New England Patriots Obtain Online Ticket Reseller Names 233
Billosaur writes "The New England Patriots sued on-line ticket re-seller StubHub (a subsidiary of eBay) to obtain the list of names of people who tried to buy or sell Patriots tickets using the service. StubHub lost an appeal in Massachusetts state court last week, and was compelled to hand over the list of 13,000 names. It is currently not clear what the Patriots organization intends to do with the names, but they have intimated that they may revoke the privileges of any season ticket holders on the list. The Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group, said the court order to turn over the names infringes on the privacy rights of Patriots fans. At issue is whether using the on-line service allows an end-run around team rules and Massachusetts state law, by allowing ticket holders to charge extreme mark-ups on their tickets." How does this ruling apply to other pieces of transient property?
Re:I would only want to hide my name if (Score:0, Insightful)
tickets sold for up to 10x what they are worth (Score:4, Insightful)
under state law tickets can be resold just at a very low profit though "the team rules" forbid any resale. that is anti-competitive though hording tickets and selling them at 10x what they are worth isn't any better. don't feel sorry for either side, neither is correct- both are screwing people over.
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing the Scary part!!! (Score:0, Insightful)
This should scare you!!!
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
Something like;
Paul Johnsmith buys 5 tickets, states he's the leader so all 5 of the tickets have "Johnsmith group".
At entry presenting "Johnsmith Group" tickets, the father, Paul Johnsmith proves he's the group leader and they let him in.
Paul buys 5 tickets, states he's the only person so the ticket has "Paul".
At entry presenting "Paul" ticket, the father, Paul proves he's the owner.
Then the ticket sellers could introduce a new service to charge a fee to change the details of the ticket to something else if the ticket details wasn't a fault of the company.
The only problem I see is under 18s not being able to get in, this could be solved if they were accompanied by an adult friend who bought the tickets.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
Charity? I don't think sports teams are being "charitable" per-se for selling tickets at under market rate.. they do it to enforce their brand and keep up the excitement in customers who can't get tickets due to overdemand and who will then try to fight for them next time.
They should just sell the damn things for market rate. I don't see beachside condos or Mercedes Benz cars being sold at under market simply to keep the proles happy.
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think scalping sucks too, but you really can't fight the market and pretend there isn't scarcity.
Re:Read it and weep (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not even slightly like pirating music or movies.
Tickets are by definition a scarce resource. There are a finite number of tickets for a finite number of seats, and once the tickets are all sold, that's it: there are no more tickets. Contrast that with pirating music which does not remove a copy of music from distribution.
I'm going to skip any moral argument, but suffice it to say that it's not a "victimless crime" as it really does remove items that would otherwise be available to "legitimate" purchasers.
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why in the fuck else would people create a marketplace for the buying and selling of tickets if not to make profit on it?
I'm all for people being enterprising and making a little money - say 10% or at most 20% above face value. But anything over that is taking advantage of the fans, and preying on their obsessive love of the sports they love.
The same can be said for coin or comic book dealers. Does it matter that Action Comics #1 originally cost $0.10? If some dork is willing to pay $250,000 for it now, there's nothing wrong with selling it at that price.
What teams make in endorsements, broadcast rights and merchandising is so substantial that they're already taking advantage of the fans by charging $50.00 or whatever per ticket.
It's pure economics, when there is great demand for a product that is in limited supply, prices will rise. There were jackasses who paid $2,500 for Playstation 3 consoles because that was the only way they could get them. Should Sony have been able to sue to prevent people from reselling things that they legitimately bought? Why is that any worse than selling tickets at higher prices? What would be wrong with having an auction? If two people want the same ticket and are willing to bid against each other to buy them, why should the owner of the ticket be kept from allowing them to do so?
LK
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's right. But why stop there? Why shouldn't the government force, say, Apple to sell their products for no more than 10-20% markup - after all, anything more than that is taking advantage of Apple fanboys, and trendies who just have to have the latest chic tech. And excessive markup is a problem throughout the whole tech sector - in fact, why don't we just make the government responsible for setting the prices throughout the whole economy? Then, because human controls are so much better at maintaining a stable system than an open market, all the prices will be fair, for both the vendor and the consumer.
Wait, is this sounding familiar [wikipedia.org] to anybody?
The problem in this case is the "insanely loyal fans who will do just about anything to see a game". If some people are stupid enough to sell their house to see a game, then society and the government is not responsible for stopping them. That's the whole concept of freedom - you can do what you want, but when you do, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.
Re:Interesting counterpoint (Score:2, Insightful)
What's stopping you from going to the place that the scalpers go and getting a ticket for yourself?
LK
No First Sale doctrine? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry about the rant, but comments like this (and people who mod them up) drive me up the wall! Its amazing how many people simply don't this whole liberty business. Who exactly are you to decide how much profit someone else should make or not make? Should every business be restricted to making 10-20% profit or only the particular ones that you don't like? You know how much profit Starbucks makes on a cup of latte, or a perfume company on a tiny bottle of scented water that they sell for $75? What on earth is wrong with a person buying a ticket for $100 and then selling it for a $1,000, or a $1,000,000 if there is a buyer who wants the ticket and is willing to spend that much.
If you have a house, and the property prices happen to go through the roof, would you sell it at below market value because you'd feel bad about making a profit on it? If you are selling your 1984 Corolla and some billionaire, for whatever reason, decides to offer you $100,000 for it would you refuse because thats too much profit for you? Well maybe you would, but that doesn't make it any less wrong to force other people to do it.
If a team wants to attach whatever conditions they want to the sale of the ticket (such as resale not allowed) that is their business, but the state making the resale for profit illegal is simply ridiculous. Have they ever heard of retail in MA?
How so? (Score:3, Insightful)
If China bans baseball, should patriots.com be required to hand over a list of Chinese IPs which visited the site?
Re:Interesting counterpoint (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
In common with your "clubs need to protect their real supporters" theme, it is important to distinguish between the regular fan who bought tickets but for one reason or another cannot go to the game, and the organised rackets and ripoff merchants. If the Pats go after regular fans they will certainly experience a backlash, but if they focus on racketeers their fanbase will most likely give their full backing.
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really have any problem with pre-order limits, or conditions on tickets that invalidate them if they're not held by the purchaser, or any other sort of controls imposed by the retailer, within their authority. It's additional government controls that I don't particularly like.
...what they are worth (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me the tickets are under-priced from the get-go.
There wouldn't be a problem if sports teams, concert venues, etc. just charged scalper like fees to begin with, then discounted the unsold tickets closer to the event time, if needed.
That gives all the profit to the right people, not artificial middle-men (scalpers).
Re:It's all about the markup... (Score:1, Insightful)
Liberty is all fine and dandy, but when other people are out to make a profit at any expense, other people suffer. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and this is why the government steps in (although corruption and greed at the top seems to be short-circuiting this step as well).
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)