Disney’s Tweet Wrap

Given all of the troubles Disney’s having, I feel kind of bad sharing this story about Disney’s attempted “tweet-wrap” but it captures so perfectly our current state of contracts run amok that I couldn’t resist. Some of you may have heard that Disney encouraged its followers to share their favorite Star Wars memory with the hashtage #MayThe4th in honor of Star Wars Day. (Confession: I didn’t know this was a thing despite having a boxed DVD set of the movies). Disney’s lawyers (who I guess were trying to earn their keep given that other Disney employees were being furloughed) added an additional legal tweet that sharing the message or using the hastag #MayThe4th constituted agreement to the company’s terms of use. It later clarified via another tweet several hours later that the “legal language applied ONLY” to replies using the hashtag and mentioning @DisneyPlus. Mark Rasch dissects Disney’s terms of use at Security Boulevard and notes that they include New York choice of law, forum in Los Angeles or New York, copyright assignment to some materials, waiver of class action, mandatory arbitration and $1,000 limitation of liability clause for Disney, among other goodies.