If you can’t sue them, join them…

On the heels of Universal’s threat to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, Warner Music has taken up a different strategy in dealing with the burgeoning media outlet (and, notably, my current number one method of procrastination). Warner recently struck a deal with YouTube, opening its library in exchange for a share of advertising revenues.

Interestingly, the relationship between Warner and YouTube began with the creation of a “branded channel” on YouTube designed to promote Paris Hilton’s first musical endeavor. It pains me to say it, but something good has finally come (very indirectly) from Paris Hilton and her bulldozer press agentry.

–Daniel Corbett 

Wow. Some hot dialogue under the “Choosing to Speed” post. Here are my thoughts:

In a perfect world, law enforcement (let’s just assume that all the laws on the books are just and proportional) would work like Newtonian physics: every action would inexorably have an equal and opposite reaction. That’s the ideal. Obviously, this isn’t the case, for the same reasons that thinking machines will eventually wipe us out…everything humanity does is messy, entropic and half-assed. Law enforcement, into which we sink tremendous societal resources, is a hairy, holey system, with plenty of room for people like you and I, Dan, to calculate our way above the posted speed limit. But speeding cameras aren’t putting any new laws on the books, and if they’re infringing on a right, it’s a poorly-articulated right. What, exactly, is meant by our ‘right to calculate our way around posted laws?’ So we have two choices. We can either accept speed cameras as mere extensions of extant laws, or we can set about fashioning a defense of an imperfect legal enforcement system.

I’m not above trying the second option. Dan, what do you think?

 –Morgan Hubbard

Promises

Family members make all sorts of promises to each other. Some of them are quite realistic and others quite outlandish. So when an uncle gets up at a family gathering, toasting his young nephew, and offering him $5,000 if he refrains from “drinking, smoking, cursing, and gambling” for the next five years, is a contract made?

Today in my contracts class, we discussed an interesting case, Hamer v. Sidway, in which this scenario is played out. The court eventually rules that the uncle’s promise (which was backed up in writing later on) did indeed constitute a contract. The uncle had contended that the boy had already received a benefit in abstaining from the previously discussed vices, and he owed nothing else to to boy. But this was not enough for the court. The court’s rationale was simple: the uncle’s lofty remarks were not the indication of a mere gift (which can be backed out of practically on a whim) because the nephew had to give up certain actions, otherwise legal, in return for the money.

But what if the uncle had promised the money on the condition that the boy refrain from illegal acts? (For fun, let’s just say the nephew was a regular heroin user.) The uncle’s remarks, according to the court would not form a contract. Is this fair to the boy? Was the ruling fair to the uncle? Thoughts?

–Daniel Corbett