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?
To be fair... (Score:3, Interesting)
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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 serv
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The fact is that it's PERFECTLY FINE to give your tickets to someone else, or to sell them. You just can't sell them for more than face value plus 2 dollars or whatever.
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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)
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Hmm, how many 14 year old boys (or even 30 year old men!) have Porsche or Ferrari posters on their walls, their screensavers, etc? How many of them will ever buy one?
I almost started going off about how the NFL has been way beyond "blue collar fans" for decades (I guarantee 95% of the hardcore football fans glued to their TVs on Sunday have not attended an NFL game in years, if ever). And about how there are no more tickets available for them if t
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Football clubs don't set their tickets at market prices because they need to protect their long term interests and markets. Current top teams could raise their prices and still sell out making short term gains, but those guy would be gone quicky enough when the success stops coming. Short term fans also don't buy the shirts and the merchandise.
Clubs need to protect their real supporters, who are there for life, whose kids will support them and will be there through thick and thin. These people can't ne
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Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Informative)
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Big fat load of bull... (Score:2)
Don't thi
I would only want to hide my name if (Score:5, Funny)
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Sports teams sell tickets with the condition that they are not to be resold for more than cost. If you don't like that condition, then you are free not to buy the tickets. There's nothing communist about it. Sports teams sell tick
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No it isn't. Corporations attach conditions to their sales all the time. If you buy a CD, you aren't allowed to copy it and sell the copies, even though it is your property. All sorts of goods are sold with conditions, and people freely agree to those conditions when they buy them.
Uh, that's copyright law not the corporations using shrink wrap licensing.
Although they may include shrink wrap licensing on software, I thought that it was largely untested in court. I seem to recall a recent story about Autocad.
It's all about the markup... (Score:3, Informative)
If I remember correctly, here in MA is is completely legal to resell tickets - just not for profit.
Our local sports teams have more than just a few insanely loyal fans who will do just about anything to see a game. People try to take advantage of this, which results in prices nearing mortage levels (and at 300k for a 2 bed home in the suburbs here, that it quite a bit of money).
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.
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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.
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Probably not.
Isn't this a contract issue? (Score:2)
If the ticket is listed as non-transferable (you can buy ten, but only if you plan on going with nine of your friends... or you can buy them, and do what you want, but you can't re-sell them for a profit), then isn't it a contract issue and not so much a criminal law issue?
(Unless, of course, your state has speci
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
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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 marku
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Because tickets are a funny resource in that more of them can't be issued. Anti-scalping laws, combined with per-order limits on the number of tickets you can buy, are there to prevent ticket scalpers from buying up as many tickets as possible and artificially restricting the supply of available tickets in order to make a profit. This is similar to the alleged practice of NYC slumlords leaving entire buildings empty in order to drive rents up by restricting supply.
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.
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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
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I like the liberty business just fine, but I often find calls for government intervention come in areas where the free market is already distorted.
Does the NFL get and "special" treatments? Lots of other businesses in our supposedly free market seem to.
all the best,
drew
http://openphoto.net/gallery/index.html?user_id=178 [openphoto.net]
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If you don't want to adhere to the conditions on the ticket, then don't buy it. But don't pretend that this is a liberty issue. It isn't. If you buy sports tickets then you agree to all sorts of things that are usually written on the ticket. Sometimes this includes a prohibition on resale.
Sports teams have their own reasons for pricing their tickets as they do and for wanting to prevent resales. Why shou
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What kind of fascist are you to tell sports teams which conditions they can put on the tickets they sell?
If you don't want to adhere to the conditions on the ticket, then don't buy it. But don't pretend that this is a liberty issue. It isn't. If you buy sports tickets then you agree to all sorts of things that are usually written on the ticket. Sometimes this includes a prohibition on resale.
Sports teams have their own reasons for pricing their tickets as they do and for wanting to prevent resales. Why should you be able to tell them how much to sell their good for and under what conditions it ought to be sold?
The OP was commenting on MA law and a previous poster who seems to be saying that the law should not allow people to resell tickets for whatever the market will bear. At the end of his post, he explicitly states that he is fine with the team attaching whatever conditions they want to the sale of the tickets.
$300K?! You should be so lucky!! (Score:4, Funny)
When I was young we had to pay $650,000 for 3 walls and a tarp for a roof, and we didn't even have a pro football team...
Oh wait...that's not when I was young. That's right now. Fucking Orange County.
Re:$300K?! You should be so lucky!! (Score:5, Funny)
Or is the county named after a copulating fruit?
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The Patriots are assuming that "their laws" apply everywhere, which certainly isn't the case at all.
solution? (Score:2)
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Ironic? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ironic? (Score:5, Funny)
What privacy? (Score:2)
What privacy? These people gave their info to an online retailer, of course it is going to be shared with 3rd parties. The only thing different in this case is that the retailer is not getting paid to share the info.
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I guess they thought the warrantless wiretapping privileges granted via the USA PATRIOT Act applied to them as the Patriots...
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The original 18th century New England Patriots were considered criminals. They broke all sorts of laws, including tax evasion and treason!
The PATRIOT act continued that trend. And now there's NFL Camera cheating and privacy invasion.
That's not irony.
Irony is the condition my Tom Brady jersey is in - it was wrinkly after last week's game, though.
Read it and weep (Score:3, Informative)
Too effing bad. Every sports related season ticket by any team in any sport always has rules attached. And if one of those rules is season ticket holders can't resell their tickets, then the franchise has every right to find out who is reselling and cut them off. If you don't like their rules, then don't buy their tickets. That's your only option.
It's not quite that simple (Score:2)
The venue has every right to revoke these tickets. However, what's at issue is whether or not StubHub has any obligation to tell the venue which tickets are being sold. If they're not based in Massachusetts, the fact that what they're doing violates Massachusetts law is entirely irrelevant. Unless there's a federal law (or state law in the state they do operate in), they have every right to tell the venue to figure it out on their own.
If a st
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The question isn't whether they're based in Massachusetts, it's whether they're doing business in Massachusetts. And they are.
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?
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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" purc
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I beg to differ. It does not increase society's wealth, as the total money remains the same. It just increases the seller's wealth. The victim is the buyer, who could not buy tickets at regular price because the seller hoarded it in advance. The seller is a USELESS middleman, a parasite of the trade. He is making money/profit out of zero effort (he doesn't maintain the venue, he doesn't produce the tickets, etc).
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Markets aren't perfect. Occasionally it will be in the interest of a seller to discount their goods below the market clearing price. This often occurs when the seller's long term interest will be better served by discounting than by selling at the market clearing price.
Video game consoles are a good example. Nintendo (and please don't mod me up just for mentioning the Wii, thank you very much) could probably make an absolute killing if they priced the Wii at the market cle
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Ticket scalping is against Patriots rules, and additionally against Mass state law. While scalping law is popular with voters, the state is choosing not to enforce the law at least for online activity. Even out of state scalpers could be reeled in, or at least banned from future sales.
And that is what this is about. The Patriots want to protect the fans, and they want to promote the sport by making it affordable to attend. It is patently obvious the Patrio
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State Specific (Score:2)
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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.
...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).
season tickets (Score:2)
We need to do like we did for the airlines (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting counterpoint (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I'm torn on this issue. Basically, as a person on a fairly standard middle class income, it sucks that I'll likely never be able to attend major sporting events because scalpers quickly scoop up all of the tickets and price them out of range of the normal fan. On the other hand, if teams insist on building stadiums that don't hold the number of fans that would actually be willing to go to the games (for example, Invesco Field in Denver was built to almost exactly the same capacity as the old Mile High Stadium, even though waiting lists for season tickets there are decades long), it might make sense to let the free market determine the price of seats.
Personally, I think that scalping should be illegal, as scalpers essentially make their money by employing dirty tricks to corner the market on tickets, thereby possibly artificially inflating the cost of tickets. I understand the free market argument, but I think measures should be taken so we can be sure that fans at a game represent a true cross section of the fan base for the team, not just the ones that can afford $500 or more for tickets.
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What's stopping you from going to the place that the scalpers go and getting a ticket for yourself?
LK
The scalpers don't, fans do (Score:2)
If people are willing to pay $10,000 for a ticket, then by definition, that's the value of the ticket. That's not an artificial inflated value, that's the actual value.
It doesn't seem immoral, I don't see that it should be illegal.
If a ticket scalper scooped up every patriot ticket and was selling them for $10,000 per ticket and they sold them all, god bless them for being clever entrepreneurs. If they scooped up every ticket and couldn't se
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If the club wants to sell their tickets below market price, it's totally within their rights to do so. If they want to prevent resale of a ticket (which isn't a physical good so much as rent on a very tiny piece of real estate for a very short period of time), it's totally within their rights to do so.
Another way to do as you suggest... (Score:2)
Charge a large amount for the ticket. Make the assumption the team is going to win every game and win the superbowl.
For every game the team loses, they refund part or all of the admission to the original owner. If they don't make the playoffs there is an amount refunded, if the team wins everything, the club keeps all the money. If the club loses all the games, they refund all the money.
In fact, maybe the NFL should mandate that approach, because it fo
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Some transportation companies like Skybus and Megabus have come up with an answer [chron.com] to the high price of tickets: sell the first few at a very low price, and sell the rest at incrementally higher prices. Then even the poor can buy tickets, if they get in line early enough.
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Football game tickets have always been hard to come by because there are so few games in a season. Yes, that one sucks. I wanted to get tickets for my brother, father & I for the Bills/Giants this December but the best non-StubHub seats I could find (via TicketMaster or Bills.com) were over $50 each and horrible seats.
But you can usually get regular-season baseball tickets for under $30. I went to an NLCS game in 2006 at Shea Stadium and IIRC the seats were only $45 each -
Ridiculous (Score:2)
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Wow, great comeback. And so apropos - You do have the right to act like a douche, as illustrated by your responding to a blunt yet insigntful comment with the above drivel.
With so many Slashdotters self-proclaimed Libertarians, it amazes me that people have a problem with scalping. The "manufacturer" (the team/stadium/league) has foolishl
GO CHARGERS! (Score:2, Funny)
*ducks*
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Oh, Chargers, I see. Your ducking to avoid the hail of used batteries from you hated rivals, the Disposables! Carry on then...
Revoke the privileges? (Score:2)
But it was Web 2.0 ticket scalping! (Score:2)
No 2.0 way!!!
This was a bad call (Score:2)
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Mixed Feelings (Score:3, Interesting)
A part of me gets sick when I go on eBay and find tickets for a concert or sporting event that is up for sale by a "professional" scalper. Especially annoying are when these tickets were obtained from a fan club membership, or sold out within minutes only to appear right on eBay. It makes it more expensive for a real fan to get decent seats.
Then the other part of me is a capitalist pig and says there's nothing wrong with that.
As for selling these season tickets... I don't see what the big deal is. People have done that for years, only now it's easier. They've also bought season tickets for the purpose of giving to clients (or prospects).
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No First Sale doctrine? (Score:4, Insightful)
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When the season ticket was purchased, the b
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This is BS (Score:2, Redundant)
The ball team got their money, i paid for it. Screw em.
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"The consumer is sovereign."
It seems our current government, and many of our people, have forgotten that this whole experiment in Democracy called the USA was designed to give Live, Liberty and Happiness to the people. There isn't anything in their about the RIGHTs of corporations, or even of such a thing called a "multinational." You make a product and you sell it -- once you sell it, you no longer have any control over that thing you sold -- none.
The loophole has been to "lease" the seat -- not
per (Score:2, Interesting)
They're just upset.... (Score:2)
Online resellers change everything (Score:2)
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Add to the fact that the *team* isn't seeing any of this 10x markup, and hell yes they're going to involve themselves, regardless. 'Regulation' be damned, they want their cut of that 10x marked up ticket.
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this is about the pats, already a multi-billion-dollar generating business, wanting a cut of the gray market surrounding their product. there's no consumer advocacy going on here. it's corporate advocacy. in no place are there arguments for the people getting gouged. the argument is that the pats want a cut of the gouge.
ass.
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And the guy who buys the scalped tickets is probably paying more tax than you as well, but you still want to put additional controls on their sales.
Sorry. (Score:2)
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It's not like the New England Patriots are prone to spying.
oh, wait.
Because a ticket is a license (Score:2)
Course, I realize that makes the Pats look like the RIAA, which explains why this decision is pretty unpopular here...
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