic energy and simply grind to a
halt, but this document will still be in effect.
Does this really work? Can any rando type up any nonsense they want, throw in some hereby's and therefore's, and expect it to hold up in court? Every court? Throughout the universe in perpetuity? Do they mean to tell me that if I walk past their cameras, my image belongs to them in all media, even on other planets? Other galaxies? What about The Lesser Magellanic Cloud? Does this proclamation hold water there? And what about other universes? Did they even factor the multiverse into this? 

We live in a country where "well regulated militia" can be interpreted to mean any asshole with access to a Cabela's, and where decades of legal precedent can be thrown out the window because a gameshow host most of us didn't vote for lucked into/straight up stole three Supreme Court seats, but this gibberish that I printed out and taped to the door has the full force of law through all time and space? 
"I rule in favor of the paper. Perhaps in the future, the plaintiff will be more careful
about what nondescript, difficult to read notices they happen walk past."
-Some Judge

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