U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: Roundup of interesting consumer and corporate crime stories

Fifteen years ago, even the luster of both a complaint to the DOJ and Congressional testimony by the band Pearl Jam was not enough to stop the looming horizontal and vertical integration of the ticket and concert industry led by Ticketmaster, which was then only building the skeleton of its anti-consumer Death Star. But now that my Super Bowl MVP, Bruce Springsteen, has entered the fray, maybe Congress and the antitrust cops will take action to destroy the now nearly fully operational Ticketmaster Deathstar, coming around the planet Earth and readying its beams to take aim at consumer wallets. If Ticketmaster's proposed Live Nation merger goes forward, Ticketmaster will not only control ticket sales and ticket resales through "legal" ticket scalping enterprises such as its Tickets Now operation, but also control how bands book shows at venues, a service now dominated by Live Nation. The Washington Post calls Live Nation a "concert-promoting behemoth." More on the growing opposition to the anti-competitive hegemony sought by that growing evil empire from Reuters and NJ.com, whose story links to a growing rebel band of bloggers backing the E Street Band's campaign. More at the main fan blog for the Boss at Backstreets.com

Reporter Carrie Johnson of the Washington Post reports that the Justice Department will devote more resources to fighting corporate crime. No-brainer, that. Over at the Huffington Post, consumer attorney Ian Millhiser has more -- especially on contractual provisions called binding mandatory arbitration agreements that hurt consumers -- in By Trap or By Trick: How Corporations Break the Law and Get Away With It

We'll be asking Congress and the FTC to look more closely at intellectual property licensing spats between the credit bureaus and FICO, which creates the most-widely used credit score from credit bureau data, because, as Michelle Singletary points in her syndicated Washington Post column, Consumers Lose in This Love Triangle, less access to credit scores is a bad idea.

Over at the Public Citizen Law and Policy blog, find out from professor Jeff Sovern how a lawsuit from leading consumer groups has forced the U.S. Department of Transportation to finalize its database of salvage, stolen and lemon vehicles being sold to unwitting consumers.

And on the better government beat, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is apparently making progress (Washington Post) in his effort to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to Congress available to the public. This has been one of the dumbest "dumber than dirt" acts of unnecessary government secrecy for years. The websites Wikileaks and OpenCRS Network, have also helped. Lieberman has also teamed up with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in ongoing efforts to make federally-funded research also available to taxpayers.