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."

Comments

Does Daniel have any rights in this matter?

[Khashishi]

Does Daniel have any rights in this matter, or is this strictly between AMPA and craigslist?

craigslist could use some cleanup?

[davejenkins]

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.

Re:What did you expect?

[Otter]

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.

conform with the rest of the industry.

[OrangeTide]

'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?

Re:The perfect place to buy tickets is...

[Enderandrew]

Exactly. When they saw the specific tickets, they'd know who the seller was.

Jurisdiction bites

[ghostlibrary]

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.