Hopefully, it does mean a thing (at least one thing, anyway):
- The highly esteemed Mr Hendrix would have been entirely unsurprised by monopolistic ticketing practices in live performances (in all probability, both directly corrupt and "influenced" by the same forces — if not the same individuals or "organizations" — that gave us payola). In the usual we-didn't-do-nothin'-wrong-and-won't-do-it-again partial resolution of current ticketing issues, the DoJ has announced a settlement of antitrust charges with LiveNation. Not everyone agrees, though; over half of the state Attorneys General have not signed on to this settlement, and continue to push for divestiture as the most-appropriate resolution.1
- The LiveNation controversy is just one particular window into the gatekeeping problem in the arts. LiveNation and its other-segment counterparts are involved after the snootier gatekeepers have finished (ineptly) imposing their narrow cultural preconceptions on everyone by trying not to "advance the useful Arts," but by repeating what has come before (presumably with better marketing support). The gatekeepers' error is one of projection: I am, therefore everyone should be… when, from inside their bubble, they have an economically ignorant view of the creator's life. Usually not just economically, either, but arguing about the self-proclaimed primacy of a single city in an entire nation's — hell, the entire world's — useful Arts is for another time, being a reflexive issue leading right back into economic irreality. (And more than one city's gatekeepers' attitudes are at issue here…)
- I respectfully suggest that the considered-out-of-touch-by-wingnuts Ninth Circuit needs to confront its current problem with "swinging dicks" by consulting a mohel (there are still a few days, the eighth day after the opinion (PDF) issued is this Saturday, so it can still be… snipped). That the plaintiffs in the underlying litigation should have consulted — and thought about, using available methods of literary and historical analysis — a relevant part of their owner's manual is an issue not amendable to judicial remedy, if only because US courts refuse to engage with pretext so long as a religious basis is proclaimed. It's far too late for this jurist to confront either without some significant guidance from real adults.2
- Sometimes proponents of generative-response systems — it's hard to avoid using the marketing-friendly, and misleadingly inaccurate, "AI" — realize, under pressure, that they've gone too far. (Much, much too far.) Any output will do; competence is optional. One wonders when they'll impose similar restrictions on legal advice, which in many instances is at least equally dangerous and founded on hallucinations. Our doom (or our Doom) at the hands of the machines isn't far off.
Pardon me, I need to take a call from Cyberdyne Systems…
- This sort of nonsense makes me wish that the American zeitgeist was as enthusiastic about imposing death penalties on bad-actor corporations, which have generally proven incapable of learning to behave better, as it is on disproportionately minority individuals, who often have never been given an opportunity to learn to behave better. The old "but what about the widows and orphans whose investments depend on those corporations?" argument means an awful lot less in the day and age of low-transaction-cost index funds (and specialized mutual funds, and even hedge funds!). Those who choose to reach for higher returns need also to accept higher risk — especially as passive investors whose only job is to choose board members to supervise corporate management.
I certainly haven't seen all (or even most) of the evidence in the LiveNation matter, although both analogy to other parts of (and pasts of) the entertainment industry and the knowledge I do have indicate it would need to be extraordinary evidence indeed to refute the inference that There's Something Incurably Wrong Here.
- Compare, e.g., prior issues with that jurist's scholarly deficits with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist., 400 F.Supp.2d 707 (E.D.Pa. 2005) (in which a court actually did confront pretext… thanks to a web of arrogant and inexplicably stupid errors by the wannabe-theocrats exposing the pretext for what it was).