Unsolicited Submissions Policy
[Company X] has a policy that neither it nor any of its agents or other employees shall accept or consider any unsolicited material, ideas or suggestions of any nature whatsoever ("Unsolicited Materials"). Accordingly, you may not use this website or information obtained there from to submit Unsolicited Materials to [Company X] via any means (including, without limitation, via mail, fax or e-mail). Should you nevertheless contravene this express prohibition by sending Unsolicited Materials to [Company X], please be advised that the Unsolicited Materials will not be considered by anyone at [Company X], and if possible they will be returned to you with no copies kept. Unsolicited Materials will not be forwarded to or discussed with any third parties.
And then you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Or maybe they're just covering their own asses. But why? From the legal tone of the paragraph, it almost sounds like they could be sued for not accepting someone's application. But that would be ridiculous, no?
More likely they're just overwhelmed, as are most booking agencies these days. Understandable enough -- but in that case won't a simple "Sorry, but we can't accept unsolicited materials" suffice?
What a business.
Anyway, "regular blogging" (whatever that is) will resume "soon" (whatever that is).
4 comments:
This is the same "unsolicited submissions" boilerplate you might find at, for instance, a Hollywood studio. If you submit a story idea (say "zombie pirates!" scrawled in red crayon), and you can prove that the studio read your idea, and then go on to make Attack of the Zombie Pirates! without crediting or paying you, you can sue.
I'm not sure why a mere booking agency needs this kind of disclaimer, but I imagine it's the "you can never be too careful" mentality.
What DJA said.
We were actually discussing this last night. I'm in LA setting up a production office, and the discussion turned to domain names and the name they had registered was a .biz and I said, "you'd really want a .com" and they said "no, we don't want people to really know about us. We just need e-mail addresses... we don't want to deal with people sending us unsolicited stuff."
Yeah, I get that, of course.
I think my point was more toward the overkill aspect of this. For me it's another instance of a pathological mis-direction of energy in the arts in general. To wit: the legal/business stuff tends to be approached with an exquisite (and sometimes silly) thoroughness. The actual art, not so much.
Not that these folks, who I'm sure are very good at what they do, are necessarily guilty of that tendency (though I have never seen this kind of in-depth disclaimer, and I've been looking at a lot of booking agencies lately). But it sure feels like evidence for the overall case.
(BTW, Darcy, we're fishing for titles for the new record -- can I call it "Attack of the Zombie Pirates!"?)
(BTW, Darcy, we're fishing for titles for the new record -- can I call it "Attack of the Zombie Pirates!"?)
Ha! The title is yours, with my blessing.
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