7 ms·

> 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

by 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 ago
Your 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    but LiveNation doesn't hold stock worth $16B and cannot easily issue new stock.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      I 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 ago
        I 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?
      - james-skemp 6y ago
        Punishment is meant to deter others from doing the crime (whether or not that works is another issue), so I think you're correct. If people/organizations are committing a crime, then one reason may be that the punishment/deterrent is too lax. (There's of course other reasons, like the law making the act a crime is bad in some way, or the individual/organization has no, or knows of no, alternative.)
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        Maybe this is an opening for a new startup: Frictionless, delightful resolution of criminal charges for the ultrawealthy. Simple automated payment of slap-on-the-wrist fines, and with the optional Uber-for-inmates premium add-on we'll find somebody to serve any jail time in your place.
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        It is not restitution if the money doesn’t go the harmed party
        munk-a 6y ago
        Restitution is one of the comparably less important facets of our legal system (IMO), the important strength of a good legal system is deterrence. Restitution should (again IMO) in fact be severed from judgement, harmed parties should be reimbursed by the government and the government can excise penalties on the offending parties. There are a lot of cases where defendants should be hit with serious fines due to the potential and foreseeable damages of their actions but the claimants suffered comparatively little - in these cases an imbalanced judgement where the defendant is hit with a strong penalty that is only partially awarded to the claimant is fair... Then again (in the US at least) the legal system is essentially privatized with very little government intervention in cases so this would require some other changes to do properly. The other side of the coin is quite damaging to our society as well - a defendant being judgement proof (having nothing to penalize or fine) can deprive claimants of funds needed to repair the damage of the crime - this, again, is a case where the government awarding funds and then regaining those funds from the defendant independently would be quite beneficial.
    - texasbigdata 6y ago
      That’s not the right way to think about it. Enterprise value is some number say $19B (shares plus debt less cash; think of the equity in your house). Assume existing debt is $5B. You “give” a debt-like instrument to govt, say $10B. Debt is ahead of stock. The stock is now “worth” a few billion. No new stock issued. The Nobel prize in economics was won for this concept in 1990 iirc: the value of the firm is independent to how it’s financed. Just like how the value of your house has nothing to do with what interest rate you pay in your mortgage.
- sscotth 6y ago
  My cash on hand is significantly less than my net worth too.
  - not2b 6y ago
    If you commit an offense that has a large financial penalty, no one will care about that, you'll have to sell assets to raise the cash.
codereflection 6y ago
... and they'll call it "The cost of doing business". Disgusting.
- xmprt 6y ago
  Are fines tax deductible?
  - jedberg 6y ago
    No, fines aren't deductible.
paxys 6y ago
It isn't even an expensive parking ticket. Traffic fines in the Bay Area are in the hundreds even for minor offenses.
- nOObie1 6y ago
  The Bay Area and expensive are already synonymous
femto113 6y ago
Worth noting that TicketMaster also paid $110MM to "acquire" SongKick in order to settle the original (civil) lawsuit.
- m463 6y ago
  This could be a business model.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ct520 6y ago
    Sounds like some solid DD to me
  - Bombthecat 6y ago
    The world is turning more and more into neuromancer / shadowrun everyday..
  - superfrank 6y ago
    It basically is a business model for dating sites. Get big enough to be annoying and then wait for Match Group to make an offer. Match Group owns Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, and PlentyOfFish as well as a metric fuck ton of niche sites.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      This seems like a huge gaping loophole in capitalism. I think companies should be disallowed to buy competing companies (even via proxy) and companies beyond certain threshold should by law be divided into smaller companies.
      - tim333 6y ago
        It's been noted. It's what the > The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission was set up on 1 January 1949 was for, now the Competition Commission. How well that works is debatable.
CerealFounder 6y ago
LOL A criminal fine. Is there anything more insane than nobody being personally responsible for committing a crime. Like an institution woke up and developed cognition.
- byset 6y ago
  But per the article, a Ticketmaster employee has pleaded guilty to a criminal offense related to the hacking
jobu 6y ago
Fines for corporations should be a percentage of revenue, otherwise massive companies will keep doing heinous shit and write it off as a cost of doing business. The GDPR penalties in the EU are done this way (up to 4% of revenue).
- hansvm 6y ago
  That still just seems like a band-aid (sorry, I don't have a constructive alternative in mind). If Massively-Evil-Plan™ increases profits from 10% to 20% then even after a 4% fine on revenue, real profits are still 15%. A company only motivated by profits and fines (which seems like a reasonable assumption if we're using laws like GDPR to deter "heinous shit") would be crazy not to continue with MEP™. It's really the same kind of calculation as with fixed fines or fines based on damage done. When profitable, they're still written off as the cost of doing business. The only material difference would be that a fixed fine effectively allows large companies to do "heinous shit" while imposing fines so large that a small company can't compete, whereas with a revenue calculation you instead just need to make sure that your "heinous shit" is scalable. That doesn't apply in practice though, since GDPR has an alternative €20M fine which would go into effect, so in reality GDPR just says that to do "heinous shit" you need to be able to do a lot of it scalably and profitably. The natural direction one might take this is just to say that the fines must not be big enough, but until you approach 100% of revenue the potential always exists for a new form of profitable "heinous shit" to crop up. If fines of that scale are on the table then that brings us to the other side of the coin: A single violation of any anti-MEP™ law will nearly certainly end the business. If a violation of an anti-MEP™ law necessarily meant that a corporation was doing "heinous shit" then that could plausibly be acceptable (definitely up for debate), but merely not appointing a data protection officer in the EU violates GDPR and potentially subjects a business to a 2% of revenue fine. The law will not perfectly align with what a reasonable person would consider "heinous shit," and too severe of a penalty in such situations seems prone to abuse.
cbsmith 6y ago
This is the not-quite-last (there's a deferred prosecution agreement that is part of this) in a series of consequences in a case that goes way back in time. I'm not sure I follow the logic of looking at the net worth of a conglomerate when assessing a fine. If someone parks the corporate car in a no-parking zone, or spits out chewing gum on the sidewalk, you're not going to fine them x% of net worth. At least in terms of consequences for the corporation, you'd they would be (punitively) proportional to the economic impact of the criminal activity. What was the impact of this conduct? It's not mentioned in the story. If they paid a $10 million fine on criminal activity that gleaned them a $1 billion advantage, then yeah this is a slap on the wrist. If it's a $10 million fine on something that gave them a $10 advantage, it's arguably overly punitive.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  Some countries actually do this, charge variable fines depending on net worth. The fine in this case is to de-incentivize bad behavior like reckless driving.
  - cbsmith 6y ago
    It makes sense for penalties on people that aren't motivated by profit.
tschwimmer 6y ago
A street cleaning ticket in SF is $79 and is probably one of the cheapest fines you'll pay.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  A parking ticket in Chelsea, Michigan is $8. I forgot to pay it for 6 months and they didn't even care.
  - enkid 6y ago
    Some places parking ticket is revenue, some places it's just a reminder.
    - sixothree 6y ago
      I think I paid > $150 for parking too close to a driveway.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    The cost of going to a judge for an arrest warrant and then arresting you would cost an least an order of magnitude more than that!
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  A speeding ticket in Southern California was over $600 for me a few years ago.
nightcracker 6y ago
> 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. Not even. I bet a person with a $100k net worth will probably rather pay $62 than have to do the blackboard punishment.
SN76477 6y ago
Fines for such acts need to be much larger. In addition I would like to see such funds turned into appropriate federal grants.

by Nacdor 6y ago

soupson 6y ago

Your 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 ago
You 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 ago
  but LiveNation doesn't hold stock worth $16B and cannot easily issue new stock.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    I 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 ago
      I 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?
    - james-skemp 6y ago
      Punishment is meant to deter others from doing the crime (whether or not that works is another issue), so I think you're correct. If people/organizations are committing a crime, then one reason may be that the punishment/deterrent is too lax. (There's of course other reasons, like the law making the act a crime is bad in some way, or the individual/organization has no, or knows of no, alternative.)
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Maybe this is an opening for a new startup: Frictionless, delightful resolution of criminal charges for the ultrawealthy. Simple automated payment of slap-on-the-wrist fines, and with the optional Uber-for-inmates premium add-on we'll find somebody to serve any jail time in your place.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      It is not restitution if the money doesn’t go the harmed party
      - munk-a 6y ago
        Restitution is one of the comparably less important facets of our legal system (IMO), the important strength of a good legal system is deterrence. Restitution should (again IMO) in fact be severed from judgement, harmed parties should be reimbursed by the government and the government can excise penalties on the offending parties. There are a lot of cases where defendants should be hit with serious fines due to the potential and foreseeable damages of their actions but the claimants suffered comparatively little - in these cases an imbalanced judgement where the defendant is hit with a strong penalty that is only partially awarded to the claimant is fair... Then again (in the US at least) the legal system is essentially privatized with very little government intervention in cases so this would require some other changes to do properly. The other side of the coin is quite damaging to our society as well - a defendant being judgement proof (having nothing to penalize or fine) can deprive claimants of funds needed to repair the damage of the crime - this, again, is a case where the government awarding funds and then regaining those funds from the defendant independently would be quite beneficial.
  - texasbigdata 6y ago
    That’s not the right way to think about it. Enterprise value is some number say $19B (shares plus debt less cash; think of the equity in your house). Assume existing debt is $5B. You “give” a debt-like instrument to govt, say $10B. Debt is ahead of stock. The stock is now “worth” a few billion. No new stock issued. The Nobel prize in economics was won for this concept in 1990 iirc: the value of the firm is independent to how it’s financed. Just like how the value of your house has nothing to do with what interest rate you pay in your mortgage.
sscotth 6y ago
My cash on hand is significantly less than my net worth too.
- not2b 6y ago
  If you commit an offense that has a large financial penalty, no one will care about that, you'll have to sell assets to raise the cash.

codereflection 6y ago

... and they'll call it "The cost of doing business". Disgusting.

xmprt 6y ago
Are fines tax deductible?
- jedberg 6y ago
  No, fines aren't deductible.

paxys 6y ago

It isn't even an expensive parking ticket. Traffic fines in the Bay Area are in the hundreds even for minor offenses.

nOObie1 6y ago
The Bay Area and expensive are already synonymous

femto113 6y ago

Worth noting that TicketMaster also paid $110MM to "acquire" SongKick in order to settle the original (civil) lawsuit.

m463 6y ago
This could be a business model.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ct520 6y ago
  Sounds like some solid DD to me
- Bombthecat 6y ago
  The world is turning more and more into neuromancer / shadowrun everyday..
- superfrank 6y ago
  It basically is a business model for dating sites. Get big enough to be annoying and then wait for Match Group to make an offer. Match Group owns Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, and PlentyOfFish as well as a metric fuck ton of niche sites.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    This seems like a huge gaping loophole in capitalism. I think companies should be disallowed to buy competing companies (even via proxy) and companies beyond certain threshold should by law be divided into smaller companies.
    - tim333 6y ago
      It's been noted. It's what the > The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission was set up on 1 January 1949 was for, now the Competition Commission. How well that works is debatable.

CerealFounder 6y ago

LOL A criminal fine. Is there anything more insane than nobody being personally responsible for committing a crime. Like an institution woke up and developed cognition.

byset 6y ago
But per the article, a Ticketmaster employee has pleaded guilty to a criminal offense related to the hacking

jobu 6y ago

Fines for corporations should be a percentage of revenue, otherwise massive companies will keep doing heinous shit and write it off as a cost of doing business. The GDPR penalties in the EU are done this way (up to 4% of revenue).

hansvm 6y ago
That still just seems like a band-aid (sorry, I don't have a constructive alternative in mind). If Massively-Evil-Plan™ increases profits from 10% to 20% then even after a 4% fine on revenue, real profits are still 15%. A company only motivated by profits and fines (which seems like a reasonable assumption if we're using laws like GDPR to deter "heinous shit") would be crazy not to continue with MEP™. It's really the same kind of calculation as with fixed fines or fines based on damage done. When profitable, they're still written off as the cost of doing business. The only material difference would be that a fixed fine effectively allows large companies to do "heinous shit" while imposing fines so large that a small company can't compete, whereas with a revenue calculation you instead just need to make sure that your "heinous shit" is scalable. That doesn't apply in practice though, since GDPR has an alternative €20M fine which would go into effect, so in reality GDPR just says that to do "heinous shit" you need to be able to do a lot of it scalably and profitably. The natural direction one might take this is just to say that the fines must not be big enough, but until you approach 100% of revenue the potential always exists for a new form of profitable "heinous shit" to crop up. If fines of that scale are on the table then that brings us to the other side of the coin: A single violation of any anti-MEP™ law will nearly certainly end the business. If a violation of an anti-MEP™ law necessarily meant that a corporation was doing "heinous shit" then that could plausibly be acceptable (definitely up for debate), but merely not appointing a data protection officer in the EU violates GDPR and potentially subjects a business to a 2% of revenue fine. The law will not perfectly align with what a reasonable person would consider "heinous shit," and too severe of a penalty in such situations seems prone to abuse.

cbsmith 6y ago

This is the not-quite-last (there's a deferred prosecution agreement that is part of this) in a series of consequences in a case that goes way back in time. I'm not sure I follow the logic of looking at the net worth of a conglomerate when assessing a fine. If someone parks the corporate car in a no-parking zone, or spits out chewing gum on the sidewalk, you're not going to fine them x% of net worth. At least in terms of consequences for the corporation, you'd they would be (punitively) proportional to the economic impact of the criminal activity. What was the impact of this conduct? It's not mentioned in the story. If they paid a $10 million fine on criminal activity that gleaned them a $1 billion advantage, then yeah this is a slap on the wrist. If it's a $10 million fine on something that gave them a $10 advantage, it's arguably overly punitive.

confidantlake 6y ago
Some countries actually do this, charge variable fines depending on net worth. The fine in this case is to de-incentivize bad behavior like reckless driving.
- cbsmith 6y ago
  It makes sense for penalties on people that aren't motivated by profit.

tschwimmer 6y ago

A street cleaning ticket in SF is $79 and is probably one of the cheapest fines you'll pay.

whalesalad 6y ago
A parking ticket in Chelsea, Michigan is $8. I forgot to pay it for 6 months and they didn't even care.
- enkid 6y ago
  Some places parking ticket is revenue, some places it's just a reminder.
  - sixothree 6y ago
    I think I paid > $150 for parking too close to a driveway.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  The cost of going to a judge for an arrest warrant and then arresting you would cost an least an order of magnitude more than that!
colejohnson66 6y ago
A speeding ticket in Southern California was over $600 for me a few years ago.

nightcracker 6y ago

> 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. Not even. I bet a person with a $100k net worth will probably rather pay $62 than have to do the blackboard punishment.

SN76477 6y ago

Fines for such acts need to be much larger. In addition I would like to see such funds turned into appropriate federal grants.