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Claiming that Microsoft is "cherry-picking" its online content, Ticketmaster on Monday filed suit against the Redmond giant. Its demand: Remove every link to Ticketmaster from the Seattle Sidewalk city guide site.
"These city guides are a unique animal in that their credibility is based on how much local content they can offer," asserts Ticketmaster vice president of multimedia Alan Citron. "Microsoft tried to take a shortcut and piggyback on our information."
Ticketmaster and Microsoft had discussions several months ago about a co-marketing deal, in which Sidewalk would use Ticketmaster information and links to help its readers order tickets to Seattle events. Microsoft declined to participate in the deal, Citron says, claiming that "there was no real value to our content." But when the Sidewalk site launched several months later, Ticketmaster information was everywhere. The lawsuit ensued after several requests that the links be removed were ignored.
"This is what the Web is all about - a gorgeous web of millions and millions of links, and no one tries to extract money from anyone else simply for linking to their site," says Frank Schott, general manager of Sidewalk. "It's in [Ticketmasters'] customers' interest - we're driving traffic to them."
Sidewalk currently links to the Ticketmaster site, encouraging readers to buy tickets for upcoming local events through that site. Although Sidewalk appears to currently link only to the front page of the Ticketmaster site, Ticketmaster claims that the links lead directly to specific event ticketing pages, therefore bypassing all of Ticketmaster's proprietary information. Sidewalk also claims that Ticketmaster accepts personal checks, which it does not; similarly, Ticketmaster has an agreement to promote MasterCard over other credit cards, and the Sidewalk site lists all credit card payments with equally sized icons.
Still, the line between linking and exploitation is vague. As Citron asserts, more than 5,000 sites on the Web currently link to Ticketmaster; unlike Microsoft, however, none of them are promoting ticket-vending as part of their service.
"We're not challenging the open nature of the Internet," says Citron. "We want people to have the ability to link freely to us, but we don't want to be used."
Ticketmaster, which is partly owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, currently has an agreement to provide a similar service to Sidewalk rival CitySearch. Ticketmaster says that relationship is unrelated to the current lawsuit, and is non-exclusive.
