Disney Says If You Tweet #MayThe4th At It, You're Agreeing To A Disney Terms Of Use (You're Not)

from the seriously-guys? dept

A million and a half people are all sending this monstrosity to me. From patient zero of overly aggressive content ownership, the Twitter account of Disney+, the new streaming service from Disney, announced that everyone should share their favorite Star Wars memories using the #MayThe4th hashtag. As you probably know, "May the 4th" has become the semi-official Star Wars day, thanks to fans of the movies spreading the "May the force be with you"/"May the 4th be with you" puns on social media a little over a decade ago, leading to it being declared (unofficially) as "Star Wars Day" in 2011. Disney finally agreed to embrace it in 2013.

Anyway, after asking people to share their favorite Star Wars memory, Disney+ just had to Disney it all up by declaring that if you use that hashtag, you are agreeing to Disney's very broad terms of use, which include a bunch of fun nonsense like "binding arbitration" and a "class action waiver." All based on the use of a hashtag. After everyone started mocking them for this bullshit rights claim, five hours later they added a new "clause" by tweet, saying that "the above legal language only applies to replies" to Disney+. Of course, that still doesn't make it legit.

In case you can't read it, here is the three tweet sequence typed out:

7am PT: Celebrate the Saga! Reply with your favorite #StarWars memory and you may see it somewhere special on #MayThe4th. 7am PT: By sharing your message with us using #MayThe4th, you agree to our use of the message and your account name in all media and our terms of use here: http://disneytermsofuse.com 12:07pm PT: 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!

All of that remains ridiculous, even with the "clarification" that it only applies to replies. I get what Disney's lawyers are trying to do. They want to put together "something special" for May the 4th and Disney lawyers are doing what Disney lawyers do, worrying about copyright. So they must have wanted some way to make it clear that they can use these tweets, and tweeting out a ridiculous "if you use this hashtag, we've made a contract" seemed like the easiest way to handle things -- even as it's totally ridiculous and unlikely to stand up in court. The later "clarification" doesn't make things much better, other than to at least note that they're limiting their bogus, over-aggressive rights claiming to a limited set of tweets.

But, man, if only Disney (whose biggest hits rely heavily on the public domain) hadn't spent decades fighting against fair use and the public domain, its lawyers wouldn't have to try to make bullshit claims like this. Wouldn't that have been special?

Of course, if Disney can make a blanket claim like this, there's nothing to stop others from making claims as well, like EFF lawyer Kurt Opsahl, who figured "why not?"

Thanks @disneyplus, but I reject your offer. My counter-offer is that by tweeting using #MayThe4th on any Disney account, you agree to replace the Disney Terms of Use with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (https://t.co/u0Enq9yIO0) for myself and all others who opt-in. https://t.co/vp5MTHhJ2v — Kurt Opsahl (@kurtopsahl) April 27, 2020

Either way, it's just so Disney to take a concept that was fan-created, which was only later embraced, and then put its own special stamp of legalese and copyright over-claiming on it.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: #maythe4th, contracts, hashtags, how does it work?, star wars, tweeting

Companies: disney