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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.