If I have Dave on my lap, I can aim that
camera down and you get way more Dave time.
But it means the microphone is
a little farther away from my face.
That looks alright, yeah?
Let’s try that.
[Music]
So I’ve… The theme for
this episode is sort of law.
And some interesting
laws or issues with law
that have come up recently
and things, you know,
you should be aware of how laws work
and how the world works around you.
The first one being a very interesting law.
But the court… This came from the
court of the King’s Bench Saskatchewan.
And Canadian law sounds cool.
I mean, that actually… I’m sorry,
the court of the King’s Bench…
I mean, the bench
isn’t the most exciting
part, but you know, all
the laws in Canada are
still representative of the King,
so that’s interesting in itself.
The court of the King’s
Bench and Saskatchewan
oversaw dispute between a
farmer and a grain buyer in 2021.
That seems like a very
mundane issue, Peter.
Why are you bringing up and seeing people?
We’ll get there,
because there’s a modern
twist on this ancient,
ancient issue of farmer
selling their grain to grain buyers
and they’re being legal disputes.
So this guy wanted to
purchase 81 tons of flax.
And then the farmer was like,
“Here’s an image of the contract.
He sent it to his phone.”
So the guy looked at
his phone and he saw the
contract and he sent a
thumbs up emoji in response.
The defendant said he sent
this thumbs up emoji as a
receipt of the image, not as
an agreement to the contract.
The farmer says the thumbs up emoji
said that he agreed with the contract.
The sender sent a picture
and a text, “Tec-no.”
The sender, the farmer
sent a picture and
text asking for confirmation
of the agreement.
So he didn’t just send an image of the
contract and the guy sent a thumbs up.
He said, “Here’s an image of the contract.
Do you agree to this contract?
The buyer sent a thumbs up emoji.”
The court acknowledges
that the thumbs up is
a non-traditional means
to sign an agreement.
Under the
circumstances, it is a valid
interpretation, which means
if someone sends you a
contract in Canada,
specifically Saskatchewan
at the moment, and you send a thumbs up
emoji as response, you are agreeing to the
proposed contract held
in that text message.
In the past though, there
was precedent for this.
It wasn’t just like a one-off thing.
In past the two, so
the farmer and the grain
buyer had agreed to contracts and
the buyer had posted looks good and yep.
The emoji being just
one step away from what
he had sent previously was then
considered an acceptance of the contract.
But if you’re accepting
contracts with yep, this
is obviously something
you do fairly regularly.
It’s obviously something you
two have worked together before.
Unless the contract
had changed significantly,
it seems weird that he
would be disputing this.
I’m assuming something
else actually happened.
The defense though, they actually started
talking about the precedent that this would
set, which is again the more
interesting part of this court case.
The court, because
he’s like, “You could send
an emoji and then the
emoji has interpretations
to it and then once you’ve interpreted
the emoji, now anything can be accepting a
contract, I honestly don’t think you
should be sending contracts over text.
I think you still should get a signature on
it, but again, modern technology has made
that maybe that’s an
antiquated way of thinking.”
So they’re saying like, “You’re going to
open the floodgates for court cases now.”
The court was like, “Laul 100
fire emoji times change fam.”
That’s not exactly what they said.
But that is the message they sent.
They said, “Look, technology
is changing the way we do
interactions, interactions, legally
or not have to be considered.
So going forward, we have to take these
communications as legally binding or not.”
And we are saying that these
communications are legally binding.
Some other interesting
Canadian law specifically.
Back in May 2006, British
Columbia introduced the Apology Act.
This was because
Canadians naturally say
sorry so quickly that people were starting
to say, “We’ve had a car accident.”
He said he was sorry, therefore
that’s an admission of guilt.
That admission of guilt means he
is now responsible for the accident.
Now this, again, because
this is sort of just
a natural aspect of
Canadian conversation
in speech, they actually
enacted a law saying
that an apology does not
constitute an admission
of guilt and cannot be used
as evidence to prove liability.
So basically you get
into a car accident and
then one of the guys
goes, “Oh, sorry, eh?
Oh, sorry, this happened.
Oh, I’m so sorry.”
That doesn’t mean he’s saying
he’s responsible for the accident.
He’s saying he’s sorry
the accident happened.
Maybe he’s still
saying he’s responsible,
but he’s still sorry that
this thing happened in itself.
It is classified specifically as an
expression of sympathy or regret not guilt.
Most provinces have
since introduced similar laws.
So if you say sorry after an accident,
it cannot have any bearing on your case.
So if you do get an accident in Canada, you
feel free to get out of your car and say
they’re sorry to the other driver,
but you’re not saying it’s my fault.
You’re saying, “I’m sorry, you’re so stupid
that you actually cause this accident.”
The insurance adjuster
will not base their
decision on what you
say, either a party, but
on all available evidence,
so they’re going to
go with CCTV, they’re going to get witnesses,
they’re going to try to do other stuff.
But what I say should not impact what the
insurance adjuster thinks in what you say
should not impact what the
insurance adjuster thinks as well.
There are two other
Canadian laws, which I think
is very Canadian in representing
the way the country thinks.
It is illegal to scare the king.
So if I jump out, the
king, that’s the king
Charles is in Canada,
and I jump out of a closet
and I go, “Boo,” and he’s surprised,
that can get me up to 14 years in prison.
So the fact is, yeah,
if you’re in Canada
and the king is there,
don’t scare the king,
be really careful because
they take that really seriously.
Scaling the king, I guess
there is a secondary
thing like Queen
Elizabeth was sold when
she died and King Charles is
quite old as he’s taken the crown.
A good scare could kill
them, could give them
a heart attack and kill them, so this could
be some kind of regicide defensive act.
So just getting murder
aside, just scare in the
king or queen in Canada,
I can get you 14 years.
If you then intern scare
them and they have
a heart attack and die, you
might be charged with regicide.
I don’t know what the time is for that.
I’m going to assume it’s a lot.
I kind of messed up my middle bits anyways.
Another thing is illegal.
I’ve actually read this
online where someone
gets a bill and they
don’t agree with the
bill and they decide
it’s sort of a malicious
compliance thing
and they pay the pill.
They pay the bill in pennies, thus wasting
the person’s time or it’s incredibly heavy.
Well, actually there’s a law in
Canada saying you cannot do that.
So it is illegal to make a
purchase with too many coins.
What are too many coins?
Well that has to be defined.
So that was the interesting bit to me.
In the law, this has
been defined in Canada.
You can pay with up to 25 pennies.
100 nickels.
It’s actually quite a lot of nickels.
3/4, 25 looneyes, which is the $1
coin, 22 nickels, which is the $2 coin.
In a single transaction.
So you couldn’t know someone by paying them
in these sums of money every single time
you do a transaction with
them and they can’t say anything.
But you can’t go over
this in a single transaction.
There’s no penalty.
So there’s no legal recourse.
But the restaurant, the business,
whatever, has the right to refuse service.
They have the right to refuse
the acceptance of these coins.
And you go, “Well, this is legal tender.”
Well, tough ship dipshit.
You’re actually kind of breaking a law.
Again, it’s a law that
doesn’t come with a
punishment, but I can’t be
punished for refusing you service.
So an interesting sidebar.
We have the right now, the writer’s
strike and Hollywood is going on.
So the writers and actors are saying,
“This actually has a lot to do with AI.”.
The studios want to
take the ideas, let’s say
I’m a writer, I’m in a
writer’s room, I create
a bunch of ideas,
they want to plug that
into AI and then have
AI generate more ideas
off that, but not pay me for
any of the ideas the AI generates.
One of the things
that came out that was
really, really interesting to me is what
they’re trying to do with background actors.
So basically, extras.
So they want to be able
to, part of the contract,
is scan background actors
for use and perpetuity.
But then I, as the background actor,
only get one day pay, no residuals.
So if they use my face again in the future,
I don’t get anything off that either.
And they get your image forever.
So here we have me, most background extras,
actors, they want to be famous actors.
I think that’s pretty fair
to say, maybe they’re out
there just having a good time
one day and they don’t care.
But a lot of those people are trying to get
into the industry, they’re trying to get
in with other people who are into acting,
they’re trying to get producers, directors,
whatever, to know them,
they want to do a good job.
The studio is saying, like, oh,
we’re going to scan your face.
And then if we need another scene in the
future, we can use your face in that scene.
Let’s say I am the next Brad
Pitt, the next Bradley Cooper.
I’m starting my career
and you have a scan of my
face that you’re allowed
to use in perpetuity.
But that means I quit, I don’t
get a job with your studio.
I get famous working
with a different studio.
Your studio still technically owns my face.
Now I’m famous and you decide, well,
let’s make a movie using this guy’s face.
But they don’t have to pay me for it.
They don’t even have to pay me for the
right to use my face in a second project.
So they use AI.
They stick my face
in another actor, that
other actor does a terrible movie
that I would never be involved in.
They make that movie,
clearly my face is on it.
So they’re selling it using my
face and that movie’s terrible.
So it damages my reputation.
What happens now?
I’ve actually signed
away my rights in
perpetuity because I was
a very poor background
actor who needed whatever,
like the $200 I would
have got that day for
standing in a crowd scene.
Now, a tiny percent
of people will be
successful, but that’s
what they’re banking on.
The percentage of actors
who will be successful
at some point in the future are going to
be these extras in these background scenes.
They still will own that face.
There’s also the secondary
issue of the writers and then
the AI learning that writer
style, so a Sam Raimi movie.
Let’s say he or every script has the twist,
but then the AI learns how to do a twist.
We don’t need Sam Raimi anymore.
We start just generating scripts.
I don’t think that’s
going to be a successful,
I think it’ll be so
boring independent
movies would actually get things,
get like sort of more traction.
But the problem is,
the reality is these big
budget movies are already
kind of cookie cutter.
Like Marvel films, hero films.
I mean, there’s no
surprises in them really.
Like if someone dies,
that’s the biggest surprise.
And then they might just come back later.
The AI can learn how to do that.
That’s problematic.
Studios basically want you to work one day
and then be able to plug that work my face
or my writing into AI and have AI generate
new things off that and give me new money.
I actually did read
about, there was this, I
assume a writer she
had written a show about
her life and she was
shipping it around in
Netflix, wanted to pay
her a million dollars,
which sounds really
good, but they wanted to
own everything which meant they could then
take her story, plug it into AI, do spin
offs, take her writing
style, make more shows,
more episodes, use her face, take
her face and put it into other things.
And she refused in good honor.
I mean, a million dollars is pretty hard
to refuse, but it’s nothing compared to the
entirety of your career
if you’re successful.
Now, am I never going to be successful?
That’s fine, but I want
to make sure that at
the end of the day, I
own everything I create.
So this podcast, this face, the
dog I got right here, it’s all mine.
If you want to use it, you
need to pay me money to get it.
But I think that’s fair.
And this is what actually a big
part of what the strike is about.
If you read the news
recently, they cut down,
the studios cut down all the trees so
that the strikers would have no shade.
And of course it’s summer in
California making it really difficult.
But it turns out they were like, oh,
well, this is just like a routine thing.
We have to cut down
the trees a certain amount.
We have to prune them every year.
Turns out they did it the
wrong season at the wrong time.
They did it illegally.
So of course they’re
going to have to pay
fines, but those fines
are going to be nothing.
But really, this was
just punitive to try to
punish the people who are striking to
make striking less comfortable for them.
And it just shows the level of
shittiness these companies are going to.
There’s a couple of
studios in Japan and they
want to use AI to
generate manga scripts.
Manga already is one of
these most abusive industries.
They have people working
incredibly long hours
making animation and drawing
and they get paid very little for it.
If AI can do that, that’s
going to be hugely problematic.
And already AI, already
anime is really formulaic.
Sticking that into AI is just
going to make it more formulaic.
Which means the good
ones just, they’re going
to be flooded out with
the absolute tons of crap
that come with AI
generated scripts and stories.
So the most recent bit of news is the Italian
courts have caused an uproar in Italy.
And it’s they’ve decided that groping for
less than 10 seconds isn’t really groping.
So this actual story is
there was a high school girl.
She was going upstairs and it
says she was pulling up her pants.
Now, I’m assuming
that they actually kind
of mean adjusting her pants or maybe they’re
loose pants and she was pulling them up.
A janitor walked up
behind her, slid his hand
down into her pants
and then grabbing her
underwear and lifting her up,
essentially giving her a wedgie.
He claims it was a joke.
Now caressing her
butt ox is pretty sexual,
but giving someone a wedgie
I would actually say is not.
So it’s a reasonable defense.
I don’t believe it’s true.
Let’s just get out there really clear.
I’m not on the janitor’s side on this one.
I think he should be punished
for groping a high school girl.
He says it was just a joke and it
was so brief it couldn’t be sexual.
Well the Italian court
accepted that because
it was less than 10
seconds to commit this act.
It is no longer considered groping.
I think they just let them go.
What happened was Italian comedian went on
TikTok and started like going, “Ahhh, ah,
if I can find that I’ll
plug it in but I don’t
know enough for telling
it to maybe to type it in.”
With a 10 second
countdown and then saying
after the 10 seconds over if that wasn’t
grossly sexual and I don’t know what is.
And this is started this
huge trend on TikTok
in Italy where everyone’s groping
themselves for less than 10 seconds.
Sort of in support of
this poor girl who got
groped and then the interview with the girl
is like, “I do appreciate the amount of
support I’m getting but at the
same time this is all very, very gross.”
And the last one is shines
copyright infringement.
It’s so egregious that
instead of just like
going after and suing sort of, and
again they’re using sub-compens to do it.
Instead of using those companies to go
after them, they’re using the United States
Rico laws which were
designed to catch organized
crime who were using
fraud and what not
to, as the basis of
their lawsuit, they’re so
aggressive that it’s actually
considered racketeering.
It’s called dishonest and
fraudulent business dealings.
So shine has grown rich committing
individual infringements over and over again.
They actually basically have a system where
what they do is they’ll have a company that
company steals a designer’s
picture and then they’ll
put it on clothing or
a t-shirt or something.
They will steal clothes
from other designers
and producers and they will
throw it into their systems.
These sub-compensies do the theft and then
feed it up into the shine system because it
has to have so many
sub-compensies, even if
they sued the sub-company,
they’re not actually suing shine.
Shine could just say, “Well, we’re going to
shut down that company, start a new company
tomorrow and it will actually
damage our business at all.”
They produce 6,000 new
items a day using multiple
companies to rip off
artists and designers.
Three companies directly have accused shine
of ripping off their designs, be it like
art or the actual
designer they’re clothing.
Having said, we will
vigorously defend ourselves
against this lawsuit and any
claims that are without merit.
If you actually dig down
into that sentence a
little bit, you get a
little interesting thing.
We will vigorously defend
ourselves against this lawsuit.
So we’re being sued by
these three companies,
we’re going to defend ourselves
and any claims that are without merit.
So any claim that is without merit, we will
defend ourselves against and this lawsuit.
So what they are
inadvertently saying is that
this lawsuit has merit,
which I don’t think
is what they mean to say,
but it is what they actually said.
Shine is trying to go public this year.
The Rico Act being
used against them, I’m
pretty sure is going
to make it so that they
can’t go public this year,
which is really, really good.
I didn’t know about
shine until very recently.
I read the news about
the TikTok influencers
going to the being
paid to go to the shine
factory and just go, oh,
oh, this is so wonderful.
It’s also clean.
It’s also modern.
All the workers look so happy.
They are also being
accused of having factories
where they have like
essentially sweatshops.
What is it?
The Urgar people in China.
They’re being focused for abuse.
So shine seems to be really abusing all the
laws and then using everything you can do
to get people to shine that turd for
them so it doesn’t look as bad as it is.
There are accusations of forced labor.
So I guess that’s just sweatshops.
We know in China, forced labor.
I mean, it could be if you
don’t hit a quota, you die.
It’s important to know the
laws in different countries.
So the Canadian laws
sort of introduce a
sense of some of the
differences in how law is
handled in Canada, which may
have an influence on other countries.
We always get our law from
essentially American media.
And that gives us a weird view
of how the law works because
in America, specifically, they
talk about individual rights.
Individual rights take the forefront
in American law quite often.
And I’ve actually found
it one of the reasons
why America is so
lawsuit happy, sue happy.
It’s because if I
have individual rights
and you have individual
rights, those cannot
exist in the same space
without there being
some kind of conflict unless
we agree perfectly on everything.
But if I have my individual
rights on the most
important thing and
your individual rights
are the most important
thing, then they cannot exist.
So the protections
of individual rights in
America causes a lot
of the problems because
this is the easiest way
to be like you have a
conservative in a Democrat
and they are in the same space.
Well, if my individual
rights are the most
important thing, then
you must be inherently
wrong because you don’t
agree with me and vice versa.
So that causes an
escalation of conflict
because you’ve been
taught your whole life that
what you believe is
the most important thing.
Canada’s rules actually protect groups.
There are rights to personal
liberties to a degree, but the
actual individual doesn’t take
precedence over the group.
So that makes it much harder to have
the same attitude as a Canadian citizen.
You can see like this
malicious compliance of
paying back money and
coins, they put a limit on that.
Yeah, you can try to
be a dick, but you can
only be so much of a
dick because you’re going
to be inhibiting another person’s
business if you’re too much of a dick.
The writer’s strike actually plays
into the thumbs up emoji as well.
The thumbs up emoji is a
new way of saying I agree.
I agree to this contract.
It is now legally binding in Canada.
Specifically in Saskatchewan, but I
bet other courts in Canada follow suit.
What the studios in
America are trying to do
is say we want to take
something from you,
your face, your writing, your art and
hold on to that aspect and perpetuity.
Never pay you again, but if you get famous,
if you get popular, we use that with AI to
create new products that we
profit off of that you get nothing from.
So basically they could
take all these podcasts,
put them into AI
and learn how to write
an engineers Japan
episode, a C-McBe episode.
And then if I get popular and they had paid
me that money in the past, they could make
new spinoffs, Italian news Japan, American
news Japan, not a ninja news Italy.
We have to be in the UK.
So we have a ninja news Japan.
I’ve just doing this joke
on the flies and possible.
I have to actually go
back and riff it a bit.
We have ninja news Japan, so we
want to have pizza news America.
Because that’s me, cliche
hamburger news America.
I’m on, that doesn’t work because
then I can’t use pizza news Italy as well.
I’m going to have to go
back, I can’t do it right now.
I would have to go away
write some vaguely racist
things, some stereotypes from the different
countries and then news in that country.
But they could do
with AI, a spinoff in a
ninja news Japan that
does all these things.
They could do a spinoff of C-McBe that uses
this writing style talking about different
topics and then make
a purely anime oriented
channel using my
style of speaking, doing
a purely news related style
linking all these stories together.
AI could put that together.
AI could use AI to
generate a million daves
and make it a movie and it would
be the best movie in the world.
But then I wouldn’t get any money
back, Dave wouldn’t get any money back.
Dave needs his million dollars.
I need my million dollars.
That’s just how it works.
So be afraid of big
corporations like shine,
of companies wanting
to use your image, your
art, your creations
and perpetuity like the
studios and be careful
about new technology,
not just AI, but how
you use new technology
because that could
actually end up you agreeing
to a contract that you don’t
necessarily intend to agree to.
[Music].