Now, what I'd like to hear about -- and I don't see it being discussed -- is such an offer [as Rossmann's] even legal?!
Anything is legal to sign.
And they are free to sue you if you break any agreement you sign.
Doesn't mean they will win though.
Legality of anything can only be ruled after the fact by court.
Contract law often favors the side who DIDN'T write the contract when it makes it to court. The reality is that most people who claim they will sue, do not actually sue.
Think about it. Court costs money. The people who sign contracts without having an attorney read them are people without the money for a lawyer.
2000 bucks for a 3-4 day work? Ok, so that is about 60-80 USD/hour, before taxes, below the engineering contracting rate. Not a good deal, if you dont have the time.
Maybe you should just subcontract the blogging to someone in India and make half the video there, place the blog post in a weird location and the video on EEVBlog3.
I agree, and would also like to add, realize the lost momentum!
Every second dave spends on the forum, his channel, and his projects he spends building his brand. Every second he spends on this blog idea, he spends putting down his own ideas. While this might sound silly to a lot of people, losing momentum on your own projects to invest in someone else's project requires a higher level of compensation than the amount of compensation we'd want if we were working for ourselves. Even if what Dave does today doesn't return him much $$$, what he does today might lead to an idea that tomorrow that manifests itself as an additional $30,000 in revenue over the lifetime of his brand.
If he spent tomorrow working on this terrible offer, he might have missed an opportunity to build his own brand by virtue of being busy doing something else. The opportunity cost has to be taken into consideration. It is why self-made successes who are busy doing their own thing will charge insane amounts of money to go "off course" for an idea they do not believe in, because they often don't know how much they are missing out on by taking themselves off track to do unrelated work for someone else.
Agreed, and crossing out almost everything or simply saying that the contract is unacceptable is sufficient, rather than long explanations about each point. If a company really is interested in doing a deal, then after failing to get you to go for the ridiculous version of the contract, they'll pull out the mutually beneficial version or have one drafted.
And if it's "just business" as you say, then the company shouldn't take Louis's rant personally and would come back to him if they really wanted it.
For me I never wanted to be on television. Instead of say no, I gave them an opportunity to listen to my concerns, and send me a piece of paper that incentivized me to change my mind. If that is their idea of changing my mind, then just gtfo. If I had applied, I understand them offering me this, but they came to me.. they actually showed up here twice because I wasn't available one day.
I worked in entertainment, as a technician, not much a recording engineer, for several years. From tiny NYC studios to Avatar studios, I got to be in the room with a lot of smart people, and occasionally, some pretty ignorant people, and I got to be in the room later to hear how everything worked out. From that time, I did learn that the biggest and oldest scam in the entertainment world is the concept of exposure. For every 1 person that becomes famous or even makes $60k/yr of of a career started off exposure, there are 100,000 that just get used up for nothing by it. As my friend who runs his own label and studio as a living says on one of his albums -
"can I take it to the deli and cash it in for a sandwich?" If no,
RUN! ![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
I've tried doing reviews before and... it doesn't work out well. Even for free. I am just not involving myself in reviews of unsolicited gear.