Eric’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog asks whether “the public interest got screwed” in the recent big win for Ticketmaster down in Alabama against RMS, a company whose software outsmarted Ticketmaster’s sales system. Copyright infringement was a lynchpin of the holding.
I was once consulted on a similar case and I was hoping that it was that same former client that lost this one — because the son of a gun stiffed me on my fee! But because of that experience and the analytical framework I ended up working through while considering similar issues, I’m sympathetic to the defendant there, and to Eric’s take on it, too:
It’s easy to point at RMS and its customers as the bad guys. After all, they are trying to get an unfair advantage in the first-come, first-served allocation of scarce tickets for their economic benefit, with the result that later comers have to pay more to get the same tickets.
But what about Ticketmaster’s role in this situation? They haven’t designed a technologically gaming-resistant allocation of tickets, so they need legal help to solve that deficiency. I also remain suspicious about Ticketmaster’s incentives here, both in setting prices and in policing against ticket allocation gaming. Their motives may not be nearly so consumer-friendly as they try to portray.
Well, no company is as consumer-friendly as it likes to portray itself. But Ticketmaster? Go ahead and Google it. It’s not pretty. On the other hand, is a company really obligated to “design[] a technologically gaming-resistant” business model before it can have recourse to the law to enforce its rights? I don’t think Eric means that, either. Read, as they say, the whole thing, though.
Originally posted 2015-03-27 14:31:24. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
