Madison Square Garden Bans Fan After Surveillance System IDs Him as Critic of Its CEO (theverge.com) 96
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A concert on Monday night at New York's Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents' wedding anniversary. He didn't end up seeing the show -- and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG). After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn't been to the venue in nearly two decades.
"They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I've been added to a ban list," Miller says. "There's a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again," which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre. He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won't say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.
In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an "integral" part of the '90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, "Ban Dolan" -- a reference to the infamous scuffle. A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller's wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG's part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership. "Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature," Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. "His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct."
Miller responded to the ban, saying: "I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby]. I was like, 'Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state. It's something that we all have to be aware of -- the panopticon. We're [being] surveilled at all times, and it's always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It's more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line."
"They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I've been added to a ban list," Miller says. "There's a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again," which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre. He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won't say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.
In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an "integral" part of the '90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, "Ban Dolan" -- a reference to the infamous scuffle. A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller's wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG's part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership. "Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature," Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. "His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct."
Miller responded to the ban, saying: "I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby]. I was like, 'Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state. It's something that we all have to be aware of -- the panopticon. We're [being] surveilled at all times, and it's always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It's more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line."
Little Jimmy Dolan is a whiny bitch (Score:5, Funny)
Such a pathetically petty, thin-skinned little loser.
To Timmy's PR flack, who most likely will find this - how does it feel to spend your time on this stupid shit for a broken freak like Dolan? Is this really what you wanted to do with your life?
Re:Little Jimmy Dolan is a whiny bitch (Score:4, Informative)
Never heard of him before. Now I have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What a first rate asshole.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Little Jimmy Dolan is a whiny bitch (Score:4)
Declaring unpersons seems to have become a fashion lately. Let's hope we won't be seeing any attempts to rewrite history. Oh, wait. [msnbc.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Well okay, declaring unpersons and rewriting history are happening. But surely not revising language? Oh damn. [silive.com]
Social Credit Score (Score:2)
Corporation starts its own Social Credit Score...
Can someone in the UK, if possible, chime in how football teams are preventing known troublemakers from attending sporting vents for some time now.
Re: (Score:1)
Corporation starts its own Social Credit Score... Can someone in the UK, if possible, chime in how football teams are preventing known troublemakers from attending sporting vents for some time now.
You can't possibly be comparing this guy who designed a t-shirt and soccer hooligans that are violent and destroy property?
Re: (Score:2)
Please reread the comment. Nowhere was a comparison between the two stated, implied or intended.
- US company has a policy to prevent people from attending events based on politics, views, or opinions
- UK has more stringent policy to prevent people from attending events when those people have been proven to fight, vandalize, etc.
Would like to know better how the UK arrived at the policy, how they implemented it, what are the penalties, and more.
Re:Little Jimmy Dolan is a whiny bitch (Score:4, Interesting)
yeah imagine having all that money and still caring so much what randos think of you.
What a petty, petulant child. I bet he and the orange idiot get along well.
Re: (Score:3)
According to claims in a lawsuit, he got on well with Harvey Weinstein, sharing extracurricular activities, including one of the subjects of those extracurricular activities.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot about Elon Musk, the world's richest man-baby. He bought a social network just so he could control what people were saying about him on it. Then he started buying elections because people stopped using his social network.
US Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no right to bear arms in Disneyland. Nor freedom of speech in Apple.
It ain't the quantity of Government that's the real problem. It's the quality.
Re: US Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: US Constitution (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite his former anticapitalist rhetoric, he cut taxes on business, permitted cartel growth, decreed wage reduction, and rescinded the eight-hour-workday law. real wages in X dropped by almost half. X admitted that the standard of living had fallen but stated that “fortunately the X people were not accustomed to eating much and therefore feel the privation less acutely than others.”
Who is this quote talking about, trump or mussolini?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Corporatism became one of the main tenets of Italian fascism, and Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy advocated the total integration of divergent interests into the state for the common good.[4] However, the more democratic neo-corporatism often embraced tripartism.
Re: (Score:1)
Wait a minute, we can drink beer in Tokyo Disneyland. In fact, it's positively encouraged.
Shit, I'm hard pressed to think of a place where beer drinking is discouraged; maybe on the grounds of the Imperial Palace, not sure.
Anyway, the folks there really ought to assert their human rights more, it's just not right.
Re: (Score:2)
What they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Tokyo?
Re: (Score:2)
But can you eat it with chopsticks?
Re: (Score:2)
Dunno but in my country they put warnings on food packaging of products containing MSG.
Re: (Score:2)
The constitution should apply to everyone, not just the government.
Re:US Constitution (Score:4, Funny)
Careful, you're talking about making democracy apply to the workplace, you socialist.
Re: (Score:2)
While the first 10 words of your sentence make sense, this insult against ZOOLOOK was uncalled for.
Re: (Score:2)
The constitution should apply to everyone, not just the government.
Define "apply." I hope you mean that individuals enjoy its protections and governments must heed its limitations.
As James Dolan so clearly demonstrates, there's no law against being an asshole. That said, it just seems wrong to ban a guy like Frank Miller for something like this. But how does he fight back legally? It's Dolan's dojo and he can let in who he wants. The only things I can think of are peaceful protest and boycotting of Dolan's venues.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Possibly it could be made a condition of the operating permit for Madison Square Garden from the city that bans can only be for specific reasons. That might infringe on private property rights, but those get a bit iffy when a place is a public venue that basically can only exist because of exceptions granted to it because its existence is seen as a public good. Whether they could argue on 1st amendment grounds there themselves is a bit tricky. Is preventing speech you don't like in your private public venue
Re: (Score:2)
I had thought universities could ban speakers they found objectionable, under the First Amendment. Then I learned that public universities are considered extensions of the government (I assume because of their public funding) so the First Amendment works in the opposite sense: they cannot ban speakers (unless there is a public-safety reason?)
I'm disturbed that any universities (let alone public ones) could be so considered, but there you are. How this relates to MSG is another question. To what extent is it
Re: (Score:2)
At the very least, they require a license/permit to operate. To what extent pinning requirements to that would be allowable is tricky. On the one hand, we have civil rights laws banning businesses from excluding certain classes. Of course, the current government is trying to ply every legal theory they can to eliminate those. Then we have the tricky gay cake supreme court ruling where an exception was made because requiring the cake maker to writing a message they did not want to was seen as a free speech i
Re: (Score:2)
The constitution should apply to everyone, not just the government.
Does this mean I get to have my own navy?
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean I get to have my own navy?
I think you actually do get to. You may be limited in what weapons you can have by where the ships are registered, international law, etc.
Re: US Constitution (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is not that corporations have the right to make choices about what they say or who they do business with, the problem is that we allow corporate mergers and acquisitions even when the entities are financially healthy and foster an environment of healthy competition.
We continually allow corporate consolidation, and we reward the scoundrels who run these corporations with increasingly regressive tax laws. What you are describing is a symptom of a greater problem. We cannot expect to legislate away the problem of the Dolans of the world abusing their power by insisting they become supposed free speech zones. Their power allows them to abuse other things, like the legal system itself. What we have to prevent the consolidation of power and implement steeply progressive taxes so that no one person could afford to fully control all the things Dolan controls. That he abuses his power is a secondary problem. The power is the root problem.
Re: US Constitution (Score:4)
aka the more power consolidated in the private sector, the more they can defang the government (or astroturf the electorate to demand such a thing on their behalf), the more the government is just a sock puppet for consolidated private interests
wow, it all seems quite familiar
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Very petty (Score:4, Insightful)
But then pettiness is apparently the new rage in the former USA, from the president down to the airport security.
Y'all are easily offended and should probably lighten up a bit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Like, blindingly clear, as opposed to patently clear before that.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, victimhood is the mantra of this administration and many of it's main supporters in the public with the man at the top as the victim in chief. They'll happily abuse immigrants and minorities while crying about how they're the real victims here.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. How dare they use the same tactics that has practically always been abused by the left, especially over the last 15 years. That's not fair!
Your post even implies that YOU know who the "real" victims are while you're complaining about victim-hood. The irony in your comment is hilarious, and the fact that you're completely oblivious to it is icing on the cake.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, it's all equivalent. As an example, the left complains about the unequal treatment of minorities in this country which is easily shown through economic, justice, crime, etc. statistics. Meanwhile the right whines about white male persecuted, people who rarely experience any real persecution and one can see that in the exact same stats.
The fact that you think there's some sort of equivalence here is what's hilarious. Get back to me when white men have to regularly fear for their personally safety due
Welfare Queen James Dolan Hates Free Speech (Score:2, Informative)
Banned AFTER buying the ticket (Score:5, Insightful)
How nice of them to take his money before the banning rather than after. He should have refused to leave without a refund.
Re:Banned AFTER buying the ticket (Score:4, Interesting)
well the CC change back will fuck ticket master with costs and they need to feel the burn.
Re:Banned AFTER buying the ticket (Score:5, Interesting)
He should make a claim for transport costs & similar. In the UK we have the small claims courts for this sort of thing; however I do not know how much of a legal leg he has to stand on. It is not clear if he had been told in advance that he was banned. This is a case where the use of a subject (data) access request under the GDPR [ico.org.uk] would help a lot.
Might as well get this out of the way. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Careful with the death threats. People generally make those anonymously. In any case, people who dislike Dolan should start banning him from their places of business (if any).
File an CC change back on the full cost of the tic (Score:2)
File an CC change back on the full cost of the ticket.
Two-year old tantrum X billionaire = trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
Two year old's baby tantrum gets blown up into a real-life thing because he happens to be a billionaire or whatever.
Honestly, this is the type of person who ought to be in jail rather allowed to run any kind of a business, let alone a large one.
At minimum, anything owned by this type of person should be ineligible for every type of government aid or cooperation, from TIF subsidies to liquor licenses.
And, let's see here [bloomberg.com]:
Yeah, anyone receiving taxpayer largess at this kind of scale absolutely should not be allowed to discriminate against random people he doesn't happen to like or whatever.
As soon as he returns the $1 bill he's welcome to continue doing whatever he likes . . .
So given that basically everything is owned (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one of the things I always find annoying about the sort of folk who brand themselves conservative or libertarian. They always seem okay with the boot on their neck as long as it's a private boot.
Re:So given that basically everything is owned (Score:5, Insightful)
They still think capitalism is ruled by "the invisible hand": That is, they can choose a different butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. As you note, that choice no longer exists, most things are a duopoly: The article mentions that MSG owns a number of unique services. (eg. The Sphere)
US politics/exceptionalism tells the people, everything is a level playing field: It's why racism is rampant and billionaires are rewarded with more money. There's no upside to that elitism.
Re: (Score:2)
The illusion of equality under the law is no longer necessary. The goverment used to ensure that some minimal basic rights, say free speech, applied much of the time but those days are now gone. The oligarchs have been let loose, and the rest of us now have the status of medieval peasants at best.
Capitalism is supposed to have a referee (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We are rapidly moving to a feudal oligarchy where "the will of the people" has replaced "the divine right of kings" as the popular myth that simply isn't true.
Re: (Score:1)
https://askwonder.com/research... [askwonder.com] shows how full of baloney rsilvergun is. It shows almost 2500 US companies with annual revenue of at least $100M as of 2013, and 20 times as many with annual revenue between $25M and $100M.
If you want to look at number of owners, https://www.fool.com/research/... [fool.com] says 62% of US adults own stock. It does note that "The top 1% holds 50% of stocks", but 1% of US adults are still more than a thousand times as many people as railvergun claimed.
It is a sign of how awful Slashdo
Fascism on the rise (Score:3)
""Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature," Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. "His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct."
I understand Code of Conducts are a dangerous tool of repression but that rather sounds funny. Fascism is on the rise.
Re: (Score:2)
""Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature," Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. "His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct."
I understand Code of Conducts are a dangerous tool of repression but that rather sounds funny. Fascism is on the rise.
This is why in the UK we have a law for this, so that private organisations can't determine what is a threat or not... It's a crime to threaten violence but a threat must be credible (I.E. those making it must be capable of and likely to carry out the threat). Being mocked is not a threat.
The legal team should have to surrender evidence of these threats to the police to determine and left to public prosecutors to determine if action must be taken.
It's a private company (Score:3, Insightful)
So they can ban him for any reason they want; he has no right to their services. Freedom of speech only applies to the government.
Or at least this is what you would hear a couple of years ago when people were being banned from public forums or social media for conservative viewpoints. I guess suddenly it really is a terrible injustice for a private company to ban someone for private company reasons.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
..... a couple of years ago when people were being banned from public forums or social media for conservative viewpoints.
Nobody was banned for "conservative viewpoints". They were banned for posting blatant lies.
Re: It's a private company (Score:2)
lol, dude just admitted that bigotry is a âoeconservative viewpointâ (not that anyone needed that spelled out anyway).
Re: (Score:3)
Yes they were. Obvious example: https://forum.rpg.net/index.ph... [rpg.net]
Notice there's no requrement to be posting any lies in there. And the judgment of what counts as lies is biased anyway--remember when Hunter Biden's laptop was a lie?
Re: (Score:1)
Not only is it a lie, it's such a blatant lie you would have to be a complete moron to fall for it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody was banned for "conservative viewpoints". They were banned for posting blatant lies.
I think you are confused. You are treating "conservate viewpoints" and blatant lies as if they aren't the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct, they legally can do so.
However, banning people for misinformation and stirring up violence from a free service is wildly different to banning someone for hurting your fee-fees. So regardless of our views on the law, the former is considered, by normal people, socially acceptable or even socially positive, while the latter is just pathetic.
And if you're going to bring up social media, I assume you're referring to the bans on Twitter against people who blatantly violated the ToS by running harassment
Re:It's a private company (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can ban him for any reason they want; he has no right to their services. Freedom of speech only applies to the government.
Or at least this is what you would hear a couple of years ago when people were being banned from public forums or social media for conservative viewpoints. I guess suddenly it really is a terrible injustice for a private company to ban someone for private company reasons.
So let me get this straight — your comment isn’t about the article or the actual issue raised. It’s a lazy culture war potshot. Instead of engaging with the disturbing use of facial recognition and blacklists by MSG to punish a guy over a years-old T-shirt design, you’re trying to score points by invoking a completely unrelated grievance: conservative voices on social media.
Here’s the problem with that: those bans you’re alluding to? In nearly every case, they weren’t for holding conservative views. They were for violating platform rules — doxxing, harassment, incitement, spreading disinformation. It wasn’t about what they believed, but how they expressed it. You’re equating shouting “fire” in a crowded theater with disagreeing about fire codes.
And that distinction matters — just like it matters here. Frank Miller wasn’t disruptive. He wasn’t wearing the shirt. He hadn’t even been to an MSG event in decades. He was silently identified, tracked, and banned by a corporate surveillance system — not for his behavior, but for designing a satirical shirt years ago and being tagged in a social media post. That is not about free speech, left vs. right, or platform moderation. That’s about surveillance creep, arbitrary corporate punishment, and the normalization of facial recognition as a tool to silence dissent.
If you actually cared about civil liberties — instead of just lobbing predictable “gotchas” — you’d see this is exactly the kind of thing everyone should be concerned about, regardless of political leaning. But you’re not here for the principles. You’re here to troll and posture. Go troll somewhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't be so annoying if he were a better troll. SlashDot used to host some of the greatest trolls on the Interwebs, and flame wars that outshone the sun. Oh, well, things change and not always for the better.
(glances back at 2020 and covid) (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Who is saying otherwise?
Or do you not understand the "nuanced" difference between "You have a right to moderate your private property" and "You're behaving like an asshole". Because both can be true, and are true in this case.
Re: (Score:1)
It is time for another tshirt design! (Score:1)
does size matter? (Score:2)
It looks like this has upset a lot of people. I wonder how many of them would still be upset if this was a small business? Maybe a privately owned bakery? It's a fair comparison, MSG is a private venture, and this is private property. Does it being bigger make a difference on who they can ban from the premises and for what reasons? Remember, this isn't government, your quoting 1984 is in appropriate.
Like he said,
This isn't censorship or gove
Re: (Score:2)
That's a lot of words to say you think people should hold and enforce petty grudges for an unreasonably long time. Either way, MSG is not a private company, and the CEO probably ought not be arbitrarily cutting off revenue and garnering bad press based solely on the flimsiness of his ego.
The Power of Bullshit. (Score:2)
”Memes are powerful..”
No, stupid. The Meme Generation of Smartass Junkies made them “powerful”. By not knowing where to draw a line, or when to lay off the narcissist sauce. Go figure when “just kidding” has morphed into an entire legal defense strategy by force.
I find it quite deranged that we went from a society who got triggered by every damn thing, to a society who rather enjoys screwing with people for the sake of triggering for entertainment. Certainly highlights the issue of social media feedin
Re: (Score:2)
I find it quite deranged that we went from a society who got triggered by every damn thing, to a society who rather enjoys screwing with people for the sake of triggering for entertainment.
When people let their emotions guide their actions, of course there was going to rise a people that uses their own actions to purposely trigger said emotions. It was obvious. The only way to stop that from happening was to stop letting emotions guide actions, but most humans aren't capable of that.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it quite deranged that we went from a society who got triggered by every damn thing, to a society who rather enjoys screwing with people for the sake of triggering for entertainment.
When people let their emotions guide their actions, of course there was going to rise a people that uses their own actions to purposely trigger said emotions. It was obvious. The only way to stop that from happening was to stop letting emotions guide actions, but most humans aren't capable of that.
Maybe the real way we stop that is to raise children to be responsible disciplined respectable adults who are capable of being part of a functioning society rather than broken smartass social media internet junkies who have their emotions, actions, and entire identity tied to some virtual representation of themselves.
It’s ironically sickening how much “social” media is failing humans in that whole social aspect. Trust, isn’t merely a luxury in society. It is an absolute necessity t
denied entry at an expensive event based on data (Score:1)
The Streisand effect (Score:1)
This calls for... [dun dun DUN!] The Streisand effect!
Free Speech (Score:2)
Free Speech has consequences, and sometimes those consequences come from pissing off a rich asshole.
Re: (Score:1)
Free Speech has consequences, and sometimes those consequences come from pissing off a rich asshole. No one is arguing that is wrong, but they are arguing that we as society should be calling it out because Dolan is an asshole, and his press guy is guilty of libel unless they have proof of those death threats.
double edged outrage (Score:3)
You might consider how you would behave if someone criticised you. Would you let that person into your home? These are, at least on paper, private facilities.
I think this is a distraction from the real problem. These 'public' like facilities are often built, refurbished, or maintained with public funds. The moment that happens, some public access rules need to be in place. They exist on the backs of taxpayers but get to operate as if they are a private space with no compromises.
Do we have all of (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Madison Square Garden Sucks (Score:2)
Madison Square Garden and their associated properties suck anyway.
James Dolan and Mikyl Cordova are dickless pieces of shit.
'Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet.
No. James Dolan's retarded ass ruined Franks's parent's anniversary. You are not responsible for the actions taken by others.
What a thin-skinned cunt. (Score:2)