In Ticketmaster LLC v. RMG Technologies, 2007 WL 2988403 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 16, 2007), the Central District of California granted Ticketmaster's motion for a preliminary injunction against a company offering software that could quickly buy large quantities of tickets from Ticketmaster's website. The court held that the defendant was bound by the website's "Terms of Use," which prohibited commercial use of the site and limited the number of tickets that could be purchased at one time. The court concluded that, by merely browsing Ticketmaster's website in violation of these terms, RMG had infringed Ticketmaster's copyright in the site.

Although it's difficult to feel sorry for this defendant, who was basically allowing people to cut in Ticketmaster's virtual ticket line, the case raises troubling implications for consumers. The case gives more ammunition to companies that claim to bind consumers with contractual terms placed on a website. Moreover, the case assumes that merely viewing a website in an unauthorized manner can be copyright infringement. Reading a website, however, shouldn't be considered copyright infringement any more than reading a book is. Even though the website is copied into the computer's memory before it is displayed on the screen, the copy in memory is purely incidental to the process of reading the website, disappears when the user navigates to a different site, and has no adverse commercial effect on the copyright owner. Even if this is technically a "copy" under the Copyright Act, it seems like an easy example of fair use.

At the Technology & Marketing Law Blog, Eric Goldman concludes that the decision is "anything but consumer-friendly."