Ticketmaster Loses the Jury: Live Nation Death Sentence?: The Battle for Transparency

During the states versus Live Nation trial I was in the courtroom one morning before the jury came in, ready to argue my motion to unseal Live Nation / Ticketmaster's filing. Then something unexpected happened. Judge Arun Subramanian chided both sides for a telephone conference he said he'd held the night before at 8 pm. He said he had read the letters they had "filed" after the call. But there was no notice of the telephone conference in the public docket on PACER. The letters they said were "filed" were not there, even in redacted form. On behalf of Inner City Press, which had already filed to unseal about Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and would soon submit Freedom of Information Act request to dozens of states and to the US Department of Justice, which dropped out of the case, I immediately challenged these secret processes. The public had a right to know about the call with the judge, and the letter emailed to him after. I made the argument to Judge Subramanian, who had already presided over the US v. Sean Combs trial in which I'd filed for the same.And then, that night, I filed FOIA requests with DOJ and dozens of states. It was time to unseal TicketMonster. That is what this book, third in a series, is about.Then, the verdict - after Inner City Press reported on days' of jury notes - on Wednesday April 15, Tax Day, the jury came back finding monopoly, $1.72 a ticket, with a proceding on remedies- breakup? - to come.Live Nation death sentence?The FOIA requests to 34 states and DOJ remain pending — Tennessee still refuses to respond to non-citizens, Texas still wants $2,500, South Dakota claimed everything is exempt, and DOJ's expedited grant has produced zero documents. Inner City Press mailed out its appeals on April 14. The battles for transparency did not end with the verdict. In some ways they are just beginning. Inner City Press will keep covering it all. Read more