Reader Chris wrote in to let us know that he was incredulous that so many people could be fans of Ticketmaster, so he did a little investigating. What he found out, and what these screenshots I took demonstrate, is that most of Ticketmaster's fans are fake profiles with names like "Hamm Beerger," "Stebe Jobs," or "Asdsd Dasdasdas." They have no profile pictures and most of them have no friends other than Ticketmaster. What we originally thought was lazy astroturfing by Ticketmaster turned out to be lazy astroturfing sponsored by Ticketmaster. In October, Ticketmaster apparently ran a promotion offering five free iTunes downloads to Facebook users who added Ticketmaster as a friend. Neither Facebook nor Ticketmaster verified anything, and now Ticketmaster is more popular than Starbucks, Marmite, and the entire sport of basketball. For the record, all of Tax Cat's fans are real.
Ticketmaster Creates Fake Facebook Profiles to Look More Popular [East Village Idiot] (Thanks to Chris and Mark!)

Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman, who has advised RealSelf on the case, posts about the issue on his personal blog:

No matter how many times I see it—and in the Internet era, I see it all too frequently—I always shake my head in disappointment and frustration when a company uses trademark law to lash out against unflattering consumer reviews. To these companies, trademark law is a cure-all tonic for their marketplace travails, and trademark doctrine is so plastic and amorphous that defendants have some difficulty mounting a proper defense. As a result, all too frequently, the threat of a trademark lawsuit causes the intermediary to capitulate and excise valuable content from the Internet.

In its answer, RealSelf goes on the offensive and alleges that Lifestyle Lift directly or indirectly posted shill reviews to the Lifestyle Lift discussion, thereby breaching RealSelf's user agreement. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another lawsuit where the message board operator sued a company for shill postings, so I think this case may be breaking important new legal ground.

We're having a hard time believing that "INFOMERCIAL SCAMS - LIFESTYLE LIFT COMPLAINTS" is an authentic product of a concerned consumer, which makes us even more curious about RealSelf's counterclaim that Lifestyle Lift astroturfed on the RealSelf site:

We believe they have violated our terms of use by posing as patients posting reviews on our site, which is misleading and unfair to our community. These sort of fabricated posts threaten our community's trust in us. We have no choice but to challenge these actions.

"Lifestyle Lift Tries to Use TM Law to Shut Down User Discussions; Website Countersues for Shilling—Lifestyle Lift v. RealSelf" [Eric Goldman - Technology & Marketing Law Blog]

(Photo: Warner Bros.)

Comcast PR rep Jen Khoury told Portfolio, Comcast informed our local employees about the hearing and invited them to attend... Some employees did attend, along with many members of the general public," adding that, "For the past week, the Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf."

Whichever side you believe, one thing is for certain: Comcast employees are very tired (exhibit A, exhibit B).

According to Ars Technica, Chairman Martin quickly came under attack by minority groups who "felt their views were being unfairly dismissed." Martin apologized, and in his apology made a very convincing argument for why la carte cable would help promote more diversity in programming.

He referenced a report from the Center for Public Integrity that shows that cable companies fund minority groups in order to shift the debate about la carte cable. (The idea being to scare people into thinking that with la carte cable, minority programming would all but disappear.)

In his statement, Martin says:

According to a Neilsen Media Research report, the average cable subscriber is paying for more than 85 channels that she doesn't watch in order to obtain the approximately 16 channels that she does.

While I believe that all consumers would benefit from channels being sold in a more la carte manner, minority consumers, particularly those living in Spanish speaking homes, might benefit most of all. Currently, cable and satellite providers often require subscribers to purchase dozens if not hundreds of channels in order to get Spanish language programming for which they must pay an additional cost. Under la carte, however, Spanish speaking homes could purchase only Spanish speaking channels."

Martin also states:

Indeed cable rates have more than doubled in the last 10 years. Cable companies often point to the increased number of channels being offered as an explanation for the increase in prices. This explanation, however, ignores the fact that the channels are not actually being watched.

We personally watch, like, 4 channels. We must watch Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, Weeds, WGN baseball, and a certain football team. For this we pay way, way, way too much.

Read Kevin Martin's Letter (PDF) [FCC]
(Photo:Cheetaz)

Comcast's PR agency has been caught posing as fans on messageboards in an effort to spread their propaganda about the "Big Ten" channel. For those of you who don't care about college football (this includes us) the Big Ten channel is a channel about Big Ten football. It's causing some controversy because it's taking games off of regular non-pay TV and putting them on a special cable channel. People who don't care about Big Ten football don't want to pay extra for Comcast to carry this channel and people who do care about Big Ten football don't want to pay extra for it either. So it's a channel no one wants to pay for, as far as we can tell.

From Fanhouse:

"Victory4MSU20" (post count: 1) pops up on Michigan State Scout site GoSpartans.net to offer this:

I'm a big fan of State sports so I went to the Big 10 Network's kick-off party in East Lansing last week. Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney was there telling everybody how great this new TV package is going to be for college football and b-ball fans. WHAT A CROCK! Delaney is like the emperor who wore no clothes...the BTC has already sold its best games to ABC and ESPN. How delusional is Delaney and these other Big 10 greedmongers who want to charge us for the games we'd be able to see on our local cable station? If you want to learn more about the Big 10's big time rip off, I found a web site that explains a lot... www.puttingfansfirst.org

VICTORY FOR MSU!!!

Comcast Posing as Big Ten Fans in Anti-BTN Astroturfing Campaign [Fanhouse via Deadspin]