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Businesses United States

Ticketmaster Pays $10 Million Criminal Fine for Invading Rival's Computers (yahoo.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Ticketmaster will pay a $10 million criminal fine to avoid prosecution on U.S. charges it repeatedly accessed the computer systems of a rival whose assets its parent Live Nation Entertainment Inc later purchased. From a report: The fine is part of a three-year deferred prosecution agreement between Ticketmaster and the U.S. Department of Justice, which was disclosed at a Wednesday hearing before U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn federal court. Ticketmaster's agreement resolves five criminal counts including wire fraud, conspiracy and computer intrusion. It also requires the Beverly Hills, California-based company to maintain compliance and ethics procedures designed to detect and prevent computer-related theft. Ticketmaster primarily sells and distributes tickets to concerts and other events. Prosecutors said that from August 2013 to December 2015, Ticketmaster employees used stolen passwords to repeatedly access computers belonging to its rival to obtain confidential business information. The rival, Songkick, specialized in artist presales, in which some tickets -- often around 8% -- are set aside for fans before general ticket sales begin, in part to foil scalpers.
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Ticketmaster Pays $10 Million Criminal Fine for Invading Rival's Computers More

Ticketmaster Pays $10 Million Criminal Fine for Invading Rival's Computers

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  • So "Company" pays a fine for _criminal_ activity?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:11AM (#60881194) Journal

    Am I reading this right?!

    How is it that we allow employees of a company to perform criminal actions and then get off by having their employer simply pay a fine... after they've already destroyed and consumed the target of that criminal activity?

    If this was the banking industry instead of entertainment, there'd be an incoming wave of pitchforks, followed by prison sentences...

    • Re:So "Company" pays a fine for _criminal_ activit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:20AM (#60881206)
      I kinda agree with the comparison to the financial world but the upper levels in the bank almost never see prison time, issues are almost always settled with a fine and/or prison for a lower level employee.

      • Re: So "Company" pays a fine for _criminal_ activi (Score:5, Insightful)

        by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:25AM (#60881208) Homepage Journal
        Jail would be more appropriate

        • Treat corporations like actual people. Like they always wanted: Federal prison. Entire company. CEO to janitor. Work there? You knowingly joined a criminal organization. (But let *actually* innocent janitors and the like slip, obviously. We're not monsters.)

          By the way: That would make Microsoft literally equivalent to leatherface and those alien bugs from TNG that attach to your spine and make you eat worms. Wearing the skin of some "person" (SCO) to murder another "person" (Linux). And Injecting their mole

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbengt ( 874751 )
            No, no. You have to jail the stock holders. You only need to jail those employees who were actively involved or in charge of the criminal activities.

            • wrong, Then just the cyber guys go to jail and the C level people all say "wow I didn't know". They get paid the big bucks to know. All C level should be in prison.

          • > Entire company. CEO to janitor. Work there? You knowingly joined a criminal organization. (But let *actually* innocent janitors and the like slip, obviously. We're not monsters.)

            So you think we should, or should not throw people in jail who did nothing wrong? So you send everyone who got a job there to jail, or the people who committed a crime?

            The way it works right now has two parts:
            1. The people who committed a crime can go to jail

            2. It's pretty much assumed that there is more guilt in the company t

          • A whole thread of nincompoops who can't read. They did file criminal charges against at least one of the employees, whom they mention in the article.

            And your rabble rousing is laughable. This is very simple - when people break laws, charge them. So whoever ordered it charge with conspiracy. Whoever did it charge with the crime. It's very simple and has nothing to do with them working for a corporation, who are not people and who don't claim to be people and who the law does not claim to be people, despite c

    • Huh? How many bankers went to prison after 2008? If you're a wealthy company/individual you can get away with anything just about anything. Anything short of prison is simply factored in as a business expense. Fuck TicketBastard for a million different reasons and more.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Same with Boeing, Wells Fargo, and VW.

        • In fairness to VW, their fine and PR hit vastly outweighed any gain they got from their shenanigans. Plus many execs involved are now professionally toxic and their careers are toast. That was the right outcome.

          This here is a joke. $10M to Ticketmaster is, by comparison, a slap on the wrist. They make more than that from some single events. And the value they gained by destroying a competitor? Heck if they could have directly bought that outcome for twice the value of that fine, they would have.

          • I agree, 10M is a joke. The problem is the fines just become a mosquito bite to the biz. They need to make it hurt, really really really hurt. Like 50% of revenue for the period. The behavior went on for 2 1/2 years. I'll repeat that, 2 1/2 years. So my idea of a fine would have been 12B since they run around 10B annual revenue. Yes, probably would have put them into BK and vanish. But until a few vanish for criminal activity, nothing is going to happen.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Tablizer ( 95088 )

            > their careers are toast.

            No, they merely will become middle class workers or already have a nest egg from their time as fat cats. Hardly tough punishment.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Huh? How many bankers went to prison after 2008? If you're a wealthy company/individual you can get away with anything just about anything. Anything short of prison is simply factored in as a business expense. Fuck TicketBastard for a million different reasons and more.

        Indeed. "Law" on the level of an average banana-republic.

    • You're not familiar with Ticketmaster's business model -- they're extortionists, plain and simple.

      • You're not familiar with Ticketmaster's business model -- they're extortionists, plain and simple.

        This is one reason I don't go to concerts. I'm not paying twice, or more, the price of a ticket to enrich someone other than the band(s).

        • This is one reason I don't go to concerts.

          Concerts:

          Large crowds suck.

          Db levels over quality equals distortion

          Too many speakers (per channel) equals poor/nonexistent imaging

          Virtually all of the big-name acts that were any good are decrepit or dead (a few holdouts like David Byrne notwithstanding).

          False flag âoeterrorist actsâ will continue until the De-Revolution is complete - I.e. the populace is entirely disarmed and under the full control of the elite.

          Large crowds suck??

    • Re: So "Company" pays a fine for _criminal_ activi (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:58AM (#60881252) Homepage Journal

      Felonies are like parking tickets to a corporation. You or I would go to pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison if we committed this level of computer crime.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      If corporations are people, give them the death penalty.

      • If corporations are people, give them the death penalty.

        That is what happened to Arthur Anderson in 2001.

        Thousands of people who had done nothing wrong lost their jobs.

        • The question is how many Anderson employees were active participants in the enron scandal? It almost had to be corporate culture for a client as large as Enron's 100B fraud. They had dozens to hundreds of employees and not a peep. No one whistled, hey what is going on here???? So no, no pity. You lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

        • If corporations are people, give them the death penalty.

          That is what happened to Arthur Anderson in 2001.

          Thousands of people who had done nothing wrong lost their jobs.

          Perhaps jail for the managers who authorized the illegal acts and a sufficient level of fines to effectively impact the equity.

          For instance, instead of $10 million if the board of directors sees 10% of their equity go down the drain they might be motivated to find a CEO who starts promoting Corporate Ethics.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Am I reading this right?!

      Yes. People committing criminal acts that would otherwise land them in prison for years walk free because "corporation". Those responsible for the acts of said corporation (CEO, for example) also walk free.

      I guess this means that if you want to do criminal hacking, you best found a company first and do it in the context of that company. If you get caught, just accept the fine and declare bankruptcy. Perfect crime done.

      • Neither of you is reading it right. Article is pretty slim, but at least one is charged:

        From another article (and that one mentions Zaidi too).

        In a statement on Wednesday, Ticketmaster said that in 2017, it had terminated the employee who provided the login information, as well as another Ticketmaster employee, Zeeshan Zaidi, who also accessed the computer systems and faced separate charges.

        People who commit crimes are and should be charged, it has nothing to do with being part of a corporation. When that's not done it has nothing to do with the "system" you pretend exists, it has to do with shitty prosecutors or corruption.

    • and like the Kings of old they are granted Indulgences. We do not spill the blood of kings.

    • ticket master is acting like the mob and they control turf of event certs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Um, no. You've never seen pitchforks, and certainly ZERO prison sentences for the bankers at fault for the great recession. And yes, I'm disgusted that we've done jack shit to prevent it all from happening over again. Ticketmaster was given a slap on the wrist, and will now profit greatly because of their crimes. The only people damaged are the consumer who will have to continue to deal with their monopoly.

    • I've been saying for years that a company should, instead of paying a fine, have to fork over $_FINE divided by the lowest share price of the past year in shares to the government. Not publicly traded? Well guess what motherfucker you better change that and fast.

    • Am I reading this right?!

      How is it that we allow employees of a company to perform criminal actions and then get off by having their employer simply pay a fine... after they've already destroyed and consumed the target of that criminal activity?

      If this was the banking industry instead of entertainment, there'd be an incoming wave of pitchforks, followed by prison sentences...

      So it sounds like the spying was part of the settled lawsuit between them [wikipedia.org]. So in the civil liability sense the Songkick owners at least partially got their due.

      But otherwise, this is certainly a case of one set of rules for big Corporations & rich folks and another for everyone else.

    • Yes, my initial reaction is "what the ACTUAL fuck, if an individual did all this they'd go to prison for years and years in addition to huge fines and restitution, but some company gets away with just writing a check!?"
      Fuck that noise.
      Some exec at Ticketmaster, who ordered the cyberhacking, should be sent to PRISON for YEARS for it, and round up everyone else who knew about it and went along with it and jail them, too. WTF!?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tflf ( 4410717 )

      If this was the banking industry instead of entertainment, there'd be an incoming wave of pitchforks, followed by prison sentences...

      Like we saw with the banks in 2008? The criminal abuses found in sub-prime mortages, and other risky financial strategies the vast majority of banks embraced, are well known and documented. How many criminal convictions? Hint: despite widespread public outrage, no one in charge went to trial, never mind to jail. Very few minions either.
      Prison sentences for criminal malfeasance by the biggest corporations are few and far between. Big businesses, of amost any kind, are always alllowed to buy

  • Wow a whole $10 Million? (Score:3)

    by EnsilZah ( 575600 ) <[moc.liamG] [ta] [haZlisnE]> on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:20AM (#60881202)

    That's what, like 100 MP3s worth?

  • Can someone direct me to their lawyer? (Score:3)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:47AM (#60881236) Homepage

    Because I got some cash and was just wondering how serious a crime I can get away with for the 6 million I got.

    • 6 million? Have you considered bionic implants and working as a secret agent for the government?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You are doing this wrong. Found a company for 100k or so, hire yourself and do the crime as an employee. Then have the company accept the fine and simply let it go bankrupt.

    • You should try it. Maybe you will be charged with a crime and we can laugh, just like in this case where it literally says Zaidi was charged criminally (probably others too, they are just too small fry for article).

      Some of you ding-dongs should learn to read the article before you whip up your dreary corporate outrage.

  • Live Nation Entertainment reported $11.5 billion in revenue last year.

  • Those poor honorabe businessmen have to go through so much.

    As a honorable businessman myself, I want to create an online shop for all of us fine businessmen, to conveniently shop for ... jurisictial Freedom, at the low low prices that only a honoranle fine business can get. You don't ever have to see a correctional facility from the inside! You are a fine honorable fine businessman! So ...

    [Country music starts]
    [Saul Goodman appears]
    "Special Texas discount week! Yeee-Haww, come on down to Shootin' Tony's Ind

  • Antitrust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @02:47AM (#60881312)

    With all the trustbusting in the air, I have to wonder how an entrenched player like Ticketbastard escapes scrutiny (other than there are no events right now). They have exclusive deals which lots and lots of venues, essentially cornering numerous local markets for artists and audiences alike and they break laws to keep rivals from getting a foothold. The ten million dollars will be wrested back via a $1 surcharge on ten million tickets--what choice does the public have but to pay it?

    This isn't a life, death, or democracy issue, but TANJ.

    • You'll notice all the "Antitrust" enforcement is focused on the Internet companies. The powers that be just want to take control of the Internet so they can take back control of media in general.

      I've said this before, but if the Establishment understood what the Internet was in the 90s they never would have let us have it.
      • In hindsight, it went better for them. After a chaotic period, the internet has been brought to heel and from an instrument to spread information, culture and awareness it has become the perfect surveillance tool. The grip the Establishment has over people is more invasive than anything ever seen before, and cannot be broken, ever. Evil has triumphed. The Eye sees it all. Hail Sauron, Lord of the World.

  • One of the dirtiest companies there is.

  • Um, why isn't this more? (Score:3)

    by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Thursday December 31, 2020 @09:55AM (#60881816) Homepage Journal

    $10 million? A business expense. $100 million starts to have impact, especially in pandemic markets.

    But yes, why isn't someone on jail for theft?

    • Because it wasn't actually that bad of a crime?

      • Maybe, but theft is often punished according of the value of the loss. Not with white-collar soft theft though, 'cause it's just corporations, right?

  • The punishment should be dissolution of the company. Let them be a cautionary tale to other companies.

    Let me repeat that: Monetary penalties do not work against corporations.

  • Jesus, will some of you numb-nuts ever learn to read before posting? Do we seriously need 50 "Turr hurr looks like corporations get away with crimes again, Ima gunna form a corp and go murder someone and pay a $50 fine, turr hurr" originals?

    They charged 1 or more people criminally. This is on top of the criminal charges.

    • Jesus, will some of you numb-nuts ever learn to read before posting? ...They charged 1 or more people criminally. This is on top of the criminal charges.

      FTA: "... one employee in the scheme was rewarded with a promotion and a raise." Also, the crimes took place over a few months in 2015, but the employees involved weren't axed until 2017. Now it's possible that the company didn't know - but how many people believe that? After all, this is Ticketmaster we're talking about.

  • A flesh-and-blood person would have been thrown in jail, but this 'corporate person' gets a slap-on-the-wrist fine that can only be considered a relatively small cost of business. I wish Ticketbastard would just DIAF.

  • Perhaps the US prosecutors could publish a schedule of fees and fines so we all can all have the option of avoiding criminal charges with money.

  • Ticketmaster employees used stolen passwords to repeatedly access computers

    I could've sworn I'd heard of criminal charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for using stolen passwords before. Of course, that was for individuals and not a corporation, but I'm tired of corporations being able to get away with criminal activity. Corporations today get all of the power of personhood and none of the responsibilities. How do I go about "incorporating" myself so I can indulge in the occasional crime spree

  • And they should be charged for having to print out the judgment if they want to read it.

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