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Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business
- intsunny 6y agoWhat terribly worded and confusing as fuck title. In case anyone was wondering, who, specifically went out of business: > Court documents didn’t identify the rival company, but Variety reported it was Songkick, which in 2017 filed a lawsuit accusing Ticketmaster of hacking its database. A few months later, Songkick went out of business.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- varrock 6y agoI thought I was going crazy or that my English has gotten worse. Thank you. I initially read this as Ticketmaster going out of business and was shocked.
- spacemanmatt 6y agoIt's fairly frustrating that no one is going to prison over this 100% greed-motivated, brazen corporate crime.
- roywiggins 6y agoAt least one actual human has plead guilty: "The charges against Ticketmaster come 26 months after Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster’s artist services division, pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack the rival company and engage in wired [sic] fraud." He appears to be awaiting sentencing.
- yummypaint 6y agoLet's say this guy gets 2 years for conspiracy. Not even doing the crime. He loses 2 of about 45 years in the workforce, or vaguely 5% of his lifetime income. For this to be proportional, ticketmaster should lose either 2 full years worth of income, or 5% of all profits in perpetuity. The amount they were fined for actually doing the crime was a rounding error by comparison.
- mywittyname 6y agoI agree, but unfortunately, bribery, I mean, lobbying has a great ROI. It's cheap to buy your way into Congress.
- snakeboy 6y agoDiscussing the length of a prison sentence strictly in terms of income lost is also greatly understating the actual severity of the punishment. I would gladly give up say 10% of my lifetime earnings for all sorts of things, but I wouldn't trade 4.5 years of my healthy adult life for anything.
- ohyes 6y ago> I wouldn't trade 4.5 years of my healthy adult life for anything But you probably do, just not on purpose. It's smaller decisions that you don't realize involve trading 'healthy adult life' for money/convenience/pleasure/release. And of course, the work hours you put in are very directly trading healthy adult life for money. Opportunity cost is not something that we, as humans, are particularly good at. It is of course possible that you are exceptional, in which case you can assume I'm speaking from my own fallible experience of existence.
- richardwhiuk 6y agoNo, marginal cost of free time gets very expensive for most people. While I'd be willing to do my current job for X, if you wanted to double my hours, you'd need to pay me than 2X.
- snakeboy 6y agoYou're correct, I should have been more precise. 4.5 years lost all at once is what is unacceptable. I recognize work and all of life's "chores" take time, and that every decision I make cuts off an infinitude of other choices. Though most chores have a positive reward for doing them, while prison has very little. The larger point I intended was that for most people (especially handsomely-paid professionals like software devs) time is a more constrained resource than money. Lastly, time lost all at once is worse than time loss incrementally, i.e. if I could serve my 4.5 year sentence 40 hours a week, that doesn't sound so bad, or that unfamiliar... ;)
- spacemanmatt 6y ago> At a San Francisco meeting attended by at least 14 employees of Ticketmaster or its parent company Live Nation, the employee used one set of credentials to log in to an account to demonstrate how it worked. I think 15 conspiracy charges are appropriate, bare minimum.
- NeverFade 6y agoA corporation criminally hacked a rival for profit and got away with a small fine. A person doing the exact same thing would be heading to prison. Seems like the same crime has a very different outcome when a corporation commits it.
- roywiggins 6y agoThe article notes that Zeeshan Zaidi, a Ticketmaster exec, plead guilty to violating the CFAA and to wire fraud in 2019, and is apparently still awaiting sentencing. You can read the criminal complaint: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451.7.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 6y ago> still awaiting sentencing Aside from the usual explanation (white collar crime), any idea why someone can be found guilty and then still not given a sentence for more than a year. AFAICT he isn't even incarcerated at the moment.
- xwdv 6y agoA corporation regular committing crimes is a good revenue stream if they pay the fines consistently. So yes, the outcome is expected to be different, this shouldn’t be mind blowing.
- maedla 6y agoThey should be nationalized to become an even better revenue stream
- buran77 6y agoWhile superficially a good idea, it would probably punish shareholders more than the actual perpetrators and would most likely lead to a far lower performing company, so a weaker economy. How many state run companies do you know are performing great? Tesla may do any number of shady or illegal things but without Musk and his vested interest in the company it would probably be a footnote in some corporate obituary.
- ogre_codes 6y agoI hate the way this article is worded. Or perhaps the problem is the source documents. "Ticketmaster" didn't do anything. Ticketmaster is a company which cannot make decisions or take actions. - An employee at Ticketmaster stole a password (and financial documents) - Multiple other Ticketmaster employees abused that stolen information to actively attack a competitor. - Ticketmaster management was aware of this and rewarded that employee with a promotion and additional responsibilities. Both the thief and the managers who rewarded the the thief should be going to jail. Instead the company is paying a small fine. I guess at least someone is going to prison, but I doubt all of the parties who were aware are. As usual, the executives in charge walk away. Hopefully there is a class action lawsuit by the shareholders/ owners of this company against Ticketmaster.
- icefrakker 6y ago"Ticketmaster" didn't do anything. Ticketmaster is a company which cannot make decisions or take actions. It's sad that people can write things like this and still expect to have their opinions taken seriously.
- aqme28 6y agoIf corporate management knew about and encouraged this behavior, how is that not "Ticketmaster" doing it? IMO both the individuals and the corporation should be held responsible.
- ogre_codes 6y agoI guess I wasn't as clear as I thought here. Corporations can't act, people inside the corporations act. If laws get broken, the individuals who made that choice should pay the price. This wasn't a defense of the company, I'm fine with the company getting fined here, so long as the people who did this get penalized as well. So long as we let companies be a sort of shelter for the people inside the company, this kind of activity will continue.
- jnsie 6y agoKind of like saying "the 49ers didn't lose, their players did"...
- g2entgroup 6y agoThis is sad that larger companies have a fear of the new kids on the block. When in fact, large companies should be embracing the young companies.
- RyanGoosling 6y agoThat idea is not in-line with a business mindset.
- inetsee 6y agoLarge companies often embrace young companies. They buy them to eliminate competition.
- ineedasername 6y agoWhy are the people who did the hacking and those who ordered it not being brought up on criminal charges? How the heck is it that we have a legal system that shields criminals so long as the crime is in service to a large corporation?
- dvtrn 6y agoThe article, when we read it tells us: The charges against Ticketmaster come 26 months after Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster’s artist services division, pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack the rival company and engage in wired fraud. According to prosecutors, the former rival employee emailed the login credentials to Zaidi and another Ticketmaster employee.
- partiallypro 6y agoI still can't believe regulators allowed Ticketmaster and Live Nation to merge
- giobox 6y agoI was at law school during that merger and it was a major focus of the Competition Law course, one of the most obvious monopolies that was ever allowed to proceed in recent times really. I think entire academic staff expected the opposite outcome too!
- anigbrowl 6y agoI love law as a field, but the sad fact is that it's often a post-facto rationalization/repair of power politics. Sometimes it's like a conference of physicists trying to demonstrate that a fire in the room is not that hot instead of pouring water onto it.
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoTicketMaster was a textbook example of a consumer-harming monopoly WAY before that merger. I’ve written to a few senators about it. Jack shit has been done, of course.
- GrumpyNl 6y agoThere should be criminal charges to, otherwise, its just money. Take away your business license etc.
- Nacdor 6y ago> Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine Live Nation is worth $16 Billion. This is like a person with a $100k net worth having to pay a $62 fine, basically an expensive parking ticket. They might as well tell them to write "I will not hack my competitors" on the blackboard 100 times.
- soupson 6y agoYour point still stands, but a better comparison I think is cash on hand, since valuation doesn’t mean much in terms of paying fines. You can’t pay the government in stock. LYV had $2.6b on hand last quarter.
- arcticbull 6y agoYou totally can pay the government in stock, you just have to sell it or set it aside in a trust. There's prior art, this is what the IRS makes folks who are attempting to renounce their citizenship (or give up a green card held for over 8 years) do for illiquid assets when paying the expatriation tax.
- brokensegue 6y agobut LiveNation doesn't hold stock worth $16B and cannot easily issue new stock.
- arcticbull 6y agoI didn't realize paying criminal penalties was supposed to be fun and easy ;) this is literally restitution for a crime. "Uh, no Judge, I don't think I should be forced to go to prison, that's hard" [edit] Maybe this is controversial, I dunno, I might just be old fashioned that way, but my opinion is if you find the punishment too onerous maybe don't do crime.
- hhggfdss 6y agoI don't think that's what the person you are replying to meant by not easy, I think they meant blood from a stone not easy. The stone might've committed a crime for which it should bleed, but that doesn't mean you can make it do that. Get it?
- ajsharp 6y agoA $10 million dollar fine for this is hardly a disincentive for similarly minded actors to do the same. If you're a large incumbent company fearing a challenger, a $10 million worst-case scenario fine for taking them out is pennies compared to the saved revenue.
- Yourmama 6y agoGoogle and ti ketmaster should be merged. Would be best for all fans.
- 247hustler 6y agoWhat the hell lol
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoWait, SongKick went out of business? What the hell is the app installed on my phone, then?
- shmageggy 6y agoClicking through some of the links in the article, it looks like it refers to their ticketing operation which was apparently separate.
- jedberg 6y agoTicketmaster bought them in 2018 as the first part of the settlement.
- petesmithy 6y agoThe bit that you can still see (ie. mobile app, website) is owned by Warner now actually, acquired by them in July 2017. The bit that Ticketmaster/LN 'acquired' in 2018 was, by then, just a vehicle for the lawsuit related to this hack/other anti-competitive/monopolistic behaviour.
- throwawaysk 6y agoI worked at Songkick. The business was not sustainable, there was no revenue stream in sight before the Crowdsurge merger. Crowdsurge effectively acquired us when they merged as Songkick had run out of funding, with no potential buyers or investors. Crowdsurge was not sustainable either, they lost money on every ticket sold, but mostly because TM would only allow 10% of any allocation at any TM venue. Crowdsurge were backed by Access (Len Blavatnik who owns Warner). The CEO and COO of Crowdsurge went after Ticketmaster as an exit. They built a corporate structure that made the employee share pool worthless. This meant that no employees ever saw any of the $110m "buy out" and they will never see any of this new $10m. The CEO and COO have a lot to answer for.
- tschellenbach 6y agoProbably related to the large amount of funding they raised compared to the exit, https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/songkick https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/songkick
- riteshpatel 6y agoYikes :O
- nanna 6y agoI worked at SK too, leaving to pursue my studies. I always wondered what happened in the end, so thanks. I assumed the crew at least got something from the buyout - damn I'm really sorry for them that they didn't.
- boshjlock 6y agoThe COO was a psychopath who treated daily company life as a game of poker. From the Crowdsurge side, it never really came as a surprise that the exec team were always planning to fuck over the company in their favour.
- tareqak 6y agoCould the $10 million fine be used by a future defendant to argue that the crime is not a big deal? What if members of FAANG+M decided to hack small startups or even each other?
- agilob 6y ago> What if members of FAANG+M decided to hack small startups or even each other? You mean the way Amazon does it every day to successful, independent small sellers, copies their products and bans them from Amazon without providing a reason why? The way Google removed Tutanota from search results? Microsoft spread FUD about open-source? Or like Oracle acquired MySQL?
- hemloc_io 6y agoCyberpunk Corpo wars come closer and closer to reality every day...
- spoonjim 6y agoAnd nobody will change their behaviors because all but one of them suffer no personal consequences. They got the benefit of the crime and have to pay no price. Corporate crime needs to be prosecuted like personal crime, with 20-year-jail sentences in a jail full of Crips and Bloods and Aryan Brotherhood. Your Harvard MBA dude truly knows that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a place like that.
- markovbot 6y agosounds like the system is working as intended
- roywiggins 6y agoThe article says that an executive was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the CFAA, pled guilty, and is awaiting sentencing. It's up to the judge whether he sees the inside of a jail cell.
- mmaunder 6y agoSo Anthony Levandowski got 18 months in prison for stealing self driving car secrets from Waymo (Alphabet) and passing them to Uber. Live Nation did $10B in revenue in 2017 and they're fined 0.1% of annual revenue for a CFAA violation which has sentences up to 20 years for individuals.
- hsod 6y agoThe individual who did the hacking was criminally prosecuted and pled guilty to a CFAA violation https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451.7.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.439451...
- Merman_Mike 6y agoWhat was their sentence?
- mandevil 6y agoNot sentenced yet, even though he plead guilty in October 2019. Apparently there have been some things that delayed his sentencing since then?
- Triv888 6y agoIn China, the CEO would probably disappear for a few months
- mhh__ 6y agoOnly if you stole it from the CCP
- mav3rick 6y agoIs he actually serving time ?
- ipqk 6y agoCompare this slap on the wrist to Aaron Swartz: Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[15] carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
- nathanyz 6y agoIt is one of the great imbalances in the justice system where technically corporations are people, but criminally don't face anywhere near the same levels of punishment.
- spoonjim 6y agoIndividuals are frequently given “life without parole,” which effectively erases them, but corporations almost never get this.
- ljm 6y agoThey get all of the benefits of personhood but literally none of the drawbacks.
- NegativeLatency 6y agoAnd other benefits too: Disney trying to shirk its royalty paying responsibilities https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25143926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25143926
- marricks 6y agoThat's one way to look at it, but I think the deeper truth is just systems are pretty much always controlled by the powerful and benefit only them. Any new rules will be enforced as such. The HN thread discussing blue state concealed carry laws was very revealing; turns out those laws just lead to pay offs to police departments when some org needs permits. [1] Senators make millions on insider relief package info? Who cares. You challenge the powerful by revealing embarrassing secrets? Enemy of the state, you're gonna lose everything or at the very least many years of your life in legal limbo. The power balance in many cases could be the real issue, everyday people just need to (somehow) get way more empowered. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193861
- smsm42 6y agoSo they knowingly committed multiple felonies and got fined 0.1% of their annual revenue? That sure will show them! That would sting about as much as me getting a parking ticket. So somehow hacking a competitor is on the same level as parking on a wrong side of the street.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago"Too Big to Prosecute"
- yowlingcat 6y agoThis one is really brazen, isn't it? I always wonder why this kind of nonsense doesn't end in criminal charges for the chain of command involved. On the other hand, historically, the entertainment industry has thrown notoriously heavy hands about to defend its perceived territory. I wonder if this is the price American society pays for patronage of the global entertainment industry.
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoTicketmaster keeps buying up its actual competitors... that's why there's no natural challenger to remove this filth. American Capitalism FTW.
- jrochkind1 6y agoIf you're curious what Ticketmaster or it's parent organization LiveNation's revenue is, to compare this fine... it looks like the pandemic predictably took a huge bite out of it, but here are some numbers: > Third-quarter revenue was about $154 million in 2020 compared to over $3 billion in 2019, with the company — which operates both Live Nation and Ticketmaster — reporting a $173 million loss for its concert business and a $142 million loss for ticketing. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/live-nation-revenue-drop-q3-2020-1086584/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/live-nation-revenue-dr...
- jrochkind1 6y agoI don't understand why there isn't an anti-trust investigation against Live Nation at this point. I mean, I guess maybe there could be and we don't know.
- not2b 6y agoLess than 0.1% of their market cap, in exchange for detroying a rival, a move that probably netted them well more than $10M. Cost of doing business, a message to all companies that they might as well do this kind of thing because any fine will be far less than the profits gained.
- dave_sid 6y agoSongKick is out of business??? Damn
- Jerry2 6y agoAt the very least, the manager who approved this hack should be charged with a criminal offence. This imbalance in the justice system is beyond disgusting. People need to protest this in front of DOJ offices. There are people in prison right now fur doing security research yet these criminals are off with a fine.
- roywiggins 6y agoThe executive who ordered the hack- Zaidi- literally was charged and plead guilty. It's mentioned in the article.
- harry8 6y agoSo you're a CEO of a company. Other employees of the company commit crimes. You know about the crimes. The company profits from the crimes paying your salary &/or bonus. You do not inform the police. How is this not a criminal conspiracy engaged in by the CEO (either before or after the fact) resulting in Jail time for the CEO? Is it just because "with a computer" that the CEO isn't facing charges? What crimes committed and prior or subsequent knowledge of and then profit from those crimes would qualify in the CEO being charged with being involved in a criminal conspiracy? Does it have to be something that reads dramatically in a newspaper like armed robbery or assult or murder? Do the victims of the crime have to be elderly? Or are those crimes also fine as long as your title is CEO rather than "Don"? Is this fixable?
- sunir 6y agoThis was a criminal conviction. It says so in the article. Are you commenting on the disparate sentencing for the company versus an individual? It is a deferred prosecution agreement, which is definitely an aspect of corporatism: that is the pre -eminent rights of corporations over natural people. However there was a criminal conviction of a natural person as well. The DPP was the criminal conviction of the corporation that benefited from the underlying crime. DPPs exist to avoid collateral damage to innocents dependent on the corporation, whilst still criminally convicting the corporation itself. It’s a balancing game. With it a bit nuanced I am curious to understand better what you meant by your comment.
- harry8 6y agoLooks to me like the person who holds the job title CEO has engaged in a criminal conspiracy. For profit. Is that really not how it looks to you? Has the CEO been charged? How bad does the crime have to be before the CEO being involved in it before it happened, or becoming aware and profiting from it after without informing the police before the CEO is themselves charged for the CEO's criminal behaviour in engaging in a criminal conspiracy with respect to that crime. I'm hoping if the crime was murder, conspiring by the CEO would result in charges. Yes? What level of crime is sheielded? Should any crime be sheielded like this?
- djabatt 6y agoThis a sick company.
- Kosirich 6y agoHow is 10 million fine deterrent to other companies trying to do the same or what is the incentives for companies to really impose internal ethic guidelines, rule following ect. and not just in name only? How are the company holders incentivized to hold management accountable? Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but as a major holder of the company it seems it would be in my interest to encourage my management in doing what ever they deem necessary to come on top, even if it means breaking the law, as the "spoils" in the end will justify the fine. This reminded me of the VW case where management involved in illegal activates surrounding emission test fraud, prepared funds to pay the fine in advance.
- habosa 6y agoThe fine is certainly too small, but also shouldn't someone be criminally charged here? I feel like many laws were broken and they know exactly who did it.
- gt2 6y agoIf Songkick went out of business why does the songkick.com domain work and have the same Songkick branding as it used to?