Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/22/ja-rule-on-the-fyre-festival-d.html
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False advertising != fraud? Is that in the same vein as lying != alternative facts?
FFS, false advertising and fraud are the same damn thing.
See also: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising
Negativland would be proud of this absurdity.
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These stories about McFarland and Ja Rule keep me constantly guessing about which grifter is the bigger self-incriminating moron.
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We didn’t actually steal from anybody, we just took payment for something we never provided. . . totally different.
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A fitting tribute to Trump’s America.
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Not strictly. It’s only false advertising until you take people’s money. Then it becomes fraud.
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This is like the gift that keeps on giving.
The only thing better would be to discover that a group of partygoers never managed to get back out and have formed their own feral cargo-cult colony, making turntables & gobo lights out of garbage in the hopes that Deadmau5 will materialize and spin a set.
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I’d think that false advertising with the intent to commit fraud would be just as bad, legally speaking. (But, INAL.) Then again they did take people’s money so I guess it’s all academic at this point.
Either way I wouldn’t trust Ja Rule’s interpretation of legal matters any more than I’d trust him for… well much of anything else for that matter.
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What would make this perfect after the schadenfreude smorgasbord that was the first round of news about this is if the instigators would somehow end up in jail for a horrifying amount of time.
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“It’s not fraud, it’s just wrongful deception intended to result in financial gain! No, wait…”
“Whew! Thank goodness we didn’t take any money from people for this! No, wait…”
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Proof could be difficult. My original post was intended to draw attention to the fact that they had actually taken money. Intention is hard to prove under trial conditions, I believe. This is for instance why it is difficult to distinguish murder from manslaughter.
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He should change his name to “Ja Hazbeen.”
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More like Ja Dumbface, amirite?
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I have really enjoyed reading about this fiasco.
The sad thing is that it’s beginning to look like McFarland’s hubris and incompetence are dragging down a lot of people who don’t deserve it. His employees, all of the contractors, the vendors, Exuma and the people of the Bahamas.
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In fairness to Ja Rule…I honestly think he doesn’t know the difference or that he thinks what he did was wrong.
He most likely intended to take the money and provide the experience they offered even if not exactly to the details they described. So in his mind he didn’t intend fraud.
I don’t feel sorry for him. Anymore than I felt sorry for the people who paid the outrageous amounts for a ticket.
If they have any sense they’ll take their cuts and retire to somewhere without an extradition treaty.
If I were feeling wildly charitable; I’d imagine that he was groping blindly toward a vague understanding that ‘mere puffery’ is recognized as a flavor of technically-false advertising that is nevertheless legal; and that he clung to the belief that the magnitude of the disaster would be limited enough to sneak any discrepancies in under that concept.
I am not feeling wildly charitable.
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Hmmm… wonder which U.S. President could have taught him such nonsense.
Distinction without a difference
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