5 ms·

A lawyer's analysis of Bilbo's contract in The Hobbit

94 points by ValentineC 14y ago

dshep 14y ago
Proof that a Lawyer can suck the life out of anything?
- esalman 14y ago
  I actually read the article with interest because I took a law course once and now being in software business we have to read/write/execute contracts all the time.
- neumann_alfred 14y ago
  The Hobbit is a story for kids; and by the point grown men make million-dollar budget movies out of it, there isn't much of the original life left, anyway. The original contract is super short; the movie contract is extremely bloated... maybe it really does take a lawyer to call that bloating "an impressive piece of work". Impressive would have been to make a children's movie out of a children's book, instead of doing whatever with it and staining the careers of otherwise fine actors, just because it can't fight back and money is nice to have. If this offends anyone; good. The existance of all these movies, their treatment of legit stories for children to turn them into brainless crap ala Star Wars, offends me as well.
  - Osmium 14y ago
    > If this offends anyone; good. The existance of all these movies, their treatment of legit stories for children to turn them into brainless crap ala Star Wars, offends me as well. Well, the inability to appreciate beauty or subtlety in a movie offends me. What's the more brainless, the person who watches a movie and contemplates it, or one who dismisses it without a thought?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - neumann_alfred 14y ago
      What's the more brainless, the person who watches a movie and contemplates it, or one who dismisses it without a thought? Without a thought, and without paying attention to any indicators.. or merely without watching the full-length movie? Huge difference. But I appreciate the irony of telling me how my decision-making process goes without having the faintest idea of it, not to mention my ability to appreciate beauty or "subtlety". Subtlety.. I might watch The Hobbit one day just to think back to this post and laugh.
      - Osmium 14y ago
        So you made your comment without having even seen the movie? That seems to give you even less of a position from which to call something "brainless crap" surely? If I've mis-spoken because I haven't fully appreciated your decision making process, it's because you didn't make enough of an effort to articulate it in the first place. But whatever. I think I'll take a lesson from The Hobbit myself right now, which is don't feed the trolls, for nothing good will come of it.
        neumann_alfred 14y ago
        I've seen LOTR, and I read the book (at an appropriate age too haha). I "know" The Hobbit is no less pompous and derpificated a conversion. Just looking at still images of it is enough for me. The good guys are good looking, the bad guys are ugly, music tells you what to feel every step along of the way, all of that crap; I know it, and I don't see anyone denying it. So I'm simply trusting my intuition on this, you know? How much shovelware do I have to take before I am allowed to skip one? I don't even think Tolkien was the greatest author ever (there's just so much random stuff in LOTR for example), but for me there is bounds and leaps more humanity in one of any of those books than in all LOTR movies combined; so unless I missed the dude remarking that LOTR was horrible, and that he is making The Hobbit differently to make up for it, I know that for me this thing is going to be neither subtle, nor beautiful. I just didn't want to point all of this out in detail because it makes me seem like such a snob, I'll take the "troll" thanks. If this stuff is fine art for you, I'll be rolling in the dirt having fun.
dustin 14y ago
"...given the contract’s length and its role in the film... a lesser studio or artist might have been tempted to go with several pages of lorum ipsum" So he's basically praising pointless lawyering! :) Or a more charitable reading: he's geeking out as we might about the terminal commands in a 'hacker' movie.
obituary_latte 14y ago
<off topic> I really can't stand it when websites like Wired usurp my back button. They even do it in a way where: - Clicking back twice in rapid succession doesn't bring me back; - Clicking and holding back button and selecting HN doesn't take me back; which is a feat few other websites manage to pull off. I wonder if they had a team put together just for this purpose. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in one of those meetings. "How can we keep people on our site longer?" "Sir, I know! Lets not let them leave!" "Brilliant! Someone make this guy CEO stat!" Utterly frustrating and inexcusable for a technology website. </sorry>
- T-hawk 14y ago
  Keep in mind the old saw, don't ascribe to malice that which is explained by incompetence. Any site with a bunch of scripting buttons and "partner content" and AJAXy stuff laboriously glued on by legions of mediocre and outsourced developers over multiple years will find itself prone to screwing up the browser history accidentally. And when it happens, it's not anybody's job responsibility to fix it or even care about fixing it. That said, yeah Wired may be doing it on purpose, but we don't know either way, unless someone uncovers some too-clever-to-be-a-mistake behavior in the code.
- zacharydanger 14y ago
  What I've got a problem with is that they bind the "j"/"k" keys to navigate between articles. Which sucks if you're running Vimium/Vimperator and try to scroll. All of a sudden there will be a dozen links to the same article under your back button.
- ineedtosleep 14y ago
  This pissed me off as much as you and I couldn't help, but take a few minutes and dig into the site a little. I found the following: * This only affects me in Chrome (using the dev channel). * Firefox Aurora (20.0a2) with noscript off doesn't have the back button 'hijack'. * A quick debug in Chrome with F8 (stop script execution) and immediately pressing back shows there's a few 'hidden' functions being run -- not sure how to view those quite yet.
betawolf33 14y ago
On the issue of the Dwarven Kingdom, the point about choice of law is further complicated by the fact that Thorin, a party to the Contract, is the de jure ruler of Erebor (or 'King Under the Mountain'), and, depending on the Folk of Durin's constituional/legal tradition, could be considered a (even the only) judge - or else might issue royal decrees to overturn a ruling. As the Shire lacks an effective government, and particularly lacks awareness of matters outside its borders, Bilbo could easily be strung up under a foreign legal system if he crossed Thorin.
- tarice 14y ago
  Concerning your point about Thorin being the only judge: > Disputes arising between the Contract Parties shall be heard and judged by an arbitrator of the Company’s choosing By that clause, the company should be able to choose Thorin as the arbitrator regardless of the fact that he's the King Under the Mountain. That fact alone would put Bilbo in dire straights if, like you said, he ever crossed Thorin.
- pnathan 14y ago
  Actually, the Shire had a mayor & sheriffs.
bjhoops1 14y ago
Wow. Didn't realize a lawyer could have such nerd cred. Respect.

94 points by ValentineC 14y ago

dshep 14y ago

Proof that a Lawyer can suck the life out of anything?

esalman 14y ago
I actually read the article with interest because I took a law course once and now being in software business we have to read/write/execute contracts all the time.
neumann_alfred 14y ago
The Hobbit is a story for kids; and by the point grown men make million-dollar budget movies out of it, there isn't much of the original life left, anyway. The original contract is super short; the movie contract is extremely bloated... maybe it really does take a lawyer to call that bloating "an impressive piece of work". Impressive would have been to make a children's movie out of a children's book, instead of doing whatever with it and staining the careers of otherwise fine actors, just because it can't fight back and money is nice to have. If this offends anyone; good. The existance of all these movies, their treatment of legit stories for children to turn them into brainless crap ala Star Wars, offends me as well.
- Osmium 14y ago
  > If this offends anyone; good. The existance of all these movies, their treatment of legit stories for children to turn them into brainless crap ala Star Wars, offends me as well. Well, the inability to appreciate beauty or subtlety in a movie offends me. What's the more brainless, the person who watches a movie and contemplates it, or one who dismisses it without a thought?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - neumann_alfred 14y ago
    What's the more brainless, the person who watches a movie and contemplates it, or one who dismisses it without a thought? Without a thought, and without paying attention to any indicators.. or merely without watching the full-length movie? Huge difference. But I appreciate the irony of telling me how my decision-making process goes without having the faintest idea of it, not to mention my ability to appreciate beauty or "subtlety". Subtlety.. I might watch The Hobbit one day just to think back to this post and laugh.
    - Osmium 14y ago
      So you made your comment without having even seen the movie? That seems to give you even less of a position from which to call something "brainless crap" surely? If I've mis-spoken because I haven't fully appreciated your decision making process, it's because you didn't make enough of an effort to articulate it in the first place. But whatever. I think I'll take a lesson from The Hobbit myself right now, which is don't feed the trolls, for nothing good will come of it.
      - neumann_alfred 14y ago
        I've seen LOTR, and I read the book (at an appropriate age too haha). I "know" The Hobbit is no less pompous and derpificated a conversion. Just looking at still images of it is enough for me. The good guys are good looking, the bad guys are ugly, music tells you what to feel every step along of the way, all of that crap; I know it, and I don't see anyone denying it. So I'm simply trusting my intuition on this, you know? How much shovelware do I have to take before I am allowed to skip one? I don't even think Tolkien was the greatest author ever (there's just so much random stuff in LOTR for example), but for me there is bounds and leaps more humanity in one of any of those books than in all LOTR movies combined; so unless I missed the dude remarking that LOTR was horrible, and that he is making The Hobbit differently to make up for it, I know that for me this thing is going to be neither subtle, nor beautiful. I just didn't want to point all of this out in detail because it makes me seem like such a snob, I'll take the "troll" thanks. If this stuff is fine art for you, I'll be rolling in the dirt having fun.

dustin 14y ago

"...given the contract’s length and its role in the film... a lesser studio or artist might have been tempted to go with several pages of lorum ipsum" So he's basically praising pointless lawyering! :) Or a more charitable reading: he's geeking out as we might about the terminal commands in a 'hacker' movie.

obituary_latte 14y ago

<off topic> I really can't stand it when websites like Wired usurp my back button. They even do it in a way where: - Clicking back twice in rapid succession doesn't bring me back; - Clicking and holding back button and selecting HN doesn't take me back; which is a feat few other websites manage to pull off. I wonder if they had a team put together just for this purpose. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in one of those meetings. "How can we keep people on our site longer?" "Sir, I know! Lets not let them leave!" "Brilliant! Someone make this guy CEO stat!" Utterly frustrating and inexcusable for a technology website. </sorry>

T-hawk 14y ago
Keep in mind the old saw, don't ascribe to malice that which is explained by incompetence. Any site with a bunch of scripting buttons and "partner content" and AJAXy stuff laboriously glued on by legions of mediocre and outsourced developers over multiple years will find itself prone to screwing up the browser history accidentally. And when it happens, it's not anybody's job responsibility to fix it or even care about fixing it. That said, yeah Wired may be doing it on purpose, but we don't know either way, unless someone uncovers some too-clever-to-be-a-mistake behavior in the code.
zacharydanger 14y ago
What I've got a problem with is that they bind the "j"/"k" keys to navigate between articles. Which sucks if you're running Vimium/Vimperator and try to scroll. All of a sudden there will be a dozen links to the same article under your back button.
ineedtosleep 14y ago
This pissed me off as much as you and I couldn't help, but take a few minutes and dig into the site a little. I found the following: * This only affects me in Chrome (using the dev channel). * Firefox Aurora (20.0a2) with noscript off doesn't have the back button 'hijack'. * A quick debug in Chrome with F8 (stop script execution) and immediately pressing back shows there's a few 'hidden' functions being run -- not sure how to view those quite yet.

betawolf33 14y ago

On the issue of the Dwarven Kingdom, the point about choice of law is further complicated by the fact that Thorin, a party to the Contract, is the de jure ruler of Erebor (or 'King Under the Mountain'), and, depending on the Folk of Durin's constituional/legal tradition, could be considered a (even the only) judge - or else might issue royal decrees to overturn a ruling. As the Shire lacks an effective government, and particularly lacks awareness of matters outside its borders, Bilbo could easily be strung up under a foreign legal system if he crossed Thorin.

tarice 14y ago
Concerning your point about Thorin being the only judge: > Disputes arising between the Contract Parties shall be heard and judged by an arbitrator of the Company’s choosing By that clause, the company should be able to choose Thorin as the arbitrator regardless of the fact that he's the King Under the Mountain. That fact alone would put Bilbo in dire straights if, like you said, he ever crossed Thorin.
pnathan 14y ago
Actually, the Shire had a mayor & sheriffs.

bjhoops1 14y ago

Wow. Didn't realize a lawyer could have such nerd cred. Respect.