Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 337 posts

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#211

Post by darepublic »

anigbrowl wrote: post #73
ogre_codes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

Corporations absolutely do act, just as surely a person acts even though only their fingers or individual limbs may be moving. I agree the individuals should be subject to criminal penalties, but so should shareholders and board members, who hoped to profit and looked the other way, respectively.

That's crazy, how about we lock up the janitorial staff as well. They were the toes

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#212

Post by rectang »

bdowling wrote: post #210
atty wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s two points to address here. 1) it’s rare, if ever, that a CEO, CFO or COO faces jail time for crimes the company committed that are similar or worse compared to jail-able offenses by individuals. So your second point doesn’t really happen in practice. 2) shareholders SHOULD be punished for the actions of the company. If my dog maims you because of my negligence to control it, I’m liable. If a corporat…

> So your second point doesn’t really happen in practice. It happened in this case. From the article, "Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster’s artist services division, pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack the rival company..." Anyone else who conspired with him could be charged with the crimes. > shareholders SHOULD be punished for the actions of the company. The entire purpose of the corpora…

Well, thanks to this genius system — and criminal-adjacent advocacy such as this — for ensuring that corporations which commit crimes will always be awash in investor money, since such criminal corporations enjoy an advantage over law-abiding corporations.

Advantaging criminality to this degree is a choice. Our economic institutions did not have to be designed in such a way that criminality is rewarded so highly. We could architect them differently — but then it would be harder for a small number of people to make a great deal of money ripping off the rest of us.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#213

Post by wolverine876 »

marricks wrote: post #169
nathanyz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

That'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? Wh…

> the deeper truth is just systems are pretty much always controlled by the powerful

The power of individuals with the right idea to change the world (often running circles around the 'powerful') is the foundation of the technology behind most people's jobs here. How do some people can work in the IT industry and promulgate the parent's fatalistic outlook? Internet Explorer would be the dominant browser, Windows the only operating system, and we'd be discussing it in an MSN forum.

If people believed in this outlook, there was would be no democracy, human rights, and rule of law (in countries around the world), everything would be corrupt and would be the same everywhere, women and minorities would have made no progress, etc. To say it has no effect and nobody cares is edgy and cool these days, but obviously wrong. If your predecessors believed that, I can't imagine how our lives would be now.

The fact is that individuals and groups of individuals, if they act, can and do change the world - and change their communities. Ask any leader; the problem is not lack of power but lack of action. Corruption will fall or not based on you, personally, on what you do. Look at what prior generations did for us; what are you doing for the people who follow us?

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#214

Post by riteshpatel »

throwawaysk wrote: post #115

I 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…

Yikes :O

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#215

Post by postnihilism »

bdowling wrote: post #201
gowld wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> punishing the corporation mostly harms the shareholders, who aren't responsible because they only have indirect control over the corporation Then why should shareholders get the profits from the work they don't comtrol? > the individual employees who commit crimes face criminal prosecution and punishment. Do they?

> Then why should shareholders get the profits from the work they don't comtrol? Because they invested money into the corporation when the corporation issued stock.

And when that company commits a crime, it should be punished and its stock should lose value.

It seems like you're arguing that shareholders should reap rewards for actions that a company takes but be shielded from negative financial repercussions that result from criminal actions it takes.

This creates a moral hazard similar to to the "too big to fail" situation of banks. It incentivizes risky and potentially criminal behavior because ownership is able to capture the value of any upside and is shielded from the downsides of the behavior.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#216

Post by insert_coin »

learnstats2 wrote: post #175
originalvichy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”If the punishment for a crime is a fine, the law was written against the lower classes.”

I find this principle useful - that a fine is just permission slip for people who can afford it. But, in terms of environmental crimes as discussed in these comments, the reason corporation dump toxic waste in the river is to avoid the clean-up cost - it's an economic crime. So in that case, it's an appropriate solution to fine a large multiple of the total clean-up cost plus damages. The point is to not make it an a…

> But, in terms of environmental crimes as discussed in these comments, the reason corporation dump toxic waste in the river is to avoid the clean-up cost - it's an economic crime.

Stealing is also an economic crime then, as they are stealing it because they cannot financially afford it and no one should go to jail but only pay a fine.

Of course not, the reason might be economic but the crime is against much more than the economy and the punishment should be even greater still. Fines do not even register.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#217

Post by backtoyoujim »

akudha wrote: post #165
ipqk wrote: post #148

Compare 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

It is news like this that makes me want to go back to puppy videos on YouTube. In what universe 35 years in prison can be justified for Aaron’s alleged crime?

It was a Stephen Heymann, Scott Garland, and Carmen Ortiz universe.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#218

Post by bdowling »

rectang wrote: post #212
bdowling wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your second point doesn’t really happen in practice. It happened in this case. From the article, "Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster’s artist services division, pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to hack the rival company..." Anyone else who conspired with him could be charged with the crimes. > shareholders SHOULD be punished for the actions of the company. The entire purpose of the corpora…

Well, thanks to this genius system — and criminal-adjacent advocacy such as this — for ensuring that corporations which commit crimes will always be awash in investor money, since such criminal corporations enjoy an advantage over law-abiding corporations. Advantaging criminality to this degree is a choice . Our economic institutions did not have to be designed in such a way that criminality is rewarded so highly. We…

> ... such criminal corporations enjoy an advantage over law-abiding corporations.

There is no advantage to criminality. It is a general rule of law that no one should be able to profit from his crimes. That rule applies to corporations as well as individuals and there are many ways to hold corporations and their managers and employees accountable (civil and criminal liability are two of them).

My point was that passive investors shouldn't be criminally liable for criminal actions of employees of the corporation that they knew nothing about.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#219

Post by wpietri »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #170
nathanyz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

IMO everyone related to a corporate crime should be responsible. If a company dumps toxic waste in to a river, the person who pressed the dump button, the person who told them to and any management that signed off on the idea should all be personally as responsible as if I just took a bucket and walked down to the local river. Perhaps some exceptions for people who could not be expected to understand the law, for exa…

I agree, and I would go slightly farther. One of the lessons the mortgage bubble taught us is how much executives benefit from plausible deniability. For corporate crime, I think the standard of "knew or should have known" should apply. If CEOs are going to hoover up a lot of the profits when things go right, they should hold at least as much responsibility when things go wrong on their watch.

Re: Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

#220

Post by wpietri »

bdowling wrote: post #192
nathanyz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

> ... but criminally don't face anywhere near the same levels of punishment. We generally do not punish corporations harshly for criminal wrongdoing because (1) punishing the corporation mostly harms the shareholders, who aren't responsible because they only have indirect control over the corporation, and (2) the individual employees who commit crimes face criminal prosecution and punishment. [Edit] I regret that my…

There is a "head I win, tails you lose" here dynamic that is pernicious. Executives and shareholders can get rich off the monetary extracted via a company's activities. But when something bad happens, suddenly they had nothing to do with it. It seems to me if they're responsible enough to get paid for the good parts, they're responsible for the bad parts too.
Post reply on HN