His insights into what may happen with the MJ Memorial Service are really interesting. As he says, it just goes to show how the music industry in a rush to do things without thinking through the implications do things without having a back up plan and without necessarily understanding the way that the Internet functions:
According to reports 1,600,000 people registered online from all over the world for a random drawing of
8,750 tickets to attend Michael Jackson's memorial service.
This is similar to a "free" concert also at the Staples Center that featured the Rolling Stones and President Clinton.
On that occasion thousands of the people who won in the lottery couldn't attend the concert - possibly because they were in another country and couldn't get there. So there was a mad scramble at the last moment to give away thousands of unclaimed tickets to avoid the embarrassment of there being empty seats at such a high visibility event.
The same problem could occur now with regard to the MJ event. Imagine thousands of fans from all over the world winning the tickets but not being able to attend because they either are minors and can't leave home, or are in another country and can't afford an airfare or can't get a flight, or.. Lots of ways that things can get screwed up and lots of reasons for future law suits!
This is similar to a "free" concert also at the Staples Center that featured the Rolling Stones and President Clinton.
On that occasion thousands of the people who won in the lottery couldn't attend the concert - possibly because they were in another country and couldn't get there. So there was a mad scramble at the last moment to give away thousands of unclaimed tickets to avoid the embarrassment of there being empty seats at such a high visibility event.
The same problem could occur now with regard to the MJ event. Imagine thousands of fans from all over the world winning the tickets but not being able to attend because they either are minors and can't leave home, or are in another country and can't afford an airfare or can't get a flight, or.. Lots of ways that things can get screwed up and lots of reasons for future law suits!
It leads me to believe the following:
1. There will be a lot of money made from the broadcast of the memorial service, and
2. There will be law suits, and
3. The whole event will be taped and online and being shared in P2P networks before the broadcast has even ended.
(I would not be surprised if some enterprising P2Per geek engineer takes a feed directly off of the unedited uplink from the outside broadcasting unit in the field and gets it seeded before most TV stations round the world get it to air).
