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I was told over and over 'this is all boilerplate'.I really hate this response, and I've heard it so many times. It's "boilerplate" only because nobody can be bothered to read it to find out how they're being screwed, mostly because most of these are ridiculously long. If one doesn't want to negotiate, that's fine, but just be straight about it and quit wasting my time.
In one particular "contract", it was also insinuated that I didn't know what I was talking about, because I was (am) not a lawyer. I might not be, but I am not signing anything about "copywrite" (sic). (And there were more semantic errors to that particular one: I was being asked to sign over rights to a work that I didn't have rights to. They had waited until literally the day of a performance to show us this, too. It didn't get signed.)