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Ticketmaster admits it hacked Songkick before it went out of business

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

#221

Post by wpietri »

originalvichy wrote: post #167
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

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

Depends on how you do it. Some places do fines based on income, not dollar amounts. E.g., the rich Finn who had a $103k speeding ticket: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

In the US, especially during this new gilded age, I'd probably change that to be a percentage of total wealth or a percentage of annual income, whichever is larger.

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

#222

Post by rectang »

bdowling wrote: post #218
rectang wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pass…

> There is no advantage to criminality.

Of course there is. That's why YCombinator prefers "naughty" companies that break rules but get away with it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

> "Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter."

Is there any doubt that YCombinator would be investing in TicketMaster if it were a startup? Is there any moral distance between the scofflaw insouciance of AirBNB and TicketMaster? TicketMaster just eliminated a threat to its quasi-monopoly through criminality and were rewarded because the criminal penalty was utterly inconsequential compared with the commercial advantage obtained. They have "won" in the "marketplace", as that criminality-advantaging "marketplace" was constructed.

The unjust demolition of TicketMaster's competitors, and the resulting systemic economic inefficiency, is underpinned by rhetoric like yours.

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

#223

Post by hchz »

ineedasername wrote: post #206
hchz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CWA, CAA, CERCLA, and RCRA provide these protections for whistleblowers and a framework for financial incentives, though these incentives are paltry compared to SEC whistleblower rewards. https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations https://www.whistleblowers.gov

The problem is also that the power imbalance is severely stacked against the whistleblower. Sure, retaliation isn't allowed, but it's a far stretch to think it doesn't happen. I've seen it happen, or what probably was retaliation, but how do I know for sure? They said the person wasn't competent or doing their job when they got fired. I don't know for sure if that was true, but I do know they reported significant the…

My point was only that such protections and rewards already exist.

I find it obvious that such retaliation happens, otherwise it would be strange to have such laws.

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

#225

Post by naniwaduni »

Spivak wrote: post #187
eropple wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is to not make it an affordable option, no matter how rich you are. The only thing the sufficiently rich can't call-and-raise you on is time. Fictional sums of money, sums that may be less than likely to ever really be paid, are more easily reckoned with than jail time.

Still not a great system unfortunately. Time based punishments still disproportionately punish the poor who have less of it. Suffering based punishments hurt everyone equally, they don’t waste a person’s time they could be contributing something positive to the world and can be scaled to fit the crime. One hell of a deterrent too.

Suffering-based punishments disproportionately punish the chronically unhappy, who have less non-suffering.

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

#226

Post by bdowling »

wpietri wrote: post #220
bdowling wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

> It seems to me if they're responsible enough to get paid for the good parts, they're responsible for the bad parts too.

Executives involved in crimes can face personal liability for those crimes. The corporation can also be wiped out and the shareholders can lose their investments.

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

#227

Post by rectang »

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…

> [Edit]

> I regret that my comment was taken as one endorsing corporations or their shareholders profiting from crimes. That was not my intent.

Regardless of whether your intent was angelic, devilish, or neither, rampant corporate criminality (such as TicketMaster's) is the obvious consequence of building a system according to principles that advantage criminality so baldly.

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

#228

Post by 0goel0 »

bdowling wrote: post #185
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

At least one of the individuals involved in this TicketMaster hacking pleaded guilty to the hacking. "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."

Unless some high-level execs are convicted and put in jail, and the company is given a high-enough file[1], this is the cost of doing business.

[1] 2 years of net profits? 50% of gross revenue? IDK. It has to be meaningful amount to truly deter criminal acts.

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

#229

Post by marricks »

wolverine876 wrote: post #213
marricks wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think we actually disagree on a ton, my original comment was extremely vague on which "systems", I meant mainly western governments and mega corps.

I don't think this unbalance is baked into humanity, I 100% agree people collectively taking a stand (unions, mass actually effective protests, etc) would lead to far better systems.

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

#230

Post by bdowling »

postnihilism wrote: post #215
bdowling wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 crimin…

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

I agree. That is part of the risk investors take.

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