Permanent home: http://wiredpen.com/resources/presentations/wordpress-using-widgets-to-customize-your-theme/

Mitt Romney

• http://www.mittromney.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/mittromney
• http://twitter.com/#!/MittRomney
• https://plus.google.com/113664776160150493710/posts
• http://youtube.com/MittRomney
• http://flickr.com/MittRomney
• Instagram?
• http://followgram.me/tag/mittromney

Rick Santorum

• http://ricksantorum.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/RickSantorum
• http://twitter.com/#!/ricksantorum
• G+ ?
• http://youtube.com/ricksantorum
• http://flickr.com/santorum
• Instagram?
• http://followgram.me/tag/ricksantorum

Ron Paul

• http://www.ronpaul2012.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/ronpaul
• http://twitter.com/#!/ronpaul
• https://plus.google.com/118337959785760721399/posts
• http://youtube.com/ronpaul
• http://flickr.com/ronpaul
• Instagram?
• http://followgram.me/tag/ronpaul

Newt Gingrich

• http://newt.org/ and http://newtgingrich360.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/newtgingrich
• http://twitter.com/#!/newtgingrich
• https://plus.google.com/u/0/103558202399303174212/posts
• http://youtube.com/newtgingrich
• http://flickr.com/newtgingrich
• http://web.stagram.com/n/newtgingrich/
• http://followgram.me/tag/newtgingrich

Barack Obama

• http://www.barackobama.com
• http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
• http://twitter.com/#!/barackobama
• https://plus.google.com/110031535020051778989/posts
• http://youtube.com/barackobama
• http://flickr.com/barackobamadotcom
• http://web.stagram.com/n/barackobama/
• http://followgram.me/tag/barackobama

Cross-posted from Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/108740570618849247850/posts/2t1Y4sGa6P9

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

Jump Links

• Back Story
• How Much Does Ticketmaster Charge In Fees?
• What About The Competition?
• What Do Competing Ticket Companies Charge?
• How Should Fees Be Structured?
• Text of Settlement Email

From the “you may have missed this in real time” department:

If you are an online Ticketmaster customer, you may be eligible for a $1.50 per purchase discount on tickets purchased from 2012-2016. No joy, it seems, for those who buy tickets from November 2011 until the settlement is finalized and discounts distributed by email (not before May 2012).

The announcement subject line is “Notice of Proposed Settlement of Class Action;” the sending email, ticketfeelitigation@tgcginc.com. You not only need to check your spam folder; you need to think about old email addresses. How many people have kept the same email address on their Ticketmaster account for 12 years? I haven’t.

The Back Story

Ticketmaster is the giant company that ticket buyers love to hate. One reason for this: we aren’t really Ticketmaster’s customers. Their real customers are venues and promoters (and sometimes those are one-in-the-same, see LiveNation, now merged with … Ticketmaster) because these are the businesses that contract with Ticketmaster for services.

Another reason we hate Ticketmaster: we think that all of those fees go into Ticketmaster’s pockets. That is probably not the case. Read on, remembering that there is more than one fee tacked on to the price of your concert or play or sporting event tickets.

In 2010, an eight-year-old court case challenging Ticketmaster’s service fees as excessive was expanded from the two original plaintiffs (ticket buyers) to a national class action suit. In late November, the proposed settlement was announced; the final settlement hearing is in May 2012. The class includes approximately 56 million Americans who on average have purchased three tickets from Ticketmaster online since 1999.

For each ticket purchased online from October 21, 1999 to October 19, 2011, a Ticketmaster customer will receive a $1.50 credit to be used on future purchases. The credits must be used within 48 months after they are distributed. And they will be distributed to you via the email that you have associated with your Ticketmaster account. [The settlement website has a form you can use to register old email addresses.]

If a typical customer bought three tickets in 12 years, it seems pretty unlikely that said person will buy three more in four years. Fortunately, the discounts may be combined into pairs (a $3.00 discount per purchase). An as yet unnamed charity will get any unclaimed balance, up to $45 million, in the form of cash and free tickets.

If you are an above-average Ticketmaster customer (like this household), you may not be properly compensated for Ticketmaster’s price gouging. Each customer is limited to a total of 17 coupon-like discounts to be used over a four-year period.

How Much Does Ticketmaster Charge In Fees?

I thought I’d review my account, as I have been using Ticketmaster’s online services as long as they’ve existed. Here’s what greeted me when I logged in:

After 15 days from the event date, receipt and order details for your transaction are no longer available online.

WTH? I can go to Amazon and find the full details of every order I’ve ever made with them! You know why? Because Amazon has competitors but Ticketmaster is a legacy company, with an antiquated backend, but it has virtually no competition and lucrative long-term contacts with major venues. Well, and you and I are Amazon’s true customer; that significantly changes the customer service picture.

When I searched my gmail archives for Ticketmaster emails, I was reminded that Ticketmaster emails include no order details — only a link — for anything purchased after June 2007. But until June 2007, Ticketmaster included a PDF of your tickets with your email order confirmation.

I paid $3.50 plus $1.00 per ticket in a handling fees for a lecture series (four tickets, one transaction). That’s $4.50 in fees — 20.7% — for a ticket costing $29.75.

And then there’s this 2006 Heart concert at the Paramount Theatre. Ticket: $37.00. Fees: $11.20 — a 30.3% surcharge.

I have PDFs of my receipts for 2011 summer concerts. Here’s Jeff Bridges: a 33% surcharge for an outdoor concert at Chateau Ste Michelle Winery in Woodinville, WA; that does not include the $2.50 per ticket print-on-demand fee:

These examples demonstrate why concert goers HATE Ticketmaster with a purple passion. And it’s why a $1.50 discount on future ticket fees is laughable.

But the law suit did not take aim at the entire fee structure, just the “order processing fees”:

The best case scenario for this case was that customers would get back all they money they overpaid in “order processing” fees, which averaged $4 each (the case doesn’t involve the much more expensive “convenience fees” Ticketmaster also tacks on).

What’s always been mind-blowing to me is that Ticketmaster charges us a processing fee to deliver the tickets via email …. but nothing to deliver the tickets by postal mail!

Think about this for a minute.

You and I both know that it costs Ticketmaster real money to print tickets, stuff envelopes and then pay the U.S. Post Office to deliver our tickets. Then there are the replacement tickets that the venue has to provide because either we didn’t receive or received and misplaced (or thought the envelope was junk mail and tossed it in the recycle bin) the tickets.

The airlines “get” it and not a single one of them charges us to get our tickets online, print them and bring them to the airport. Hell, they sometimes give us a discount if we do this work in advance! I don’t believe their market behavior is overly influenced by competition, but it’s possible, especially since that oligopolistic market has a lot more competition than ticketing services. It also has more regulation.

What About The Competition?

What competition might be the better sub-head. In 2000, Ticketmaster bought the indie ticketing company, TicketWeb. I checked the fees for a Seattle venue, the Tractor Tavern: 35% mark-up:

Other “competitors” that Ticketmaster now owns: MusicToday, TicketWeb, Ticketron and TicketsNow (a peer-to-peer, or secondary, marketplace). In 2009, Ticketmaster reached a settlement with the state of New Jersey over its redirecting customers to TicketsNow even though tickets were still available at face value on Ticketmaster.com.

It will also end a previous advertising arrangement in which customers Googling for Ticketmaster were automatically sent to the TicketsNow web site.

Ticketmaster is the primary ticket seller for  the NBA and sells tickets for 14 of 30 MLB teams.

Here’s one political tie-in:
There’s the niggling fact that Ticketmaster owns venues. This is a form of vertical integration that the courts axed back in anti-trust days, when Boeing lost its airline and Hollywood producers lost ownership of the movie theatres. But the Obama Administration OKed Ticketmaster’s acquisition of LiveNation, which is the largest venue owner in the county.

FYI, even though Ticketmaster owns venues, the $1.50 discount cannot be used at events sponsored by Live Nation.

In order to merge with LiveNation (LYV), Ticketmaster had to divest itself of Paciolan, which is now 100% owned by Comcast. According to its data, it is the number two ticket seller in the U.S.

• 192 million tickets — Ticketmaster in 2007 + Live Nation in 2008
• 124 million tickets – Paciolan data coupled with New Era Tickets and TicketsWest
• 42 million tickets – Tickets.com in 2009

Based on the DOJ requirements detailed in the merger, AEG Live was LiveNation’s leading competition. It’s a promoter that also owns venues and sells tickets to its events.

StubHub, an eBay company, is a fan-to-fan (secondary) sales venue, so it doesn’t count as a competitor to Ticketmaster although it is a competitor to TicketsNow.

What Do Competing Ticket Companies Charge?

When I checked prices for an AEG event scheduled at Seattle’s Key Arena in February 2012, I discovered that the service fee ranges from 15-30%, with the lower priced tickets taking the brunt of the convenience charges:

I checked prices for the Harlem Globetrotters, who are coming to Everett WA (Comcast Arena, Paciolan ticketing) in February 2012. Fees total 23.3%. That also feels exorbitant. But for a less expensive ticket, the fees jump to 31%!

Distant number three Tickets.com is “a privately held subsidiary of MLB Advanced Media, LP, the interactive media and Internet division of Major League Baseball.”

Here’s an example of ticket charges for a performance at the Paramount: 26% in handling fees plus an order processing fee (per order) of 3.5% of the face value of the tickets. Note that $7.50 of the $24.50 in “convenience fees” goes to the Paramount Theatre:

A small venue ticketing company, ShowClix, does not charge for ticket delivered by email and offers mobile phone delivery on some tickets. On this order for circus tickets in Lansing Michigan, the service fees total 16.9%, which is a significantly less than the top three ticketing companies:

How Should Fees Be Structured?

I’ve always bridled at having to pay a per-ticket fee rather than a per transaction fee. What’s not been clear to me is how this market works. We need to understand that Ticketmaster exists because of a distributed duopoly structure: the venue and the ticketing agency.

A long long time ago, Ticketmaster decimated then market leader Ticketron by “increas[ing] service fees and split[ting] the money with whoever housed a concert or sporting event.”

There are real reasons that venues don’t want to invest in a computer system that won’t crash when thousands of fans log on the instant the star du jour concert tickets go on sale. That’s probably why the handful of alternative ticketing systems are focused on small venues. (And why MLB decided to roll its own.)

I think any fees should be

1. Per transaction, not per ticket;
2. Clearly marked on the ticket, showing how much of the fee goes to the ticketing company and how much to the venue. This information would enable customers to put pressure on both entities, because public opinion is the only pressure available to us when faced with a monopoly market. And it is a monopoly for any given event: there is only one event per city per tour; there is usually only one online ticketing option per venue; and now Ticketmaster also owns venues.

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

Text of Settlement Email

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA – COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

This proposed settlement (“Settlement”) is on behalf of a nationwide class of consumers (the “Class”) who (1) purchased tickets on Ticketmaster’s website, www.ticketmaster.com (“the Website”) between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011 (the “Class Period”), (2) paid money to Defendant Ticketmaster for an Order Processing Fee (“OPF”) that was not refunded, (3) did not and do not opt-out of the Class, and (4) were residents of one of the fifty United States at the time of their purchase. Excluded from the Class are (a) Ticketmaster, (b) any entities in which Ticketmaster has a controlling interest or which have a controlling interest inTicketmaster, (c) the officers, directors, employees, affiliates, and attorneys of Ticketmaster, or (d) any employee or officer of the Court or their immediate family members.

The proposed Settlement is also on behalf of a nationwide subclass (the “UPS Subclass”) of all Class Members who paid a delivery price for expedited delivery of their tickets via UPS (the “Delivery Price”).

The Class asserts claims that Ticketmaster’s OPF is excessive and deceptive. The UPS Subclass asserts claims thatTicketmaster’s UPS delivery charges are excessive and deceptive.

If you are a member of the Class and do not opt out of this proposed Settlement as set forth below, the Settlement will resolveyour claims if approved by the Court.

On May 29, 2012 at 8:30 a.m., there will be a Final Approval hearing for the Court to determine whether to approve the settlement described below. The hearing will be held before Judge Kenneth R. Freeman, in Department 64 of the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles, located at 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, California 90012.

The proposed Settlement will provide a combination of benefits to the Class and UPS Subclass. Additionally, Lead Class counsel (identified below) will apply for up to $16.5 million in attorneys’ fees and expense reimbursements to counsel for the class and for an incentive award of $20,000 to each of the class representatives. Ticketmaster has agreed not to oppose that request and the Court will decide how much to award to Class counsel and the class representatives. The specific terms of the settlement are described in a Settlement Agreement and Release. This Notice does not change the terms of the Settlement Agreement, and is intended as a short summary of that document, which will be made available for your review on the Litigation Website as described below. In the event of any conflict between this document and the terms of the Settlement Agreement, the terms of the Settlement Agreement will govern.

SUMMARY OF YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS & OPTIONS¹
(DETAILED DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS)

Email: ticketfeelitigation@gcginc.com

If you do not exclude yourself, you will be represented as a member of the Class and UPS Subclass, as applicable, by Lead Class Counsel who are identified below and have been appointed by the Court to serve as class counsel. You will also release all claims against Ticketmaster as summarized below and as set forth in detail in the Settlement Agreement.

1. WHAT THIS CASE IS ABOUT:

Plaintiffs have alleged that Ticketmaster deceived and misled customers by representing that the Delivery Price was a pass-through of the amount that UPS charged Ticketmaster for that delivery and that Ticketmaster’s OPF was also deceptive and misleading in that it did not actually represent Ticketmaster’s costs in processing orders but rather was a profit generator which Ticketmaster required customers to pay.

Ticketmaster denied all of these allegations, and has defended this litigation for the past eight years. In addition to denying the merits of Plaintiffs’ claims, Ticketmaster opposed Plaintiffs’ request that the Court certify this case as a class action.

On February 5, 2010, the Court certified the case as a class action only on behalf of California residents who purchased tickets from the Website, including a subclass of consumers who also purchased UPS delivery for those tickets. Plaintiffs appealed that decision, to the extent the Court did not include consumers residing outside of California. In September, 2010, the Appellate Court ordered that the case should be certified as a nationwide class action, and the trial court thereafter issued an Order certifying a nationwide class covering purchases made from the Website from October 21, 1999 through May 31, 2010. In October 2010, pursuant to Court Order, Notice was sent via email, and published in the USA Today, advising members of the foregoing class of the certification and of their opportunity to opt-out of this case. Accordingly, this case is proceeding as a class action on behalf of that class. The class also has been expanded, by stipulation of the parties and order of the court , for purposes of this Settlement only, to include all consumers who (1) purchased tickets on Ticketmaster’s website from June 1, 2010 through October 19, 2011, (2) paid money to Ticketmaster for an OPF that was not refunded, (3) did not and do not opt-out of the class, and (4) were residents of one of the fifty United States at the time of their purchase.

2. WHY THIS NOTICE IS BEING PROVIDED TO YOU:

After several mediation sessions before an impartial mediator, the parties have reached the proposed Settlement for this case on behalf of themselves and all Class Members and UPS Subclass Members. If you have received this notice by email, that is becauseTicketmaster’s records reflect that you are a member of the Class, and some members of the Class also are members of the UPS Subclass. The purpose of this notice is to inform you of the terms of the Settlement, the benefits available to you under it, how this lawsuit and the Settlement may affect your legal rights, important upcoming deadlines relating to the Settlement, and the steps you must take if you want to object to or opt out of the Settlement.

3. SETTLEMENT TERMS: If the Court approves the settlement, it will provide the following:

A. Monetary Benefits To Class Members.

(a) Class.

Each Class Member who (i) has an eligible claim, (ii) has not been convicted of a felony pertaining to his/her purchases of tickets over the Website and certifies that he/she has not been so convicted and also certifies that he/she did not use computer “bots” or other software to disguise his/her true identity and/or avoid the tickets per transaction limits on the Website, and (iii) has not filed a timely opt-out, as applicable, shall receive the following benefits: a code (“Code”) for each purchase transaction (i.e. per order, not per ticket) entered into from the Website during the Class Period, (up to a maximum of 17 transactions/codes) entitling each Class Member to a credit in the amount of one dollar and fifty cents ($1.50) per transaction which will be deducted from future purchases from Ticketmaster on the Website for events occurring at venues located in the United States (excluding events at venues owned and operated by AEG). The Codes may be combined, up to a maximum of two credits totaling three dollars ($3.00). The Codes are non-transferable.

(b) UPS Subclass.

Each UPS Subclass Member who (i) has an eligible claim, (ii) has not been convicted of a felony pertaining to his/her purchases of tickets over the Website and certifies that he/she has not been so convicted and also certifies that he/she did not use computer “bots” or other software to disguise his/her true identity and/or avoid the tickets per transaction limits on the Website, and (iii) has not filed a timely opt-out, as applicable, will receive the following benefits (unless the payments you made for UPS already were refunded – for example, where you cancelled your purchase order on the same day you made the purchase order): for each purchase up to 17 transactions (per order, not per ticket) made over the Website during the Class Period, a credit in the form of a code (or codes) e-mailed to the UPS Subclass Member for five dollars ($5.00) off the Delivery Price on subsequent purchases from Ticketmaster on the Website of tickets that are shipped via UPS for events occurring at venues located in the United States (but excluding events at AEG owned and operated venues). These codes cannot be combined or aggregated (i.e. only one code may be used per order) and are non-transferable. A UPS Code may be combined with a ticket purchase Code, however.

(c) Issuance of Codes. Ticketmaster (or, at Ticketmaster’s election, the Claims Administrator) will send the codes to Class and UPS Subclass Members at the last-known e-mail address in Ticketmaster’s database within thirty (30) days after Final Approval² but in no case prior to August 28, 2012, with instructions that they may be redeemed over the next forty-eight (48) months.

(d) Limitations on Redemption of Codes. Codes may be redeemed up to 48 months after distribution, at which time they will automatically expire. Codes may only be redeemed through the e-mail account to which they were sent unless the e-mail account is updated and verified (by Ticketmaster or the Claims Administrator) to belong to the same member of the Class or UPS Subclass, as applicable.

(e) Guaranteed Redemption Amount/Charitable Contributions. In the event that the minimum aggregate value of the OPF and UPS credit benefits redeemed in any given year during the forty-eight (48) month redemption period is less than $11.25 million, Ticketmaster shall make charitable contributions in amounts equaling the difference between $11.25 million and the aggregate value of the redeemed credit benefits that year. The aggregate guaranteed minimum redemption/cy pres amount for the settlement is $45 million. The charitable payments shall be made in the form of a combination of cash and tickets provided free of charge to appropriate charities, on the terms set forth in detail in the Settlement Agreement.

B. Non-Economic Settlement Terms And Benefits To Class Members.

1. Administrative Fees. Ticketmaster will pay the fees and costs charged by the Claims Administrator for administering the Settlement.

2. Website Changes. Ticketmaster has agreed to change its Website to add disclosures clarifying that Ticketmaster’s OPF may include a profit and is not limited to its order processing costs, and that its Delivery Price for expedited delivery via UPS may include a profit to Ticketmaster and is not the same as what UPS charges Ticketmaster. The language of the changes to the Website has been left to Ticketmaster’s reasonable discretion and may be changed again by Ticketmaster in the future to suit its business needs.

C. Release of Claims. The complete release is contained in the Settlement Agreement. In summary, if the Court grants final approval of the Settlement, you will be deemed to have fully and finally released and discharged Defendant Ticketmaster and its related entities from any and all claims relating in any manner to the allegations made in connection with the claims alleged by Plaintiffs in this case. If you want more details about the scope of the release, you should read the Settlement Agreement which is posted on the Litigation Website.

The release also covers any and all claims for attorneys’ fees, costs or disbursements incurred by Lead Class Counsel or any other attorneys for services rendered or value provided to the Class or the UPS Subclass. Nothing in the release precludes any action to enforce the terms of the Settlement Agreement. Insofar as this release extends to venues, the Released Claims shall not extend to any claims relating to the Face Value of Tickets (as defined in the Settlement Agreement). The Release also does not extend to any claims based on a breach of this Agreement.

D. Attorneys’ Fees and Costs. You will not be required to pay any attorneys’ fees or costs from your share of the Settlement. Lead Class Counsel will file with the Court an application (the “Fee Motion”) in this action for an award of up to fifteen million US dollars ($15,000,000) in attorneys’ fees, which, if awarded by the Court, would represent a “multiplier” of approximately 2.5 times Lead Class Counsel’s “lodestar.” The lodestar is computed by taking the amount of time spent working on this case, multiplied by Lead Class Counsel’s hourly rates. Lead Class Counsel has informed the Court that its lodestar is approximately $6.5 million, from the beginning of this case in 2003 through September 26, 2011. Lead Class Counsel will also seek to recover the amount of costs and expenses they have incurred, up to a cap of one million five hundred thousand dollars ($1,500,000). The parties have agreed that any award of fees and costs shall not exceed those amounts and that Ticketmaster will pay any amounts, up to these limits, awarded by the Court in addition to the relief provided to the Class.

E. Incentive Payment To Named Plaintiffs. In connection with the Final Approval hearing, Plaintiffs’ counsel will ask the Court to award an incentive award not to exceed $20,000 each for the two named Plaintiffs who brought this case, were certified as class representatives, and who have been required to respond to substantial discovery requests from Ticketmaster over the past eight years. If the Court approves the request, any attorneys’ fees awarded by the Court will be reduced by the amount of the incentive award. The incentive award will not reduce any of the benefits to the Class members.

ADMINISTRATOR CONTACT INFORMATION: The Claims Administrator in this matter is The Garden City Group, Inc. You may reach the Claims Administrator by e-mail, fax, mail or telephone using the following contact information:

Mail:

Schlesinger v. Ticketmaster
c/o The Garden City Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 9731
Dublin, OH 43017-5631

Email: ticketfeelitigation@gcginc.com

Toll-free telephone number: (877) 317-9139

PLAINTIFFS’ ATTORNEYS AND PLAINTIFFS SUPPORT SETTLEMENT: Plaintiffs’ attorneys and Plaintiffs support this Settlement. Among the reasons for their support include the benefits provided to the class, the fairness of the Settlement terms, the inherent risk of litigation at trial and/or appeal, and the delays associated with continued litigation, including a trial and appeals, the uncertainty of Plaintiffs’ claims, as well as other legal issues that have not yet been determined by the Court. Class Counsel believes that the Settlement is fair, reasonable and adequate in light of all the circumstances and in the best interests of the Class.

HOW TO OBTAIN ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.

The Claims Administrator has set up a website at the URL <www.ticketfeelitigation.com> for the purposes of allowing class members to update their email information, and to provide them additional information regarding the lawsuit. The Litigation Website includes copies in downloadable .pdf format of this notice, the Settlement Agreement, the most recent version of the Complaint in this case, the Motion for Preliminary Approval of this Settlement filed by Plaintiffs’ attorneys, and the Court Order granting Preliminary Approval. The Litigation Website also provides a means for class members to make inquiries electronically to the Claims Administrator regarding this Settlement and other important information relating to the Settlement.

Additionally, any class member is free to inspect the Court file, which is located at 111 North Hill St., Los Angeles, California 90012.

FINAL APPROVAL OF THE SETTLEMENT: The Court has set a hearing regarding final approval of the Settlement, Incentive Award Motion and Fee Application for May 29, 2012 at 8:30 a.m. in Department 64 of the Los Angeles Superior Court, located at 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, California 90012. The Final Approval Motion, Incentive Award Motion and Fee Application will be filed with the Court no later than April 2, 2012. All pleadings, motions and applications are or will be publically available in the court file in advance of the final approval hearing. If you file a timely objection as and when set forth below, you may (but are not required to) supplement your objection by timely filing a written opposition to any specific motion or application that has been filed with the court, in accordance with the California Code of Civil Procedure. Any supplemental oppositions must be served on Plaintiffs’ counsel andTicketmaster’s counsel by personal or overnight delivery at the addresses below no later than April 16, 2012. The Settlement will not be final and will not take effect unless and until 5 days after Final Approval of this Settlement as “Final Approval” is defined in footnote 2 below and in the Settlement Agreeement.

At the fairness hearing, Lead Class Counsel will ask the Court, Hon. Kenneth R. Freeman, to find that all aspects of the Settlement Agreement are fair, reasonable and adequate and approve the settlement in its entirety, which includes entering a Judgment granting all of the relief to the class members identified above, and the attorneys’ fees, expenses, and incentive awards.

Any class member who files a timely objection may appear at the fairness hearing (either in person or by an attorney) and have his or her objections heard by the Court.

RIGHT TO OBJECT TO THE SETTLEMENT:

You have the right to object to any aspect of the proposed Settlement, including the relief provided to the Class members and/or the attorneys’ fees and expenses, and/or the incentive awards, and may appear personally or through counsel at the hearing and object to the approval of the Settlement. Even if you object to the Settlement, you may still be entitled to share in the Settlement proceeds. The following is a summary of the requirements for filing an objection. For complete details, please review the Settlement Agreement, available at www.ticketfeelitigation.com.

To be valid and considered by the Court, any objections by you must be submitted in writing, must be filed with the Court and served by mail and/or email on Defendants’ Counsel and Lead Class Counsel by February 16, 2012 and must and include the following information: (1) a heading referring to the Action; (2) your name, address, telephone number, email address, and the contact information for any attorney retained by you in connection with the objection; (3) any email addresses used by you in connection with the purchase of tickets from the Website during the Class Period and, to the best of your ability, the identification (description, date and location of the event, date of ticket purchase, number of tickets purchased, and whether or not the tickets were delivered by UPS) of all purchases you made from the Website during the Class Period; (4) a detailed statement of each objection you are making and the factual and legal basis for each objection, and the relief that you are requesting; (5) a statement of whether you intend to appear, either in person or through counsel, at the Final Approval Hearing. If you intend to appear through counsel, you must identify the counsel’s name, address, phone number, email address, and the state bar(s) to which the counsel is admitted, and any Points and Authorities in support of your objections must contain any and all legal authority upon which you will rely; (6) a list of and copies of all exhibits which you may seek to use at the Final Approval Hearing; and (7) if you are going to request the Court allow you to call witnesses at the Final Approval Hearing, you must provide a list of any such witnesses together with a brief summary of each witness’ expected testimony at least thirty (30) days prior to the Final Approval Hearing. The failure to provide this list of witnesses shall bar them from testifying at the hearing. However, submitting this list does not guarantee that the witnesses shall be allowed to testify. The ability of any witness to testify is subject to any objections that may be raised by any Party and subject to the normal rules and discretion of the Court.

Any counsel retained by you in connection with an objection shall identify all objections they have filed to class action settlements from January 1, 2008 to present, and identify the results of each objection, including any Court opinions ruling on the objections. Objector’s counsel shall also identify if they have ever been sanctioned by a Court in connection with filing an objection.

If you file an objection, you must make yourself available for deposition upon ten days written notice. The deposition must be taken within 40 miles of your residence, unless you agree to a different location.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO NOTHING AND DO NOT EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO OPT OUT OF THE SETTLEMENT:

If the Court grants final approval of the Settlement, and if you do not properly and timely opt out of the Class by sending a written request to opt-out to the Claims Administrator identified above either by mail postmarked on or before February 16, 2012 or by e-mail sent by no later than 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on February 16, 2012, then you will automatically be included in the Class and the Subclass, as applicable. You will be bound by the terms of the Settlement Agreement and any Court Order approving the Settlement and Judgment, and will release your claims against Ticketmaster.

An original and one copy of any objections you prepare shall be timely filed with the Court at the following address: Los Angeles Superior Court, Department 64, 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, California 90012. Copies of all documents filed with the Clerk of the Court must also be sent to Plaintiffs’ counsel and to Ticketmaster’s counsel at the following addresses:
Plaintiffs’ Counsel / Lead Class Counsel

Steven P. Blonder, Esq.
Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C.
191 North Wacker Drive
Suite 1800
Chicago, Illinois 60606
Telephone: (312) 521-2000
Facsimile: (312) 521-2100
Email: sblonder@muchshelist.com

W. Michael Hensley, Esq.
Robert J. Stein III, Esq.
AlvaradoSmith
1 MacArthur Place, Suite 200
Santa Ana, California 92707
Telephone: (714) 852-6800
Facsimile: (714) 852-6899
Email: rstein@alvaradosmith.com; mhensley@alvaradosmith.com

Ticketmaster’s Counsel

Jeff E. Scott, Esq.
Greenberg Traurig, LLP
2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 400E
Santa Monica, California 90404
Tel: (310) 586-7700
Fax: (310) 586-7800
Email: ScottJ@gtlaw.com

Any objection or opt-out request that fails to satisfy the requirements of the Settlement Agreement, or that is not properly and timely submitted, shall be deemed ineffective, may be disregarded by the Court, and may be deemed to have been waived, and the Class Member asserting such objection or opt-out request shall be bound by the final Judgment of the Court.

IF YOU DO NOT OPPOSE ANY ASPECT OF THE PROPOSED SETTLEMENT, YOU NEED NOT APPEAR AT THE HEARING OR FILE ANY PAPERS.

RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES. If there is a dispute regarding your settlement amount, or any other aspect of your participation in the Settlement (other than objections as set forth above), the dispute shall be decided by the Honorable John Wagner (Ret.).

INQUIRIES: Any questions concerning this notice should be directed by email to ticketfeelitigation@gcginc.com, or by U.S. mail or telephone to the Claims Administrator using the contact information set forth above.

Please do not contact the Court or Defendant’s attorneys.

¹You are not entitled to any benefits under this Settlement if you have been convicted of felonies pertaining to the purchase of tickets overTicketmaster’s Website or have used “bots” or other software to disguise your true identity and/or avoid the “tickets per transaction” limits on the Website. You will be required to certify that you are not so disqualified at the point of purchase.

²“Final Approval” shall be five (5) days after the date that an Order by the Court granting final approval of this settlement becomes non-appealable. “Non-appealable” shall mean that no party, including objectors, if any, has a right to appeal to, or seek reconsideration in, the California Court of Appeal, the California Supreme Court, or the U.S. Supreme Court or, to the extent any appeals have been filed, they have been resolved or exhausted.

^{The Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, has ordered this email notice be sent. If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from future email messages from the Claims Administrator with regard to this Settlement, please click on this link.}

My entry in theDecember’s Carnival of journalism, hosted by The Guardian Developer blog. This month’s question: If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree?

My wish for the Christmas elves? Put someone other than IT in charge of all CMS purchases. [There's an argument to be made that IT shouldn't be in charge of IT ... but that's another story.]

I make this wish (a not-very-veiled complaint) for the same reason that Don Norman criticized the design of stoves in The Design of Everyday Things. Landlords and housing developers are major purchasers of stoves. Thus, the person making the buying decision is focused primarily on price and reliability. Usability does not enter into the equation.

And so it goes with most software purchases in a corporate or enterprise system. I’m experiencing one of those purchase decisions in the project I’m working on right now.

It’s a content management system (CMS) called SiteCore. Here are three things that indicate how unusable the tool’s interface is:

1. To preview a page, you click publish.
2. To publish a page, you click preview.
3. To edit a page, you click home.

There is no way in heaven or hell that this software could have been tested with people who create web pages … unless the tests were stictly for functionality. That is, to see if the buttons worked. Not if the interface worked.

There are under-the-hood problems, too. The kind you would think IT would be aware of and care about, if they understood web technology that is. This software is a document model system in an object model world. As a result, redesign takes far more effort than modifying CSS.

The software purchae was supposed to make it easy for non-web staff to update pages. For that purpose, a better tool would be WordPress (which is free but has upfront development costs) or even Adobe Dreamweaver (which would be more expensive because of a per-seat charge). Of the three, WordPress would be the best long-term solution because it separates content from presentation.

I wish I knew who should be in charge of purchase decisions like these. But because moving IT purchases out of IT is one of those “never gonna happen” wishes, I’ll propose a secondary wish: any IT purchases must be vetted by those who will use the software on a daily basis. And ease of use must be factored into the buying decision; it’s more important, in the long run, that the initial outlay.

However, this won’t happen so long as organizations are structured in silos, where a cost saving for one VP is a cost burden for another. And that’s how most “enterprises” are organized.

Prior Carnival of Journalism Posts

• September: Online Video News: 5 tips
• August: Google+
• June: Tips and Tools To Ease The Turbulence In Your Workflow
• May : Failure Is A Not Four-Letter Word

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

News reports identify the three as Seth Burroughs, Elizabeth Robblee and Ben Byers.

I learned about the story Thursday evening while attending the GeekWire holiday gala in downtown Seattle and agreed to be interviewed by local NBC affiliate KING5.

The reporter wanted to know if I had any idea why the staffers would tweet about the drinking. When I talked to one of my friends at the event, she hypothesized that we were seeing an age-related values disconnect.

I kept thinking: they were drinking Jack Daniels during business hours in the Cannon Office Building? This isn’t a Silicon Valley start-up or an after-5pm drink with the boss. One tweet screenshot, dated December 1, reads:

@TheRockeman1 My D2R team showed up this morning at 9am with shots of Jack. What a glorious and frightening way to kick off the month.

D2R is shorthand for “December to Remember.”

It’s possible that the public conversation on Twitter was a great big hoax. The trio is silent; Twitter accounts disabled. But I don’t think so. If so it was a very elaborate and long-running hoax.

Inexperience isn’t an excuse. Robblee had worked for Larsen since 2007 and was drawing about $60,000 a year. She had worked for Sen. Patty Murray before joining Larsen’s staff. Seth Burroughs, a legislative assistant, had worked for Larsen since 2009. He was making about $45,000 a year. Byers joined the staff in 2009 and was promoted in June 2011; his salary was about $38,000 a year.

Two Sides To This Coin

In my mind, there are two issues at play here. One is the core behavior: drinking at work. The other is the public broadcasting of that behavior.

Think about behavior that society judges to be taboo like date rape, driving drunk, armed robbery. Do folks that commit those acts talk about them publicly (in those terms)? I don’t think so.

For the drinking-at-work to be a topic of even semi-public discussion, it seems like the participants have to believe that it’s not taboo. Did they think that they were living an episode of Mad Men?

As far as those public tweets are concerned, most that are featured in the NW Daily Marker screenshots are @ tweets. That is, these tweets are directed to a person [beginning @twitter-user-name] and thus only show up in a third party’s Twitter stream if she is following both participants (the sender and the receiver). This Twitter behavior may have given the three a feeling that they were in a protected bubble.

Or it may be that these stream-of-consciousness tweets weren’t considered out of bounds because the three didn’t think the behavior out of bounds.

Or a cry for attention. (To look cool?)

This behavior included more than tweeting about drinking. Burroughs also called his boss an idiot. Those writing about this story have assumed he meant Larsen, but he could have meant an intermediary (his real boss).

To me, either set of behaviors is inexplicable.

The reporter asked me if I had advice for listeners. I shared the tried and true: don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times and don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read.

That may be common sense, but as you can see from the sidebar examples, common sense isn’t necessarily common.

:: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice
:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

In other words, any political action site — a PAC or a site advocating for or against a person or an issue — should contain information about the organization or person who is running the website in a Whois lookup. [To clarify, I'm not talking about opinion sites but sites that are driving campaigns.]

If you agree with me, please sign this petition. And share it!

A “private domain registration” that shows only the domain registrar, such as GoDaddy, is insufficient for political action transparency. Knowing the provenance of a website is essential information for determining a site’s credibility and veracity. This transparency is essential in an ever-crowded digital space, where setting up an online storefront can be done in five minutes.

The impetus for my soapbox Tweet and Google+ post was this site/comment. A commenter at Google+ suggested the WhiteHouse petition.

What say you? Vote for transparency by signing the petition and sharing it (or this post)! TIA!

Photo credit: Flickr CCL.

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

Updated: This works in Chrome/Mac now (30 October) but my balkanization concern remains relevant, especially since this DOES WORK with Safari. Just use that “look …  [at your] own risk” link.

1. New CBS 60 Minutes Website In Safari

According to TechCrunch, CBS has created a Chrome-specific website ["Chrome App"] for 60 Minutes that “delivers high-quality video of “60 Minutes” program content, starting with the recently aired interview of Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’s biographer.”

Based upon the screen capture in the Chrome Store compared with the screen capture on my MBP, as well as the fact that no video launches for me, this app only works with Chrome for Windows. TechCrunch says the app uses HTML5 and CSS3 animations.

This balkanization — lack of accessibility — is a problem.

Having news content balkanized in discrete mobile apps is troublesome; having a platform and browser-specific news website is antithetical to the ethic of the web.

Not only is it wrong, it’s antithetical to the spirit of HTML5/CSS as well.

Let me remind everyone of this quote from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, father of the web:

Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
- Technology Review, July 1996

CBS 60 Minutes: Just say no.

• As you can see from these two screen captures, the contents widget (upper left) does not look the same on the Mac as the PC. On the Mac, it’s empty and the one line that shows up (sometimes) is out of sequence compared to the PC.
• Moreover, clicking the “play” button yields … nothing. No error. No action. Nothing.
• The “home” images are different. There is no obvious way for me to find the image in the promo screen.

2. New CBS 60 Minutes Website In Chrome Mac

3. New CBS 60 Minutes Website In Chrome PC [via Chrome Store

Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs, 2011 by Lea Suzuki

In 1984, I convinced my about-to-be (then) husband not to buy a Macintosh ($2,495/$5,440 in 2011 $). It wasn’t just because it was expensive. It wasn’t interoperable, you see, and the dairy cooperative we worked for was an IBM shop. Mainframes and IBM PCs (not clones) didn’t talk to Macs. Heck, Microsoft Word wasn’t around yet!

Instead, we bought an Epson cp/m machine with 5 1/4″ floppies, a green screen and a great software bundle (Peachtree). And a dot-matrix printer, of course. I can’t imagine that it was interoperable either, but it was less expensive. And it was the gateway drug to the life I lead today.

I moved to the Northwest in 1989 in a vain attempt to salvage that marriage. When I started work at Northwest Pulp and Paper Association in 1990, I tried to convince my boss to let me buy a PC. But NWPPA was a Mac shop. Her response: someone needs to be able to access your files if you get hit by a truck. So I bought my first Mac on the company dime. I never looked back.

By 1991 I was online and, information junkie that I still am, I was in nirvana. CompuServe was my friend and the PRForum was my community. One of my best friends from college was married to Dennis Hayes, of Hayes Modems, so I made sure that was what we bought at work. I became the network/software/IT person in our office of five.

I remember going to one Halcyon user group meeting in Bellevue. I couldn’t understand why everyone was having trouble connecting to the Internet, and I said so. The guy running the session said, “What kind of computer do you have?” “A Mac,” I replied. “Well that’s why you don’t have problems.” I didn’t go back.

When I traveled for work, I had a Motorola mobile phone. Eventually I would buy a Powerbook. (Guy Kawasaki got me an Apple employee discount on my second one; he was the keynoter at a conference I attended.) I had no idea I was an early adopter; when the people around you have similar toys, that becomes your normal.

In 1995, I began work on one of the first gubernatorial candidate websites in Washington state, on my trusty Mac. In late 1996, I left public affairs and started to ride the dot-com boom as a communicator who could speak tech. I was also convinced that the WWW would impact the 1996 presidential election. (That’s what happens when you don’t know you’re an early adopter.) I was on the board of the HTML Writers Guild and in that role presented a paper at the sixth conference of the World Wide Web Consortium in April 1997. I created a Mac fan site (“Mac Facts”) and was an Apple Demo rep. I lusted after a Newton. And bought stock right before it tanked.

I had become techie.

As much as I love Apple, I’ve never bought a first generation product. I’m not a bleeding edge person, but I really wanted that first iPhone. However, I can be pragmatic (as the opening anecdote illustrates) so I waited for the 3GS before ditching my Samsung Blackjack. And I bought the iPad2.

I’ve admired Steve Jobs from afar, for a very long time; we are, after all, contemporaries. My friend who was married to Dennis Hayes? She met him back in the 80s. And I know lots of people who have met or worked with or know him casually. Tech is a small community.

The news broke as I was riding my motorcycle in the rain to the University of Washington campus to teach a class called Managing Your Web Presence: Strategic Digital Platform Fundamentals. Design and HCI are big components of the class, so Apple is a big component. Presentation skills are factored into other classes I teach, so Guy’s tips and the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs have informed my students.

Just as we were getting started, Lisa asked me if I’d listened to the news while coming in. “No,” I laughed, “I’m on a bike!” I don’t remember her next words, just the name: Steve Jobs. Heck, she may have only said Steve. It was enough.

Modified Apple Logo, Aug 26 2011, Jonathan Mak Long

Would I be where I am today if, in 1990, my boss had said “sure, buy a PC”? I don’t know, but maybe not. I believe that Apple products and Apple’s user interface guidelines shaped my sense of user experience, informed my views on product and web usability, turned me into an advocate for the person we visualize using our products.

Steve’s death has touched me like no other “celebrity” death except that of Princess Di. At the time of her death, I was taken aback at my intense feeling of sadness. I did not understand that I was experiencing the connectedness and closeness, the stirrings of intimacy, that can come from computer mediated communication.

Tonight is different. With Steve’s death, I feel my own mortality; we are the same age. I grieve for a world that has one less person whose passion is aesthetics and soul coupled with a willful disregard for conventional wisdom.

R.I.P. Steve, and heartfelt condolences to your family.

****

Photo  : San Francisco Chronicle
Logo : Tumblr
Yes, I’m violating copyright.

****

Meaningful stories about Steve Jobs:

• Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets Of An Asshole
• Steve Jobs Tribute For Misfits…
• The Economist : http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/10/obituary
• Wired (+Steven Levy) : http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/jobs/all/1
• The Guardian : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/06/steve-jobs-quotes
• Rolling Stone : http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/steve-jobs-in-1994-the-rolling-stone-interview-20110117
• Reuters (+Kevin Kelleher) : http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2011/10/06/jobs-gave-us-computers-without-pain/

And an animation from +Dunken K Bliths

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g55Rnc92KWI]

From Google+

• Steve Jobs Stories
• Apple History (An Animation)
• TIME magazine produced a new issue in 3 hours after learning of Steve’s death.

This post on the future of online video news is part of the September Carnival of Journalism.

The history of online video production and distribution is one of fragmentation (competing formats and players) followed by easy-uploads-with-inferior quality (YouTube); one of dissatisfaction with the cross-browser and cross-platform work-around (Flash) with hopes pinned on a new savior for rich media, HTML5.

If the future of the Internet is mobile (and I believe it is), then what types of content are mobile customers accessing today? According to a 2011 report from ComScore, in 2010 2-out-of-5 U.S. mobile customers used their mobile devices to access “news and information.” In Japan, where the mobile market is much more mature, the numbers jumped to 3-in-5. In the U.S., only 6% reported watching “TV or video” but 23% did in Japan, where mass transit is part of the lifestyle of a much greater percentage of the populace than it is in the U.S.

So what should a newsroom manager be thinking about the future of online video?

1. Avoid “Not Invented Here” Syndrome

There’s a time and place for home-grown solutions but video distribution is not, in my opinion, one of them. Leverage existing platforms like YouTube or Vimeo because the platform is familiar to your customers and it’s what they do. As Tom Peters suggests, “stick to the knitting” — which in the case of news organizations is creating compelling content.

2. Make It Easy To Share

Too often, I see a news story that has a video and (a) I can’t tell that it is a video because what I see looks like a still photo with no visual clues that a video is hiding underneath or (b) I can’t link directly to the video or (c) I can’t embed (share) the video in a blog post I am writing about the topic. Each is flat out a bad business decision. The first is a violation of good user interface design, the second screams “learn SEO” and both the second and third means that your content can’t go viral.

3. Make It Compelling

Whether we’re talking about TV news or online video news stories, too often the strengths of the medium are ignored. Use video for stories where action and sound are integral to my being able to understand the intricacies and nuances of the story. Oh. And there needs to be a story. Talking heads? Give it to me in text, please, as I can read a lot faster than the talking head can speak. Moreover, the text can be indexed by search engines; for the time being, that audio track cannot.

4. Get To The Point

A corollary to number three, get to the point means think about the environment in which this video is being watched. With television news, the environment is usually leisurely, in my home sitting comfortably on the sofa*. Sometimes, it’s “sound only” as the viewer is doing something else; the TV is on in the background. (And unfortunately too often sound is the only part of the medium that is essential to understanding the story.) But on my phone (or iPad) or even my laptop, I’m not in a leisurely state of mind. I’m not going to linger. And if the video doesn’t get to the point (or capture my heart) immediately, I’m outta here. That leads to ….

5. About Those Lead-in Commercials

I’d love to be able to say “ditch them” but I’m a realist. Americans put up with commercials in order to have “free” information. We’ve been doing this for at least a century, so I will bend to the inevitable. Except: Insist that the commercials you run be developed specifically for online video. This means that they need to be short! A 30-second commercial is a lifetime online. Moreover, if I want to rewind – watch the clip again – don’t make me sit through the commercial a second time. For the record, I’ve experienced these non-user-centric design pitfalls on too many news websites.

Pre-internet, we had three separate distribution (media) methods: print (newspapers and magazines) for text and still images, radio for audio, and television for moving pictures and sound. The internet, as a distribution platform, accommodates all media forms. It will be the primary distribution platform for content in the not-too-distant future. We live in a multi-media world; the successful news organization will create compelling content that best understands the advantage of each content form and embrace tools that allows customers to share content and also interact with both the content and its creator.

* I confess to not watching mainstream TV news. I watch The Daily Show (irregularly) and PBS/BBC (irregularly).

:: wiredpen permalink
:: Follow me on Twitter!
:: Tweeted, Facebooked, Plused, Linked To JCARN