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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."
I got two oscar tickets. Anyone want em? Asking $600 OBO.
Legal representation
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
they didn't post the hearing notice under rants and raves.
Maybe Craig was too busy responding to bots and picture collectors. Real results takes all day!
Craigslist. Not only do you get a great deal on tickets, you get a great deal on a date to go with you!
If they want to know who is in the theater during the ceremony (for 'security' reasons... dun dun dun!), why do they even have physical tickets? Why not just a list of who can get in? Do the invitees REALLY have to show a ticket to get in? "Sorry, Mr. Cruise. No ticket, no entry!"
Does Daniel have any rights in this matter, or is this strictly between AMPA and craigslist?
Craigslist has to be about the seediest place to do business on the internet. Nothing about their service screams 'high quality,' much less 'we care.'
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.
davejenkins.com |
Craigslist might be seedy, but then again, everyone needs a dark alley to buy their fake gucci bags and knock-off soccer shirts. Ebay just doesn't cut it anymore...
There goes my prostitution business.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
More like CL didn't care. They didn't care enough to show up to court, so they didn't care enough to fight about it.
The sad thing is, I'm not really surprised. They have warnings in their real estate section of housing wanted/for sale that states that if you post something like "Only Mexican People Can Buy/Live-in My House" you will get fined - so they must be down with sharing your info when asked for it.
Ave Molech Setting
"...invitees to the Academy Awards show are explicitly told they cannot sell or give their tickets away."
What does "explicitly told" mean? It doesn't sound like a binding contract. Why don't they issue tickets that say non-transferable right on them and require id at the door?
"If you don't know who's inside the theater, it's very difficult to provide security," Quinto said.
If you're too stupid to keep a list of the people you've invited, with their ticket numbers, then providing security will indeed be difficult.
Typical Hollywood idiocy.
If they're worried about who's in the theater, then it seems like they'd be more interested in the identity of those *buying* the tickets, no? Do they have prohibitions against giving the tickets away if you get them legitimately? Can I donate them to a charity auction, and do they send the Oscar Gestapo to the auction to fingerprint and photograph the winners at the charity auction?
If not, then why is Craigslist such a security threat?
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
"De-fault! Woohoo! The two sweetest words in the English language!"
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
http://www.craigslist.org/about/privacy.html
And look at the terms of use, particularly item 2.
Was Craigslist expected to not reveal the seller?
Possibly, or they realized that they'd lose the case and chose to not bother wasting money on it.
While the reason is bunk, the people running the event do have the right to keep people out if they want to. People who are invited don't have the right to sell.
I'm not really sure how it's in the best interest of people that use Craig's list to have them wasting money defending such clear cut cases in court.
I mean seriously, you don't really have to be an attorney to recognize that a private event run by a private organization that stipulates as a condition for receiving an invite that the tickets are non-transferable would have the legal right to deny entrance to those people.
The suit here is so that they can figure out who it is and avoid giving the person tickets in the future.
I'm not really sure what part of that is actually shady. (Excepting of course the explanation of why it's necessary to make the tickets non-transferable)
I don't blame the academy for wanting tighter security, and they have a valid reason for WANTING to know the identity, but security at the Oscars isn't Craigslist's responsibility, and they're not ENTITLED to that identity.
Forcing Craig's to stop the auction and prevent the sale? Reasonable. I would think that the extent of their liability would be to remove the auction of (what are presumably) non-transferrable tickets. Had they actually shown up in court, they could have had a good shot at protecting the sellers identity.
There's potential here for an unfortunate precedent.
Well I found my current apartment through the site, but it took weeks of combing out the wankers before I did. But in San Francisco it's something of an institution so you've got to use it.
Here's a handy tip I've come up with to determine, in a business vs. business lawsuit, who will win: Who has the most money to spend on lawyers?
If CL had attempted to fight the suit, with its meager resources, it would have lost. Then, the case may have stood as a precedent to future such cases.
CL was smart, not only for its own limited resources, but also for the larger communities that it and others serve, to not attempt to fight this suit. Let someone with deep pockets stand in and try to win a case that can stand.
(IANAL)
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
You:But all I want to do is to see the movie.
Clerk:Sorry Sir but we have to know who is in the theater. It is afterall for your own protection.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
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.
Craigslist doesn't manage auctions.
If you sell your Oscar tickets on Craigslist, the terrorists win.
'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
This strikes me as the classic fallacy for suing online service providers, to challenge the messenger for the messages that they deliver. Craigslist is about as fast and lose as sites seem to come, and all that's needed is a legitimate email address to post ~ which costs about five cents and ten minutes to set up. The service has absolutely no guarantees of poster accuracy, honesty, or legitimacy ~ honestly, about on par with a web board. Keeping eBay and Amazon on their toes is valid, in my book, solely for the fact that their sites enable transactions, but beyond that, it's buyer beware.
This lawsuit makes about as much sense as bringing the FTC in to a flea market. You can't impose any sorts of regulations without completely warping the existing system, in which case it's no longer a flea market.
Security has nothing to do with it. They just want to control who has access to the ceremony. "Knowing" who is there really has little to do with whether a place is secure, especially when there is no checks on who has access other than being "in the know" or "in the cool crowd."
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.
It sounds like Craigslist didn't want to give up the name outright, but they didn't want to enough to spend money to defend it in court either. Sort of like waiting until you get a subpoena before giving it up and then it's "Oh well, nothing I could do--don't sue me."
I wonder if the person in question knew about the lawsuit and, if so, could have sent his own representative.
A bigger question I have with these increasing attacks on privacy: How long before we start getting fake ids to protect our privacy from companies who seem all too will to give us up. For example, I found out my credit card now offers a different CC# to use on line so you have some layer of protection between your actual number, identity, etc. Not sure on how well that works, except that it should stop someone who has the number from using at large. I suppose it's a bit like PayPal. Although that still wouldn't help you if the company contacted Visa, MC, etc. and were able to get your ID through them. It would have to be like an off-shore PayPal that could verify a purchase or whatever needed verification, but kept your ID safe from even the ISPs.
How long before we need more layers of protection--where companies (and governments) can't just shut us down on a whim because we said something bad about them or sue us. Even if the individual is correct, very few people can afford to be sued by some company.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
How is this Craiglist's fault? "Daniel" was doing something he was barred from doing. Shouldn't people be more upset that Daniel is doing this instead of being upset at Craigslist for investing massive amounts of money to protect someone else's dubious behavior?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Craig didn't show up to defend someone he does know, I don't think anyone is surprised. God forbid, that someones actions actually have a consequence. They knew reselling the tickets wasn't allowed, I personally don't see why it is craiglists problem to begin with.
Either you are a woman, or you don't date.
We pay for sex. It may not be a direct cash transaction, but pay for it we do. We pay for it in meals, movies, flowers, jewelry, etc.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If the tickets are on sale to the Public? Then It's the public (very large and diverse group) you've invited? Everyone knows the public is a very dangerous group...Thats why many people hold Private gatherings.
If the concern is security...Don't sell to the Public.
Or am I missing something?
-DML
Craigslist isn't bound by a contract between two other parties, the question here is does the plaintiff have the right to the data in question.
They would need to claim the right under criminal law, or possibly trademark/copyright law. They can't claim it under the criminal since they aren't the State.
If I gave a copy of my keys to a friend, and it later appeared on craigslist, would I have the right to the name of the seller? The property wasn't stolen, and I have no particular rights attached to that key. AFAIK my only recourse would be to change the locks.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
They aren't talking about security in the terrorism/national security sense. Ever been to a private night club? The bouncer outside the door that lets people in based on how they're dressed, or their social status? That's the sort of security they're looking for.
They send out tickets to the people they would like to come. These people are the people that they feel "deserve" to be there. Now, these tickets are transferrable between friends. It is reasonably assumed that anyone they invited would give their ticket to someone of a similar status, by the nature of friendships and how people give shit away. When you have someone selling the tickets, however, you have the potential for the unsightly to sneak in the back. The tickets are the bouncer at the front door, and you don't want him to be easily purchased.
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.
Revenues about $150 million, operating cost about $15 Million, rest is profit split among the owners, 45% Craig Newmark, 30% Jim Buckmaster, 25% eBay
http://valleywag.com/375850/is-craigslist-worth-5-billion
So they're using the court system to figure out who to punish for doing something entirely legal?
I could see it if Daniel was under contract for the tickets, but if they just give him tickets with no stipulations, why should they get to enjoy the power of the courts and tax payer funding?
Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to buy the tickets off the guy, and as soon as you find out who is selling them, negate those tickets, then, as the buyer, refuse to pay for the now worthless tickets?
Woh, no money, no lawyers, and the seller gets screwed out of his tickets for trying to sell them. Done.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs