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Craigslist Forced To Reveal a Seller's Identity
mi writes "The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts has won a judgment compelling Craigslist to reveal the identity of 'Daniel,' who tried to sell two tickets to the Oscar ceremony recently. The plaintiff's argument against such sales is scary and can be taken very far very quickly: 'If you don't know who's inside the theater, it's very difficult to provide security.' Craigslist's handling of the case may be even scarier, however — instead of fighting tooth-and-nail for the user's privacy, as we expect Google, Yahoo, and AOL, and even credit-card issuers to do, Craigslist simply did not show up in court and lost by default."
Does Daniel have any rights in this matter, or is this strictly between AMPA and craigslist?
Normally I would completely agree that privacy must be protected wherever and whenever possible. Both my heart and my head tells me that privacy is an essential right.
Having said that, could craigslist use a little bit of "cleanup" from the scam artists, vice decoy hookers (keep the real ones!), and other bad elements that are hiding behind the anonimity of CL as an essential part of their scam?
I realize that the key word there is "bad"-- who is to judge what is 'bad' or 'good' except the other party in the transaction?
I just wonder if CL purposefully ignored the court date in hopes of such a cleanup, or if they were simply too busy smoking some dope and selling some old furniture (both are fine hobbies to have) to remember to go downtown.
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Isn't Craigslist basically just Craig and a handful of other people? I wonder if they have a lawyer, or even someone there to accept the summons. Their financial dealings with EBay don't suggest massive legal support.
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Well that wouldn't stop them from putting John Smith on the list the janitor, no one said the list had to be Tom Cruise and above.
of a corporation dragging you into court on bullshit pretenses
given that thought, not showing up to court is really the only course of action you can take
of course, there are also those who want to see someone else fight their battles. this is the only reason in which you yourself who do not respect the legal status quo can expect someone else to respect the legal status quo for you
and to some extent, this is a valid attitude: if that someone else fighting for you is big and powerful while you are small and weak
but as others have noted, craigslist really is just craig and a few dudes in san francisco. they may have the exposure of a large corporation, btu they aren't a large corporation. as such, they are in the boat with you and me: someone else needs to fight this battle, or craigslist, due to the legal environment of our modern times, needs to give in to reality and turn into a corporate turd pile and fund a bunch of corporate lawyer whores in order to retain its integrity in the face of such legal bullshit
i dunno, i'm torn. i say fuck the courts on the issue of corporate chicanery, ignore them. but then they win by default in terms of enforceable rulings. such that you have to fund the legions of corporate lawyer whores
or kill them all. hard to say
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
TFA does not say that craigslist turned over the guy's identity, just that they figured out who it was. Granted, AP articles sometimes read like they were written by a high-school journalism student, translated into Bantu, then back into English, but the omission seems glaring. Other TFAs on the same topic also do not actually say that craigslist turned the name over.
'If you don't know who's inside the theater, it's very difficult to provide security.'
Then require people to show ID. Try to do security like the rest of the world. If you can sell tickets and not know who is at the Oscars, then what stops some one from tying up ticket holder and taking their tickets to the Oscars?
I'm simply do not understand what legal right one private organization has to enforce its policy on a completely unrelated organization?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How would craigslist know the seller's name? I sell stuff on there, and I have never put my name. And even if I did, Craigslist still would not know WHO I SOLD THEM TO. So this is just stupid all around. And besides, this isnt any different than if I were selling them on the street, the Oscar peeps wouldnt know the name of the buyer, they would never even know the sale happened. Bottom line is, its not about "security". They were suing other people for selling tickets back in March, and they are looking for more people to sue.
Exactly. When they saw the specific tickets, they'd know who the seller was.
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Original poster here. Nothing that I'm aware of would have stopped me from handing my ticket to a total stranger and letting them go instead. That said, it's not like they have NO IDEA who is actually going to show up. There is a lot of political wrangling before the event between various parties who want to get tickets. Academy members (who incidentally I didn't mention previously but typically with their families are the bulk of the audience), producers, agents-- lots of people want to go. So the tickets are rationed.. Interestingly, when I went (the year the Return of the King won, whenever that was-- Billy Crystal hosted), there were actually some seats still untaken. Don't know why that was.
One thing I will say fwiw about the oscars-- they are VERY VERY LONG. When you watch them at home, you talk to your friends, you get up to get some chips, etc. When you're actually at the Kodak theater, there aren't other distractions and only a few strangers near you to talk with. So I and a lot of people tended to get up during the commercial breaks, walk outside, have a drink (free!), socialize, and watch the show on the monitors for a segment or two before heading back in... a little "social time" so you're not just sitting there for hours and hours...
I understand that near the front of the stage (in camera range) they use "seat fillers" to temporarily fill the space of people who are taking a leak or whatever. A lot of people get loaded before the show- (you would too if you were nominated for an Oscar and potentially about to give a speech in front of a billion people), so it's not surprising everyone's running for the bathroom. Still, I think on TV you can often see the house only partially filled in wide shots. Most of the "missing" people are outside the theater getting drunk.
So, Craigslist is in San Francisco, yes? And the court case was in Los Angelos. Sure, it's the same state, but California is big, that's a full day's drive apart (8-12 hours depending on route). So, as usual, the people suing chose a venue that's not where the supposably offending business is located.
That's the real problem here. To expect someone to have to take 3 days off to fly or drive a long distance to attend each and every spurious lawsuit just means you can do a Denial of Service Real World... file lots of lawsuits until the airfare bankrupts the given target.
A.