Legal action against Eventbrite for unlawful discrimination

[Spero]

On Oct 27 2022, Eventbrite pulled my book launch event for 'Transpositions - personal journeys into gender criticism'. This was a collection of stories from men and women about how they got involved in issues around sex and gender. Some of you may have contributed.

They told me that I was promoting 'violent and dangerous' content. I asked them to explain themselves. They haven't. So I am taking them to court for unlawful discrimination against my gender critical belief.

I wrote about it in the Critic here thecritic.co.uk/why-is-eventbrite-obstructing-my-book-launch/

I am hoping that some people may feel able to do a spot of gardening. I know its dark and miserable and not the best weather for gardening, but I think this could be quite an important piece of digging. There are some really important questions to ask about how private companies, based overseas are allowed to dictate what we think or say.

I know that. But question is what service were they providing in England?

The service consisted of having a webpage hosted in CA that the OP accessed and posted her event to, ticket payments were then processed by a subsidiary in ROI. We need to nail down place of performance.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude
I admire your tenacity and patience. Apparently you're asking trick questions now!

@MoirasSaggyBundles
Thanks for the clarity you are bringing (and I love the username).

@Spero
I'm so glad to hear that tickets have sold out.
This is a really important case, for all the reasons you have mentioned. I'm not in a position to help right now but I'll be planting a little seed in your allotment in a week or so.

@Discovereads
You tell off @ChazsBrilliantAttitude for using "contract" and "agreement" interchangeably. But surely a contract is an agreement? Not all contracts are legally enforceable, I would imagine, but every contract must be an agreement.

@Spero
Hasn't the jurisdiction clause been superseded by the EU provisions?

"27.2 EEA, Swiss and UK Users. If you are a User located in the European Economic Area ("EEA"), Switzerland or the United Kingdom (together, "EU") who is an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession while using the Services, then the following EU Amendments available here apply to you. If you are an Organiser and process personal data of EU event attendees, you are a data controller with respect to your event attendees' personal data and Eventbrite will act as a data processor. With respect to EU personal data that an Organiser holds as a data controller, the Data Processing Addendum for Organisers located here is incorporated into these Terms."

www.eventbrite.co.uk/support/articles/en_US/Troubleshooting/eventbrite-terms-of-service?lg=en_GB

"Section 23 is amended such that the law of the EU country in which you reside applies, excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG)"

www.eventbrite.co.uk/support/articles/en_US/Troubleshooting/eu-consumer-amendments?lg=en_GB

The UK is expressly included in the defined term EU

Am I missing something obvious? Are they arguing it's trade etc. because it's a book launch?

Every contract is an agreement, but not every agreement is a contract. So they shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

It’s the same type of nitpicking potshots that Chaz has done to me and I said it to illustrate what he’s been doing. And I’m not also going “don’t believe a word chaz says because he didn’t even know the difference between a contract and an agreement!” Like he has done to me. Its shit like that which is frustrating and counterproductive.

Ivd posted loads of helpful information on this thread. From the T&Cs with a contract law analysis that has been confirmed as right by posters who know what they’re talking about as opposed to posters who seem to just enjoy smirking, insulting me and calling me names while doing nothing useful at all.

Jurisdiction is an issue for this as Eventbrite is US defendant and it’s a cyberspace/digital services type of contract. The U.K. court would have to first agree it has jurisdiction over Eventbrite for a EqA discrimination case and then also when considering choice of law agree to apply the U.K. Eq A as opposed to the US Civil Rights Act (which would result in different outcomes unless CA law has something). Then even if OP proves discrimination, and a U.K. court rules in OPs favour, there is still the question of enforcement of its ruling in the US.

Even I know that, and I did one law module as part of my accountancy qualification

Except point out that the EU provisions (where EU expressly is defined as including the UK) appear to substitute English law as the governing law provided the "an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession" test is met.

That might be vaguely helpful to the OP

@Discovereads
So no substantive point to make about the use of "contract" and "agreement" in this context, just an attempt to score points.

This was what Chaz originally posted to me in a disparaging manner.
Find barrel, scape bottom of barrel - claim international agreements involving a department of the state is relevant to a dispute between private persons.

Chaz chose to write “dispute between two private persons” which usually is how one refers to two (natural) people having a private disagreement, as in no contract is in existence. Normally you’d describe the OPs situation as a “contract dispute between two parties”

Governments are legal persons too btw..so, if he had really meant to use just “person” as shorthand for all the “legal persons” in his sentence then why didn’t he say “person” instead of “Dept of state?” And he’s gone and substituted international agreements for international contracts (again) which are two very different things not at all comparable or interchangeable just to add to the general vagueness and sow confusion.

So I question “person” being applied to Eventbrite US and he then pretends he said “legal person” and goes ha ha gotcha.

So that’s what Chaz does, he writes something vague and when I don’t decipher it quite right he pretends he said something entirely different.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude I think those clauses relate to consumer protection legislation that cannot be overriden by T&C. I think the EU amendments referred to were incorporated into English Law under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. That Act distinguishes between "traders" and "consumers". I think the purpose of defaulting to this legislation would be to protect ticket buyers who are buying physical goods (i.e. a ticket) rather than organisers like Spero are buying a service, but I might be wrong, I'll have a read through some guidance and see what I can find.

Stop childishly misrepresenting what has been going on. It's embarrassing for you. I haven't tricked you or misled you - you've just made basic errors that I wouldn't expect from an experienced lawyer. It's also interesting that you didn't pick up on the EU consumer provisions point which may well change the governing law.

It's not surprising that there might be such carve outs given the provisions of the recast Brussels Regulation and the Lugarno Convention

I don’t want to derail the thread but youre asking for it.
International agreements are nothing like international contracts.

International contracts are the buying/selling of goods or services in return for compensation across international borders. (Note: goods can be tangible or intangible)

International Agreements involve no buying/selling of goods or services in return for compensation.

International Agreements consist of things like treaties, free trade agreements, double taxation agreements, memorandums of understanding, memorandums of agreement, status of forces agreements, foreign aid agreements, research and development cooperative agreements, extradition and judicial agreements, intelligence and data sharing agreements, defence cooperative agreements, etc

International agreements often form the framework within which international contracts can be legally negotiated, issued and enforced.

I haven’t misrepresented anything. You need to work on being more specific when youre communicating using terminology. You can’t swap this for that willy nilly and saying vague statements without causing confusion. And what’s childish is instead of saying, oh I wasn’t clear….let me rephrase…you decide to hurl insults and make snarky remarks at me.

Youve made plenty of “basic errors” of your own.

It's also interesting that you didn't pick up on the EU consumer provisions point which may well change the governing law.

You didn’t pick up on lots that I picked up on. Is that “interesting” too?

@MoirasSaggyBundles

The main T&C define Users as including Organisers

"1.2 Who's Who. When these Terms use the term "Organiser," we mean event creators using the Services to create events displayed on the Services for consumers using our Services (a) to consume information about or attend Events ("Consumers"), or (b) for any other reason. Organisers, Consumers and third parties using our Services are all referred to in these Terms collectively as "Users," "you" or "your.""

The EU Consumer amendments including the governing law clause provision apply to Users
"If you are a User located in the European Union who is an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession while using the Services, then the following changes to the Terms of Service apply to you:"

The challenge is that EB have defined EU as including the UK but not European Union but then make reference to EU country in the governing law provision

To be clearer the term European Union has not been defined at all, but EU has been defined as including the UK. It would appear nonsensical if the EU consumer amendments did not apply to all those that fell into the definition of EU so I think there would be a strong argument that User in the European Union must include anyone within the definition of the term EU (otherwise these aren't the EU consumer amendments).

I'm not a lawyer, not in UK, but I'm pretty sure that online companies can't T&C whatever they want.

GDPR is one example - Google provides right to be forgotten, cookies consents on American pages were added to somehow deal with it.
Uber has to follow the law wherever they provide services.
Some online casinos are blocking people from my country, as they refuse to comply with our national hazard law, so can't sell us their services at all.
And once any online company establishes a webpage in my language, my currency and my national domain, it can't T&C me out of my legal consumer protection as defined by my national law.

I’m not sure this would apply to OP after all?

”27.2 EEA, Swiss and UK Users. If you are a User located in the European Economic Area ("EEA"), Switzerland or the United Kingdom (together, "EU") who is an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession while using the Services, then the following EU Amendments available here apply to you. If you are an Organiser and process personal data of EU event attendees, you are a data controller with respect to your event attendees' personal data and Eventbrite will act as a data processor. With respect to EU personal data that an Organiser holds as a data controller, the Data Processing Addendum for Organisers located here is incorporated into these Terms.”

OP is an individual.

OP is an author, which is a craft, and she was using the Eventbrite Services to sell tickets for the launch of her book (the product of her craft).

OP’s acting for purposes that are not wholly or mainly outside her craft while using the Services.

I did say that test would have to be considered by the OP we don’t have enough info to answer.

The OP is a lawyer so being an author may be incidental rather than wholly or mainly.

Yes you mentioned in passing are are they arguing that it’s a trade? I’ve just taken a minute to apply it to the OP.

A plain English reading of “your trade, business, craft or profession” is that this applies to any of one these and furthermore, it is not uncommon for an individual to have more than one of those. E.g. just because you have a profession, doesn’t mean you do not also have a business or craft or trade ifywim.

Theres enough information to answer imho. Her profession is irrelevant to her purpose for using the Services. But using the Services to sell tickets to launch her book that she wrote is acting for a purpose that is wholly or mainly related to her craft as an author.

If she were launching someone else’s book, then I’d agree with you a good chance this could be applied. But as it is, it doesn’t look very hopeful to me.

I didn't 'write' a book. Together with Al Peters we collected 100s of stories from men and women who think sex is real and it matters. So each and everyone of those individuals are being falsely accused of 'hate' and 'violence'. I am not an 'author'. But I will stand up for those who are denied their protected speech.

Except point out that the EU provisions (where EU expressly is defined as including the UK) appear to substitute English law as the governing law provided the "an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside of your trade, business, craft or profession" test is met.

Was that vague?

It's interesting you feel you can determine whether or not the test is met based on the minimal information available. I'll let the OP decide as she has the facts.