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Comment by asah | Hacker News Reader

I'm boycotting MSG over this, and it's an easy call: I didn't bust my ass for 30 years creating tech to have companies pull nonsense like this. Among the issues, this is a violation of their own written policy, stated that this is for "safety" when this clearly about retribution.

MSG, you want retribution, you got it.

I'm really hoping the CEO faces personal penalties over this, causing other companies to take notice and setting de facto limits on acceptable use of this tech. Normally, I'm not one to take reactionary stances, but the CEO absolutely knew about and approved this policy and exercised __extraordinarily__ bad judgment unbecoming of a public company CEO. A fifth grader would understand that this policy doesn't work at any scale.

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Let’s take a step back for a second: is it the use of technology to ban certain people from the venue, or the way people are being chosen for exclusion?

If the former, and banning people you consider to be your enemies is not an issue here, then I guess I struggle with why using technology to exclude people efficiently is a concern.

If the latter, then I struggle as it should be within the rights of any property owner to exclude their antagonizers (or really anyone on any basis not covered by anti-discrimination laws) from their property. I feel strongly about inalienable property rights, and who is anyone else who hasn’t put money up to own the land to tell them what to do with it? Are we all just a giant HOA?

Or is the issue that it’s a public company and as such is expected to have separate standards?

I don’t mean to be pedantic - I am honestly trying to understand. As a landowner myself (of publicly accessible spaces), if I were to be sued by someone I certainly wouldn’t want to be forced to extend hospitality to those suing me by allowing them onto my land for their own enjoyment. If technology allowed me to do this more efficiently, I’d utilize it if I felt that strongly about the merits of the case against me. But I am not a public company, so perhaps that’s where the issue is?

To be clear, if they were excluding people based on things out of a person’s control or otherwise protected by civil rights, I’d understand that society restricts this - it isn’t a society we collectively want to live in. But I am not sure I want to live in a society where someone can antagonize someone else and we force that party to host the antagonizer for the antagonizer’s enjoyment. That seems somewhat dystopian to me as well.

The best way of expressing this was posted in the comments when this issue was raised a couple days ago: the scale enabled by technology means that decisions that would have had to be reasonable before can now be made unreasonable by applying them at scale - and in most cases without the nuance applied when done by humans.

In essence, it's fair enough to ban the legal team suing you, and in the past you would have to restrict it like that, because who's going to check against 1000 photos on the wall, right? But when it's automated, it's probably just easier to ban the whole firm. Is it fair to ban some paralegal who works in probate law from seeing their favourite artist or attending a show with their kids because someone in a different state in a different division is suing a different division of the giant conglomerate that owns the venue? I think that crosses a line for most people.

I wonder what the world would look like if Google, Microsoft, and Apple had term wars everytime one of their legal teams sued another over patents.

I bet companies would stop suing each other really fast

Ok, I appreciate this response and I hadn’t read the comments you reference from a past post. This nuance is valuable and I can understand the logic. There should be some connection to the thing offending the land owner, and the way to embed this into the decision making is to take technology out of it so that decisions have to be internally governed by some thought to efficiency.

Thank you

> Is it fair to ban some paralegal who works in probate law from seeing their favourite artist or attending a show with their kids because someone in a different state in a different division is suing a different division of the giant conglomerate that owns the venue?

depends on many things, from pettiness all the way to financial harm. i’ve seen places ban whole families.

Furthermore, under the "businesses can do what they like" principle, there would be nothing stopping a business offering to ban anyone as a paid-for service.

On the technical side of this issue, I am curious how MSG as to how acquired the reference images, and I wonder if they would try to pass it off as fair use.

In fact, I am slightly skeptical that the identification was done via face recognition, as opposed to through the ticket sales chain, with face recognition being claimed as a cover. If using ticket sales information this way would present legal problems for MSG, I hope this possibility is investigated. (Nevertheless, face recognition clearly could be used this way, so that issue would still be on the table regardless of what MSG did here.)

I'm under the impression that the ticket wasn't bought by her, but rather by another member of the group she was traveling with. The facial recognition match was supposedly then confirmed by the venue asking her for her ID.

Thanks for your correction.

I think this is spot on, and to add to it, tech allows scaling in other concerning ways besides just this example IMO. A different comment mentioned you can't restrict bans to behavior on property, because then a venue can't refuse entry to someone they saw behaving disorderly across the street. The problem with introducing tech to this decision is the temporal and spatial scale it can expand to though. It becomes theoretically feasible to ban someone from one venue because they were garden variety disorderly drunk 6 months ago at a venue across town.

Certainly this is more of a grey area than the guilt by association scaling you mention, but I think there is a point at which it becomes scary. People grow over time, people behave differently in different environments with different peers, etc. People also just make impulsive mistakes from time to time, especially when under stress. To what extent should that information be usable at scale for years of a person's life?

I'm for sure not legally qualified to know how or where to draw the line. But it's a problem we haven't grappled with much yet, because in the past there was no realistic infrastructure for it as you say. A ban list had to stay at reasonable length and further only had a more restricted set of info available to it.

Now ban criteria can include not only a longer list of "offenses" which may be much more minor, but also can cover offenses that occured at more possible places over a longer duration. Hopefully business interests will prevent much of this from being realized, but there needs to be a regulatory discussion to get in front of this too.

Hmmm, it's like implicit safety checks, intersting concept.

This isn’t a new concept or area of the law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations_in_the_U...

This isn’t a matter of private property rights. The owner of Madison Square Garden is free to sit inside it by himself and keep the world at bay.

But once he creates a business open to the public there are rules. There are rules about what hours he can be open and closed, rules about the number of fire exits, rules about the labels that have to be on any food that’s sold, rules about how loud sounds can be and how bright lights can be. If he sells someone real estate the contract must be in writing. If he sells someone a toaster there is a legally enforced warranty that it will be able to make toast.

This hypothetical idea that businesses have the right to sort of do whatever they want comes up a lot in arguments like this, but it has no real basis in law or tradition.

Businesses don’t now, and have never, had the right to do whatever they want. Their ability to even operate at all is a privilege that requires advance permission and registration.

The state regulates commerce that’s literally what it’s for. It enforces principals of fairness, honesty, enforcement of promises, and all sorts of other stuff.

If the state believes, correctly, that this kind of behavior is incompatible with the state granted privilege to operate as a business then it should prohibit it without hesitation.

https://dukeundergraduatelawmagazine.org/2018/10/22/the-righ...

> Summary: A business owner has the right to refuse service as long as he or she does not infringe upon federal or state discrimination laws.

And having another reason is the best defense against the discrimination suits.

I believe GP's point was that this is just the current law, not some profound legal principle like property rights. That is, the law already deeply limits property rights for businesses open to the public in various ways (e.g. by forcing them to abide by anti-discrimination laws, which private property owners have no obligation to). Making a new law that would limit public businesses' ability to ban people based on legal disputes would not constitute a difference in kind (only in degree) compared to current laws.

You have to look at the situation.

In a case like this, private property rights are probably more important. It is an entertainment venue, there are plenty of alternatives out there, and entertainment is not necessary for society.

Contrast that to something like grocery stores. I don't know what it is like in your neck of the woods, but almost everything in my area is controlled by three companies. Food is a necessity of life and there are not many alternatives. The grocery stores are large enough that banning someone will have very little consequence to the business, but it can have disproportionate consequences to the individual.

Even if you do accept banning people, where do you draw the line? A grocery store should have the right to ban shoplifters, but should it be a narrow ban (e.g. it affected a particular location) or should it be a broad ban (e.g. based upon some externally acquired list)? Should the ban be limited in duration, or can a person reasonably be banned for their actions ten years prior? It may seem reasonable to dismiss such people because the ban would be a consequence of their actions, but there comes a point where the consequences are excessive.

Then there is the question of who is being banned. The company stated their list extends to people working for the law firm, not just the people involved in litigation. If I recall correctly from another article, Conlon stated she wasn't involved in the particular case. In other words, there are instances of guilt and punishment by association. While it can be stated that one controls who they work for, is it reasonable to expect someone to quit their jobs because of legal (and possibly even moral) actions of their employer?

Treating inalienable property rights as a default is probably a good default position, but I am deeply concerned about it being used as an excuse to control others.

Synthesize your two examples and you get some really sinister results. Imagine getting banned from a national grocery store chain not because you shoplifted, but rather because one of your family, friends or coworkers shoplifted. The company just mutters something about thieves associating with thieves and now you can't buy food because you associated with the wrong people.

You just invented the Chinese "social credit" system all over again.

Sadly, I know a surprising number of people lamenting that we don't have it in the US - the thought is that collective punishment works to force a group to self-regulate, so why not apply it to groups of friends, family, etc and punish all of them as soon as one person steps out of line.

> In a case like this, private property rights are probably more important. It is an entertainment venue, there are plenty of alternatives out there, and entertainment is not necessary for society.

In principle I see where you're coming from. Nevertheless I disagree in this case.

While a property owner should have the right to say who can or cannot use his property I think this becomes a lot more fuzzy when you own a venue, which runs performances open to the public.

You can absolutely stipulate conditions upon ticket sales like accepted behavior or actions that a ticket buyer is prohibited from doing (no recordings or no smuggling of your own booze come to mind).

I think it's a hell of a lot more sticky if you exclude visitors based on totally arbitrary factors, which I think happened here.

If you provide a service, which is generally open to the public, this should come with the obligations not to exclude patrons for capricious or even frivolous reasons.

I don't think that grocery stores that are allowed (and are big enough to) have cameras everywhere and a security service should be allowed to ban known shoplifters. They can already focus on them, catch them in the act, immobilize them, and have the police deal with the offenders.

Rights are different than acceptable social behavior.

Even if they are well within their rights, this is not acceptable behavior, and they should be boycotted for it.

It's not force to choose not to associate with a business you don't like.

> If the latter, then I struggle as it should be within the rights of any property owner to exclude their antagonizers (or really anyone on any basis not covered by anti-discrimination laws) from their property.

If the business has premises in a city then it is subject to various planning laws. Planning permission could probably be made conditional on serving all members of the public without discrimination. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but that's one way to resolve the issue you quite reasonably raise of compatibility with property rights.

A lot of your personal property rights of throwing out who you want when you want why you want go out the window when you have a liquor license that says you are to not discriminate members of the public

> I don’t mean to be pedantic - I am honestly trying to understand. As a landowner myself (of publicly accessible spaces), if I were to be sued by someone I certainly wouldn’t want to be forced to extend hospitality to those suing me by allowing them onto my land for their own enjoyment. If technology allowed me to do this more efficiently, I’d utilize it if I felt that strongly about the merits of the case against me. But I am not a public company, so perhaps that’s where the issue is?

The nature and extent of this "private land" is at least part of the problem. This isn't some guy's living room or a small theater he built himself. MSG Entertainment Group owns venues all over the place. In New York, at least Madison Square Garden, the Beacon Theatre on Broadway, and this venue, Radio City Music Hall. Three of the largest and most historic venues in the city. Radio City Music Hall has been open since 1932, is an official New York City Landmark, and hosts the NFL Draft, Emmys, Grammys, Tonys, and VMAs, all globally-televised events. The Rockettes themselves are a national institution that has been around even longer than Radio City Music Hall.

You're effectively saying that the rights of James Dolan, a spoiled, petulant drug addict and alcoholic with a famously volatile temper, who happened to be lucky enough to be born to the founder of Cablevision and HBO, a daddy who could buy him things like Radio City Music Hall, is more important than the rights of the people of New York to take part in century-old community events that are part of the history and fabric of where they live.

One person is more important than millions because he happens to be richer.

Legally, you're right in most cases (maybe not this one because of the liquor license) that the rights of the owner are absolute. But should they be? What are the limits on what types of places a single person should be allowed to control? Imagine places that are currently public, like the Alamo, Central Park, Mt. Rushmore. If Texas, New York City, or the United States ever got so strapped for cash that they decided to sell those places to private owners, is it seriously now okay that some bratty rich kid whose daddy bought him a historical landmark can exclude anyone he wants for any reason?

What if one of the dancer's family members worked for this law firm? Now they can't come see their sister, mother, daughter perform because their employer's parent company is involved in a lawsuit against the Rockette's venue's parent company? The founders of our country went out of their way to enshrine and protect property rights because they were concerned about the past tendency of kings to just decide arbitrarily that your land was now under their control and you owed them more money than before or needed to send people to fight wars for them. It wasn't for shit like this. James Dolan is the shitty tyrant in this scenario. The Rockettes should get to say who gets to see them perform, not a global entertainment conglomerate that bought the venue they currently perform in.

Company towns come to mind :

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

The CEO is a billionaire (Dolan) who owns it and many other properties.

From MSG's perspective the ban is about safety - albeit the safety of their own perceived attack surface from adversaries, not the safety of their customers. This is where they are twisting words to fit the "safety" narrative, and it is completely disingenuous IMO.

> I didn't bust my ass for 30 years creating tech to have companies pull nonsense like this

Hate to break it to you, but this is exactly what you busted your ass for.

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