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Comment by AirMax98 | Hacker News Reader

> Lawyers may not be the most sympathetic victims and their need to be entertained may not be the most compelling of causes. But their plight, Mr. Greenberg said, should raise alarms about how the use of this technology could spread. Businesses, for instance, might turn people away based on their political ideology, comments they’d made online or whom they work for.

Feel like this is a pretty wild extrapolation that summarizes the core of this. I'm not a fan of the police state that we live in, but at the same time I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue? This article even outlines how this practice has been done in NYC for like a hundred years.

On the other hand, if this effort somehow succeeds and we have less facial recognition tech in the wild, props to them.

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Sir Thomas More : There's no law against that.
William Roper : God's law!
Sir Thomas More : Then God can arrest him.
William Roper : While you talk, he's gone!
Sir Thomas More : Go he should, if he were the Devil, until he broke the law.
William Roper : Now you give the Devil benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More : Yes, what would you do?
William Roper : Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil? Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

Sir Thomas More : And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you...where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast...Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down...and you're just the man to do it...do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then? Yes. I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.

-- Robert Bolt, "A Man for All Seasons"

What's your point? What "law" are you wishing to uphold?

The law from 1941, guaranteeing admittance to anyone over the age of 21. So basically, even if you are the devil/evil lawyer, you cannot be denied access to legit venues.

As I understand, that only applies to venues that serve the general public. Private venues may make up arbitrary rules and deny access to any professions.

Right, so MSG clearly is considered a legit public venue, but the small local theatre group in the alley may still be able to bar people of their choosing.

Not if that theatre group sells tickets to the public, no. I am talking about private clubs or groups that by definition have a limited membership.

That's what's under contention.

Delivered brilliantly by Paul Scofield in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_(1966_fi...

- and if you like that then (the ‘bad guys’ perspective):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series) is also well worth a watch.

> I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue

And when you have a legitimate grievance against a company who also owns half the country? Who are you gonna call? Ghost busters? you better, because all the lawyers have been chilled and scarred away from helping you. And they won't even answer your call.

Both sides have grievances. You could equally well say that Madison Square Garden has a grievance against the lawyers.

Even Wikipedia blocks people who have made legal threats. You don't even have to actually sue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_legal_threats

> Even Wikipedia blocks people who have made legal threats.

You've misread the Wikipedia policy that you linked to; it says: "Do not post legal threats on Wikipedia. ... Users who post legal threats on Wikipedia are typically blocked from editing while the threats are outstanding." (Emphasis added.) The rest of the page goes on to emphasize that this doesn't preclude people from engaging Wikipedia about legal issues.

It's also a block on EDITING, not even a block from being in the audience of Wikipedia by reading. This would be like M.S.G. refusing to let the lawyers rent the venue, be employed by M.S.G., operate a concessions stand in M.S.G. etc. Which I would find highly understandable.

> Both sides have grievances. You could equally well say that Madison Square Garden has a grievance against the lawyers.

Don't be daft. Getting sued when you are a big business is not a grievance. It is a conflict resolution mechanism for grievances. It is already hard enough for regular people to win against big companies. Do you think if we let the companies bully the lawyers representing these people that is going to help with that?

Here is an example: A brick falling from a badly maintained facade smashes into your car. Luckily nobody is seriously hurt, but the car can't be driven until it is fixed. You think the facade's owner (the person who decided to not maintain it) should pay for it. When you ask them they stonewall you, and you are getting nowhere.

You call a lawyer but they just hang up the phone when you explain why you are calling. You call an other lawyer and the same happens. The seventh lawyer takes pity on you and explains to you that the owner of the badly maintained facade also owns a significant portion of all entertainment venues, and petrol stations and grocery stores in the state. If he even just suspects that a lawyer helped you, his hired goons will make the lawyer's life pretty unpleasant. And then the seventh lawyer also hangs up on you.

Do you want to live in this world? Do you think society will be richer/happier by living in this world?

> I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue

I don't think you need to extrapolate in order to make this an issue. Many of the lawyers mentioned in the article weren't a part of a case against MSG but rather just working for a firm that also had a case against MSG. I also don't have a lot of empathy toward rich lawyers, but I do have sympathy for their clients and large companies harassing lawyers just for working a firm that is suing them has a pretty clear chilling effect. Regardless of if this is currently legal or not, I think something should be done about it.

Doing something about it also has a cost.

Trying to you carve out an exception so narrow it only applies to X results in a stupidly complex legal system less narrow exceptions have unintended consequences. This is such an edge case situation doing something could be more harmful than beneficial.

Which practice? The article mentions theaters banning attendees who had panned their shows (or said nasty things about the owners’ families); there is no precedent for the practice of banning attorneys from shows just because they happen to work for a firm that has litigation pending against the venue.

The article mentions one of the lawyers for Madison Square Garden saying they where banned from several Italian restaurants due to their involvement in mafia prosecutions. However, I'm not sure how sympathetic the court is to citing Mafia practices as precedent.

Thanks, I missed that. But yeah, I don’t suspect “the Mafia did it, so we can too” will fly in court.

And if you can't go to one Italian restaurant, there are many many other alternatives in the area. If you want to see someone who is big enough to tour at MSG, you don't really have another option besides traveling to another city where they are performing.

Presumably the precedent they're claiming is "venues can decline entry to any customer for any reason, so long as there's small print somewhere saying so"

In my country, the jargon for this is 'right of admission reserved'

> I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue

So... first, it's important to remember that "lawyers" are advocates. Someone else is suing MSG. Their lawyers merely represent them. This is the same logic that would treat a criminal defense attorney as a criminal or shun a prosecutor because ACAB. Lawyers aren't blameless about the cases they take, and can be good or bad people, but under the constitution we're all granted the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and lawyers are the profession that mediates that interaction.

Also: this lawyer isn't doing that. She's just an employee of a firm; she isn't working this case. Per the bit you quoted, this is absolutely isomorphic to banning someone because of who they work for. Imagine refusing to seat Walmart employees at a restaurant because they aren't unionized.

Right, so you work for some large company that is in some dispute--maybe it's a patent or maybe it's something of a thousand other things (large companies are in disputes with each other all the time)--with Amazon or Google. Should you be OK with Amazon or Goggle canceling the accounts of all the employees of the company they're in a dispute with?

Yes, that's probably an extrapolation too far but it's not that much of an extrapolation.

> but at the same time I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue?

So, if someday you have a legal dispute with an entertainment venue, like you worked for them for 6 months and they owe you $60K in back pay for which you then decide to sue them, we should not feel "empathy" for you then, right?

> ... I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue? This article even outlines how this practice has been done in NYC for like a hundred years.

Not liking the people, their profession or who they're suing is a terrible standard for a society to operate under because I guarantee you there is something you do or believe in that someone else objects to (rightly or wrongly) and if you find yourself barred from some broad activity because of that, you would probably feel differently.

How far do you want to take that? Imagine she has a family and this job supports said family. Aren't they benefitting from her activities? Should MSG bar them too?

Also, her firm is suing MSG. She's not involved in the case.

>but at the same time I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue

The lawyer initially turned away wasn't involved in that suit at all, just worked for the same company. Imagine your company did something shitty (not that the litigation is shitty), then you personally started getting banned from places because of it, even if you had no involvement whatsoever.

So you'd be fine with being denied entry because some part of your employers business did something to annoy the venue? Or are lawfirms somehow special?

You can ignore something "annoying" done by another party. You can't ignore a lawsuit. Lawsuits are enforced by a government and legal system that you have no choice but to participate in, and if you lose, the government can send men with guns to take your money and send you to be locked up (or maybe just tell your bank to directly take money from your bank account).

This is a test, a legal test to see if they can get away with it; while it's a slippery slope argument, if this is not stopped now, they will expand this technology across the country, and they will start barring people based on e.g. criminal records (IMO if someone served time their record should be expunged) or visual traits ("you look like trouble"), which invariably will lead to racial profiling.

Slippery slope fallacy for sure, but it's not unheard of. China applies it at a wide scale, to the point where I'm sure Faceapp is used to gather facial recognition data, and they use it to track ethnic minorities (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveill...)

> IMO if someone served time their record should be expunged

For all crimes? If not, then what's your criteria for which ones should and which ones shouldn't? If so, then would we have to stop keeping sex offenders away from children?

> I do not feel a whole lot of empathy towards lawyers that are actively suing the venue

Even if they just happen to work on that case and have nothing to do with the specific action against MSG?

If you sued your utility company, should they be able to shut off the water to your house?

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