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You Wanted the Best? You Got the Best! If You Can Pay for It... Antitrust Considerations and Artist-Based Solutions for Lower Concert Ticket Prices
Full text linkThe live music industry has become increasingly inaccessible to fans as ticket prices continue to rise under the dominance of Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster. Since their controversial 2010 merger, the two companies have consolidated control over both the primary and secondary ticketing markets, fostering anticompetitive practices that allegedly include exclusive venue agreements, coercive bundling of promotion and ticketing services, and dynamic pricing schemes. These practices have drawn widespread scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, artists, and consumers alike, culminating in the Department of Justice’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up the conglomerate.
This Article traces the historical development of the ticketing industry, analyzes Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct under U.S. antitrust law, and examines price manipulation through bots, scalpers, and algorithmic pricing. Through case studies of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Oasis’s reunion, it highlights the real-world consequences of monopolization on artists and fans, while surveying legislative and regulatory responses in the United States and abroad. The Article concludes by advocating for a multi-pronged approach—aggressive antitrust enforcement, artist-led initiatives, and targeted legislative reform—to restore competition, lower ticket prices, and preserve live music as an accessible cultural experience for all.
The live music industry has become increasingly inaccessible to fans as ticket prices continue to rise under the dominance of Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster. Since their controversial 2010 merger, the two companies have consolidated control over both the primary and secondary ticketing markets, fostering anticompetitive practices that allegedly include exclusive venue agreements, coercive bundling of promotion and ticketing services, and dynamic pricing schemes. These practices have drawn widespread scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, artists, and consumers alike, culminating in the Department of Justice’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up the conglomerate.
This Article traces the historical development of the ticketing industry, analyzes Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct under U.S. antitrust law, and examines price manipulation through bots, scalpers, and algorithmic pricing. Through case studies of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Oasis’s reunion, it highlights the real-world consequences of monopolization on artists and fans, while surveying legislative and regulatory responses in the United States and abroad. The Article concludes by advocating for a multi-pronged approach—aggressive antitrust enforcement, artist-led initiatives, and targeted legislative reform—to restore competition, lower ticket prices, and preserve live music as an accessible cultural experience for all
Authoring While Dead
Full text linkBob Marley died in 1981. But he wrote a song in 2017 with The Killers. At least, that’s what the song credits say. Why? Because The Killers’ song included the two words “redemption song,” the title of a classic Bob Marley hit. Rather than fight, The Killers agreed to add Marley as a co-author.
There is an increasing trend in the music industry toward resolving disputes over music copyright by granting co-authorship (or “interpolation”) credit to the claimant, no matter how weak the claim (as in Marley’s case), and even if they are dead (as in Marley’s case again). Bob Marley and The Killers are not alone. Olivia Rodrigo agreed to add Paramore as a co-author despite the absence of any plausible copyright claim. Sam Smith did the same with Tom Petty. So did Beyoncé. They are all identified as co-authors of the songs they (generally falsely) alleged were infringing.
But they aren’t and can’t be authors under copyright law. Even if the copyright cases have merit—and they often don’t—that would make the defendant an infringer, but it wouldn’t make the plaintiff a joint author. Instead, the deal for co-authorship credit appears to be a form of trolling. Most music contracts give the complaining party an undeserved share of the royalties. If that was all they did, we might put up with it. After all, the parties agreed for whatever reason. But permitting retroactive co-authorship claims does harm to others and to the system as a whole. It creates problems for later understanding of authorship, for termination rights, and is a form of rights accretion that Jim Gibson warns us about. There is reason to worry that it will lead to a statutory interpolation right—a right to be credited for, get money for, and eventually control songs that don’t infringe in the first place
Will Green Mean “Stop”? Exploring How Combatting the Climate Crisis Impacts on WTO Relevance
Full text linkThe WTO faces a legitimacy crisis as climate change demands leadership it may be structurally unfit to provide, raising doubts about its future role in global governance
Child Rights: Bangladesh’s Obligations Under the Worst Forms of Child Labor and Minimum Age Conventions
Full text linkDespite international prohibitions, millions of children in Bangladesh endure exploitative labor in violation of ILO conventions, highlighting the country’s enforcement failures and urgent need for reform
Robbing the Cradle: Georgia\u27s Battle to Enact Raise the Age Legislation Through HB 462
Full text linkIn the state of Georgia, seventeen-year-olds are not old enough under the law to vote or consume alcohol and tobacco products. Despite this, they are old enough to be criminally tried as adults. Georgia is one of three states that continues to process seventeen-year-old juvenile offenders through the criminal justice system instead of juvenile court. In September 2023, forty-five juveniles were prosecuted as adults and incarcerated in Georgia prisons. This is significant because juvenile offenders experience better outcomes when they are processed through the juvenile court system because juvenile courts account for a youth’s “naturally high capacity for change and growth to redirect behavior into more healthy and socially positive outcomes” in ways that the criminal justice system does not. In its latest attempt to address this, the Georgia House of Representatives drafted and passed Georgia HB 462 during the 157th legislative session, but it did not pass in the Senate. To faithfully serve and support the juveniles in the state of Georgia, it is imperative that HB 462 be fully passed
The Secret Service Industry: Reimagining Trade Secret Protections to Curb Exploitation in the Hospitality Industry
Full text linkThis paper observes and analyzes the current discussion around the exuberant use of non-compete clauses in the business world by placing a focus on the hospitality industry and why, in an time where we are witnessing the demonization of non-competes it might be prudent to revisit and enhance trade secret laws to make them better equipped to handle the caseload that would inevitably come should non-competes be banned by the FTC. While the near-ban or complete ban of non-competes would certainly affect other industry fields and bodies of law, the hospitality industry is one that has been particularly scrutinized as the media has brought to light the predatory nature of non-compete usage on low-income, unskilled employees. Furthermore, trade secret law has always been the most underdeveloped body of law for intellectual property as it has for decades been substituted for non-competes
Trademark Expansion as an Avenue to Protect Personal Identity Amidst the Rise of Deepfake Technology
Full text linkRecent technological advances, often referred to as deepfakes, pose a new legal conundrum. How can individuals protect their identities online? A deepfake is a manufactured image, video, or audio file that appears to attribute words or acts to someone that has never acted in such a manner. Already this technology has been used to extort money and in attempts to spread false information and sway elections. As technology continues to improve, these deepfakes will only become increasingly more convincing. Traditional approaches to identity protection do not address all the various harms or the multi-jurisdictional nature of the harms that deepfakes present to individual citizens. This note suggests that a reconception of trademark law serves as one avenue to protect identity amidst rapid technological innovation. Recognizing that our identities are commodified now more than ever, posing identity as a source identifier of an individual would prevent scammers from co-opting another’s identity in a confusing way
Defamation, Privacy, and the First Amendment: Cases & Problems (2nd ed.)
Full text linkI created this resource in anticipation of teaching my Torts II class, which will primarily explore defamation and privacy torts. Though I searched for a suitable coursebook, I found that none contained all of the opinions I consider essential for teaching the nuances and complexities of these subjects. Additionally, I wanted to spare my students the exorbitant price tags associated with traditional law school texts. Hence, I assembled a collection of relevant privacy and defamation cases that align with the objectives of my course. Each case is accompanied by a set of questions to further stimulate class discussion. Where I thought necessary, I included clarifying comments and summaries. I made this resource available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license and hope that others will not only use it to their own benefit, but adapt it to meet their own needs (provided they respect the non-commerciality and attribution conditions).
As I prepared these materials, my primary goal was to enhance readability. Fully aware that law students already spend most of their time preparing for class, I significantly shortened the opinions, focusing on what I believed was most important for instructional purposes. I also removed the majority of what I believed to be non-essential citations to streamline the opinions and make them more accessible. If you believe I misrepresented or left out any important doctrines or perspectives, or have any other suggestions, your feedback (from students, instructors, and practitioners alike) is greatly appreciated. Although I did not engage a formal editor, I reviewed the materials carefully and, consistent with my scholarly interest in the area, occasionally experimented with large language models (AI) for minor editorial refinements. If you believe that any errors or omissions escaped my review, please don’t hesitate to let me know.https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/books/1200/thumbnail.jp
Inge Viermetz, Woman Acquitted at Nuremberg
Full text linkConventional narratives tend to represent the post-World War II international criminal proceedings as a men’s project, thus obscuring the many women who participated, as lawyers, journalists, analysts, interpreters, witnesses, and defendants. Indeed, two women stood trial before Nuremberg Military Tribunals. This article examines the case of the only woman found not-guilty: Inge Viermetz, who had been an administrator at Lebensborn, the Nazi SS adoption and placement agency. The article outlines the prosecution’s child-taking case against Viermetz, as well as her successful gendered self-portrayal as a conventionally feminine caregiver. With references to Professor Megan A. Fairlie, at whose memorial symposium it was presented, the article concludes by considering contemporary implications of this acquittal at Nuremberg
Confession and Confrontation
Full text linkThe constitutional law of confessions has a critical blind spot. In theory, the law serves two interests. First, it protects the autonomy of suspects by stipulating that they can be questioned while in custody only with their consent. Second, it restrains official misconduct by forbidding interrogation methods that overbear a suspect\u27s will. Even if the law adequately safeguards those interests, something is missing: reliability. As false confessions emerge as a major source of wrongful convictions and as social scientists expose how standard interrogation tactics prompt innocent people to confess, the Supreme Court and conventional wisdom insist that the reliability of confessions is not a constitutional concern.
The Supreme Court and conventional wisdom are wrong. Inattention to reliability is a jurisprudential oversight, not a feature of constitutional design. The problem is that the Court and commentators have neglected the part of the Constitution that unabashedly curates prosecutorial evidence: the Confrontation Clause. For much of our constitutional history, that omission could be excused, as the Confrontation Clause was a sleepy corner of the Sixth Amendment. Twenty years ago, in Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court enlivened it.
This Article shows that a straightforward reading of Crawford, combined with a smattering of legal history, yields a simple but transformative rule: If police obtain a confession through psychologically manipulative tactics that induce \u27fear or hope, the confession should be inadmissible unless the defendant testifies. Eighteenth-century jurists and modern social scientists agree that such tactics lead to unreliable confessions, yet these tactics remain a staple of modern American interrogations. That would change if courts recognized the Confrontation Clause\u27s capacity to regulate confessions