Legalese

In legalese functioning as modern philosophic poetry, the rules and guidelines inform me that the winners of the contest who accept a prize release the rights to have their works used “throughout the universe and in perpetuity.” I am then unable to work for the next hour, so beguiled am I by the idea of lawyers who now anticipate the need to expand their legal domain into outer space and the ways in which photography will be shown, in art exhibits, advertisements and other means thus far unimagined and unimaginable, throughout the universe of the future (or even, perhaps, the past of the future). What do the contract writers of the present know about the future of photography that I do not? What do they know?