Month: November 2024

Stubhub & Co. Launch Stealth state-by-state legislative offensive strategy for Astroturf “Model” State Ticketing Laws

By Chris Castle

Yes, it’s kismet in the legislature–the sketchy ticket resellers are redoubling their efforts to normalize “speculative tickets.” They have found a willing partner in gaslighting with an organization called “ALEC”.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (hence “ALEC“) is a nonprofit organization that brings together private sector representatives and relatively conservative state legislators to draft (and pass) “model legislation” that pushes a particular narrative. (That private sector representation is led by Netchoice, aka, Big Tech.) Unlike other model legislation with a social benefit like say the Uniform Partnership Act, ALEC’s “model legislation” pushes a particular agenda. Examples would be “stand your ground” gun laws, Voter ID laws, and “right to work” laws.

Netchoice Members (Netchoice leads ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council)

ALEC’s many successfully-passed “model” laws are intended to be passed by state legislatures as-written. Like Al Capone’s green beer, it ain’t meant to be good it’s meant to be drunk. A cynic–not mentioning the names of any particular cynics–might say that the ALEC strategy is an end-run around federal legislation (like the fake library legislation that was shot down in New York). If ALEC can get a critical mass of states to pass one of their “model bills” as-drafted on any particular subject, then the need for federal legislation on that topic may become more muted. In fact, if federal legislation becomes inevitable, the ALEC model bills then provide guidance for federal legislation, or new federal legislation has to draft around the states that adopt the model bill.

So much for Justice Louis Brandeis’ concept of states as laboratories of democracy (New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262 (1932)), unless that lab belongs to Dr. Frankenstein. ALEC’s mission claims to promote principles of limited government, free markets, and federalism; I will leave you to decide if it’s more about checkbook federalism.

Ticketing Panel, Artist Rights Symposium 11/20/24, Washington DC
L-R: Chris Castle (Artist Rights Institute), Dr. David Lowery (Univ. of Georgia, Terry College of Business), Mala Sharma (Georgia Music Partners), Stephen Parker (National Independent Venue Association), Kevin Erickson (Future of Music Coalition)

Like so many of these bills, ALEC’s Live Event Ticketing Consumer Protection & Reform Act disguises its true objective with a bunch of gaslighting bromides that they evidently believe to be persuasive and then when you’re not looking they slip in the knife. Then when the knife is protruding from your back you discover the true purpose. I think this section of the bill is the true purpose:

This is an odd construct. The model bill starts out by requiring positive behavior of a primary seller (which would be the band on fan club sales or other direct to fan sales). That positive behavior immediately turns to using the ticket purchaser into an enforcer of the values beneficial to the ticket reseller. This is done by forcing a purchaser to be able to resell their ticket without regard to any restrictions placed on reselling by the artist. 

And you know that’s the intention because the section also requires there to be no maximum or minimum price. While the model bill doesn’t require any particular restriction on the platforms, it has enough in it that it can look like a consumer protection bill, but what it is really doing and apparently was designed to accomplish is eliminate an artist’s a ability to set prices.

ALEC is serious about violations of the act, including civil penalties. Their model ticketing legislation can be enforced by both the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Penalties can include fines of up to $15,000 per day of violation and $1,000 per event ticket advertised or sold. One problem with the model bill is that it appropriates jurisdiction already available to federal agencies like the FTC which is already failing to enforce the existing BOTS Act and other property theft laws.

The main targets seem to be Stubhub’s competitors like “Primary Ticket Merchants,” These are the original sellers of event tickets, such as event organizers or venues. “Secondary Ticket Merchants” may also be prosecuted as well as individuals.

We continue to study the proposed model legislation, but I tend to agree with Stephen Parker (NIVA) and Kevin Erickson (Future of Music) on my Artist Rights Institute panel in DC yesterday. The better model bill may be their bill passed in Maryland, recently signed into law by Maryland governor Wes More.

Key differences between Maryland and the ALEC bill I could spot:

  • Scope of Penalties: The Maryland bill specifies fines for speculative ticket sales, while the ALEC bill includes broader penalties for various violations.
  • Refund Policies: The Maryland bill explicitly requires refunds for counterfeit tickets, canceled events, or mismatched tickets, whereas the ALEC bill focuses more on transparency and restrictive practices.
  • Study on Resale Impact: The Maryland bill includes a provision for studying the impact of resale price caps, which is not present in the ALEC bill.

    It appears that the Live Event Ticketing Consumer Protection & Reform Act will be introduced at the ALEC meeting on December 5, 2024. This is where ALEC members, including state legislators and private sector representatives, will discuss and vote on the model policy. 

    Watch this space.
by Trichordist

Selected Quotes from Keynote Presentation by DiMA CEO Graham Davies, Nov. 20 4th Annual @ArtistRights Symposium at @AmericanU’s @KogodBIZ

RICK

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

from Casablanca, Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Howard Koch 

Following are excepts from Graham Davies keynote at the 4th Annual Artist Rights Symposium

“The issue – and challenge – of incomplete metadata is one close to my heart, as I worked for many years dealing with finding solutions to reduce the significant cost that collecting societies incur, trying to find this missing data. This is why I started the Credits Due initiative when I was at Ivors [Academy], to raise awareness of the problem and support industry wide solutions that enable accurate metadata to be attached to recordings at the earliest point in the creation process.

This was how I first encountered [Digital Media Association], who have supported the initiative from the beginning. The supply of recordings with accurate metadata is in the interests of creators, rightsholders and streaming services alike.”

“The previous pre-[Music Modernization Act] approach to licensing musical compositions was not particularly effective before and became entirely unfit when it was overtaken by the speed of adoption of streaming. And to understand why this was the case, let’s step through how the licensing process worked – or didn’t – pre-MMA.”

“To date, DIMA’s members and other streaming services have paid more than $160 million dollars for the operation of the [Mechanical Licensing Collective], including meeting all of the requirements for its setup. And the MLC has now distributed more than $2 billion dollars in revenues collected from the streaming services. 

This is a great success. The MMA has given certainty to licensees and rightsholders alike, whether major publishers, independent publishers and songwriters.”

“It is our collective role to ensure the MLC embraces its responsibility – actually, it’s statutory obligation – to serve its three key stakeholders – songwriters, publishers, and streaming services.”

Let me be clear –  any efforts to unravel the MMA will not improve licensing or improve the growth and success of the music industry. Rather, such moves will lead to an upheaval of the whole system and likely return to the problems of the past.” 

by theinvisiblestagehand

Updates for Nov. 20 @ArtistRights Symposium at @AmericanU @KogodBiz in Washington DC

We are announcing the time schedule and speakers for the 4th annual Artist Rights Symposium on November 20. The symposium is supported by the Artist Rights Institute and was founded by Dr. David C. Lowery, Lecturer at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business.

This year the symposium is hosted in Washington, DC, by American University’s Kogod School of Business at American’s Constitution Hall, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016.  We are also pleased to have a Kogod student presentation on speculative ticketing as part of the speaker lineup.

Admission is free, but please reserve a spot with Eventbrite, seating is limited!

The symposium starts at 8:30 am and ends with a reception at 4:30pm. The symposium will be recorded as an audiovisual presentation for distribution at a later date, but will not be live-streamed. If you attend, understand that you may be filmed in any audience shots, questions from the floor or still images. The symposium social media hashtag is #ArtistRightsKogod.

Schedule

8:30 — Doors open, networking coffee.

9:00-9:10 — Welcome remarks by David Marchick, Dean, Kogod School of Business

9:10-9:15 — Welcome remarks by Christian L. Castle, Esq., Director, Artist Rights Institute

9:15-10:15 — THE TROUBLE WITH TICKETS:  The Challenges of Ticket Resellers and Legislative Solutions:

Kevin Erickson, Director, Future of Music Coalition, Washington DC
Dr. David C. Lowery, Co-founder of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, University of Georgia
  Terry College of Business, Athens, Georgia
Stephen Parker, Executive Director, National Independent Venue Association, Washington DC
Mala Sharma, President, Georgia Music Partners, Atlanta, Georgia

Moderator:  Christian L. Castle, Esq., Director, Artist Rights Institute, Austin, Texas

10:15-10:30: NIVA Speculative Ticketing Project Presentation by Kogod students

10:30-10:45: Coffee break

10:45-11:00: OVERVIEW OF CURRENT ISSUES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LITIGATION: Kevin Madigan, Vice President, Legal Policy and Copyright Counsel, Copyright Alliance

11:00-12 pm: SHOW ME THE CREATOR – Transparency Requirements for AI Technology:

Danielle Coffey, President & CEO, News Media Alliance, Arlington, Virginia
Dahvi Cohen, Legislative Assistant, U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff, Washington, DC
Ken Doroshow, Chief Legal Officer, Recording Industry Association of America, Washington DC 

Moderator: Linda Bloss-Baum, Director of the Kogod School of Business’s Business & Entertainment Program

12:00-12:30: Lunch break

12:30-1:30: Keynote: Graham Davies, President and CEO of the Digital Media Association, Washington DC.

1:30-1:45: Coffee break

1:45-2:45: CHICKEN AND EGG SANDWICH:  Bad Song Metadata, Unmatched Funds, KYC and What You Can Do About It

Richard James Burgess, MBE, President & CEO, American Association of Independent Music, New York
Helienne Lindvall, President, European Composer & Songwriter Alliance, London, England
Abby North, President, North Music Group, Los Angeles
Anjula Singh, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, SoundExchange, Washington DC

Moderator:  Christian L. Castle, Esq, Director, Artist Rights Institute, Austin, Texas

2:45-3:15: Reconvene across street to International Service Founders Room for concluding speakers and reception

3:15-3:30: OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LEGISLATION: George York, Senior Vice President International Policy from RIAA.

3:30-4:30: NAME, IMAGE AND LIKENESS RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF AI:  Current initiatives to protect creator rights and attribution

Jeffrey Bennett, General Counsel, SAG-AFTRA, Washington, DC
Jen Jacobsen, Executive Director, Artist Rights Alliance, Washington DC
Jalyce E. Mangum, Attorney-Advisor, U.S. Copyright Office, Washington DC

Moderator: John Simson, Program Director Emeritus, Business & Entertainment, Kogod School of Business, American University

4:30-5:30: Concluding remarks by Linda Bloss-Baum, Director of the Kogod School of Business’s Business & Entertainment Program and reception.

by Trichordist Editor

Kim Dot Com Emerges from the Memory Hole

By Chris Castle

“If you get down on your knees and beg to be arrested, don’t be surprised if you are.”

That was what I told a TV news anchor in an interview I did in 2012 right after Kim Dot Com was arrested on his vast estate in New Zealand.  Dot Com’s arrest started a long running extradition proceeding between the United States and New Zealand that Dot Com and his team of lawyers somehow managed to drag out until this year.  That’s right—twelve years.  That puts him right up there with Roman Polanski and Meng Wanzhou.  So now Dot Com is subject to extradition back the US to face criminal charges, and yet nobody in New Zealand seems to be in a big hurry to arrest him and send him Stateside.

The first time I connected the dots on Dot Com’s piracy site Megaupload was when film maker Ellen Seidler launched a site called Pop Up Pirates.   Megaupload figured large in her site for a simple reason:  When you tried to access a film stored on Megaupload, it launched a popup with an ad.  At that time, many of those ads included a credit saying “Ads by Google.”  Ellen gave me a short clip of her launching the Mega popup in real time with a close up of that ad.  I played the clip on a panel with one of the Google charm offensive folks who I thought was going to vomit when he realized what I had just shown the audience.  I thought I conclusively demonstrated that Google profited from piracy and paid pirates—being Kim Dot Com aka “Defendant.”

Shortly after, I started posting about this obvious connection, which is how Dot Com and his confederates were getting rich from their the-Hong Kong-based pirate site.  And of course, I would find it hard to believe that anyone was operating a lucrative pirate site from Hong Kong without taking care of people if you know what I mean.  So there’s that.

Fast forward a year and I was in front of the National Association of Attorneys General demonstrating Google’s many, many connections to crime, terrorists, and general issue bad guys.  

Right about this time I got a call from a distinguished music industry executive who asked me whether I was seriously suggesting that a public company was involved in funding crime.  I said that’s exactly what I was saying.  If that were to happen today, nobody, and I mean nobody, would question that Google is the paymaster of the dark web.

Which leads me to the Dot Com indictment.  It turns out that we are not the only ones who made the connection between Google and massive piracy. The Department of Justice did, too, and describes the connection quite clearly in the indictment.

Adbright and Google were Sequoia investments and PartyGaming was one of the big donors to Creative Commons (and the whole Lessig/Nesson poker lobbying extravaganza).

So who had an interest in keeping Kim Dot Com out of an American jail in case he might negotiate a plea deal as did his confederate Andrus Nomm back in 2018? According to the New Zealand Herald:

While [Dot Com] and his co-accused have denied all charges, Nomm testified in support of the US case. As an insider, his testimony will be key to supporting prosecution arguments the so-called “Megaconspiracy” knew what it was doing, attacking any claim the accused were acting in the belief the website was lawful.

Nomm’s testimony was included in the case for extradition in New Zealand but documents showing how will not be made public until after the judge’s decision has been made. The Herald is unable to report the details of the US case that Nomm pleaded guilty to in the United States until then.

The press release from the U.S. Department of Justice tells us:

In court papers, Nomm agreed that the harm caused to copyright holders by the Mega Conspiracy’s criminal conduct exceeded $400 million.  He further acknowledged that the group obtained at least $175 million in proceeds through their conduct.  Megaupload.com had claimed that, at one time, it accounted for four percent of total Internet traffic, having more than one billion total visits, 150 million registered users and 50 million daily visitors.

In a statement of facts filed with his plea agreement, Nomm admitted that he was a computer programmer who worked for the Mega Conspiracy from 2007 until his arrest in January 2012.  Nomm further admitted that, through his work as a computer programmer, he was aware that copyright-infringing content was stored on the websites, including copyright protected motion pictures and television programs, some of which contained the “FBI Anti-Piracy” warning.  Nomm also admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from the Mega websites.  Despite his knowledge in this regard, Nomm continued to participate in the Mega Conspiracy. 

An extradition hearing for co-defendants Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram Van der Kolk and Finn Batato is currently scheduled for June 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand.  Co-defendants Julius Bencko and Sven Echternach remain at large.

This case is being investigated by the FBI’s Headquarters and Washington Field Office.  The case is being prosecuted by Senior Counsel Ryan K. Dickey and Brian L. Levine of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu of the Eastern District of Virginia.  The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs also provided significant assistance.

So if there was a “conspiracy”, it takes more than two to tango. That racketeering and money laundering conspiracy might have included the advertising companies that played an essential role in providing illicit revenue to the “Megaconspiracy”. Recall that Google got caught in a federal sting operation, paid a $500,000,000 fine and entered a nonprosecution agreement with the same DOJ for promoting the sale of illegal drugs online, all at roughly the same time as they appear to have been the paymaster for Mr. Dot Com. Why else were Adbright, Google and Partygaming mentioned in the indictment?

Stay tuned, boys and girls.  The plot sickens.

by thetrichordist