because this is a negotiation between weak individuals and a very strong movie companies. as the movie companies have shown that they won't hesitate to exploit people working for them, laws are needed to protect the individuals.
you don't get the point. every individual is weak in the face of a large corporation seeking to exploit them. that's why we have laws to protect employees.
People have agency and can decide for themselves if a job offer is worth it
if they desperately need a job then they don't.
the pandemic actually demonstrated that. many more people than before are refusing to work when a job forces them to be in an office. that means previously they accepted that work even though they would have preferred not to. but they didn't have the agency to voice that preference. only the demonstrated evidence that work from home is possible and the collective awareness of that gave them that agency.
likewise, most people are uninformed as to the consequences for signing away the right of a digital version of themselves. at a minimum they are not aware of its value.
that is a power imbalance the film industry seeks to exploit, and that power imbalance must be corrected by giving individuals more protection.
it is similar to copyright. i know the US doesn't recognize this but at least in europe copyright includes the inalienable right for a creator to be associated with their work even if they sold away the right to profit from it financially.
Do the people who pose for stock photos have special laws?
yes, they have the right to control how their image is used.
in a similar manner, at a minimum it must be recognized that an individual should always have the right to use their own digital version as they wish and to control how their digital version is used by others and that selling the rights to someone else must not prevent them from doing so.
where there large likelihood of individuals being exploited, the law must step in to reduce the risk for that exploitation.
that's why we have minimum wage laws. that's why in europe health insurance is mandatory for any job and even available if you don't have one. that's why in many countries you can't dismiss an employee without proper justification, or you can't evict tenants unless they egregiously violate their tenant agreement (and failing to pay rent on time is not such a violation).
there are plenty of examples of how the law protects individuals from being exploited. to suggest that such laws are unnecessary is completely missing the power imbalance that exists here, or worse willfully ignoring it.
