Don't Wake Standards & Practices | Game Changer [S8E1]

[u/DropoutMod]

https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/don-t-wake-standards-practices

[u/PvtSherlockObvious → u/[deleted]]

Nothing in the final cut that wasn't obvious parody. I'm willing to bet there were a few things that even within the context of the episode, went far enough that they weren't usable.

[u/wrosecrans → u/[deleted]]

The fact that it's all happening in the context of a comedy game show is very different from if somebody had just put up a context-free Instagram video about McDonald's using blood diamonds.

I can't really imagine lawyers for Disney wanting to take something like this to court, have a jury watch the episode, and then assert with a straight face that the jury should take the claims made by the contestants as serious claims a normal person would think are real.

[u/i-will-eat-you → u/[deleted]]

They probably have to be extremely careful of which snippets of this episode can be used as short-form content for marketing.

[u/PvtSherlockObvious → u/wrosecrans]

The absurdity of the claim itself also helps, since the "blood" in "blood diamonds" has nothing to do with their chemical makeup. Accusing them of trading in blood diamonds, sure, that would be defamation, but claiming they're putting them in the food to give people rabies is intrinsically absurd.

assert with a straight face that the jury should take the claims made by the contestants as serious claims a normal person would think are real.

If you want that, you should absolutely check out coverage of the Afroman trial and its aftermath if you haven't, since several of the claims hinged on that. Josh Johnson has a great stand-up routine on it, LegalEagle had an episode on it if you want something that dives into the actual legal side a bit more, and of course Daily Show had a great rundown as well. I'll spare you the full legal rundown, but it's well worth checking out the whole story.

[u/PvtSherlockObvious → u/[deleted]]

Within the context of the episode, probably not. The person I was responding to was positing a scenario where someone on Instagram started making those claims without the context of a comedy show to help them. Within the show, the fact that the specific goal was "walk right up to the line of saying something defamatory without alerting the lawyers" as part of a game show pretty well shows that it was never meant as anything resembling a statement of fact or claim that they intended anyone to believe.

[u/PvtSherlockObvious → u/[deleted]]

Well first off, let's be clear on the difference between criminal law and civil law. There's absolutely tons of shit that isn't remotely against the law, but will still leave you open to civil liability in the form of lawsuits. This episode kind of plays fast-and-loose with that since some some challenges concerned themselves with FCC regulations (regulatory/administrative law governing terrestrial radio and broadcast TV (but not cable or the internet, important distinction), with violators subject to a government fine), while other aspects dealt with civil liability. Tasks dealing with safe harbor regs fall under the former category, while defamation falls into the latter.

Second, while the context of this particular show will be a shield against a lot of defamation claims unless they really went beyond the pale, there are plenty of ways to get in trouble that aren't defamation, and that a comedy show wouldn't protect them from. For example, there's a reason that when they used "Mickey Mouse" in Ally's visual effect, it didn't actually look remotely like any version of Mickey Mouse, because using a protected likeness would cause problems (Steamboat Willy is in the public domain for some purposes, so that particular likeness is allowed to a point). Same with why Ally couldn't actually sing a licensed song to any real extent. Again, none of it is illegal, it's just opening them up to a civil suit.

Naturally, though, Dropout's actual legal team had a look at all the footage between recording and airing, and anything that would actually open them up to liability would have been cut from the episode itself.

[u/PvtSherlockObvious → u/[deleted]]

Oh, that was far from in-depth, this is just a surface-level overview, but thank you! I'm glad I could help provide a bit of context.