SLATE: "Donald Trump’s list of supporters is worth tens of millions of dollars. But who owns it?"

[misterhighwasted]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/10/who_owns_donald_trump_s_list_of_supporters.html

Listomania
Donald Trump’s list of supporters is worth tens of millions of dollars. But who owns it?

The business of politics is lists. Lists of voters’ emails, phone numbers, who they are, what they like, and so on. Lists, lists, lists, for which a candidate, campaign, or consultant can fetch a handsome sum on the market. Private companies, like the Harold Ickes–founded Catalist, can build up their own data warehouses and partner with progressive clients.

Newt Gingrich lost the Republican presidential primaries in 2012 but rents out the email list he built up to the highest bidder, whether that’s scammers offering secret cancer cures or Donald Trump.
Newt Gingrich lives well.
As does Ben Carson, whose list of millions of names could be worth $5 million to $6 million.

Selling or renting lists can either be the silver lining for a losing candidate who held a grip over a firm core of supporters—or the whole point of the scam candidacy in the first place.

SNIP
Parscale, though, claims that the campaign’s pricey efforts to build out an expansive voter file nicknamed “Project Alamo” has been a success—and is something Trump could monetize after the election, perhaps as the foundation for a media network.

“By Election Day,” Green and Issenberg write, “the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million.” The piece continues...

SNIP
It’s the end of the piece where this gets interesting. Green and Issenberg write that “Trump will be better positioned than the RNC to reach this mass of voters because he’ll own the list himself.”
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, with carefully chosen words, hints that it has a claim on the collected data.

SNIP

It’s difficult to see Trump—or for that matter Bannon and his ilk, who are using Trump as a vehicle for personal enrichment and advancement—simply allowing the RNC to maintain sole ownership of his lists, if that’s what they are indeed claiming to have.
Donald Trump has sued over far, far less

***
More lawsuits!!

[randr]

1. Not much you can do with the worlds largest list

of losers

[misterhighwasted]

2. That's the truth!

Love your synopsis..

[lapucelle]

3. Yes, but they're GULLIBLE losers.

The banker from Nigeria who needs all your personal information because wants to deposit money in your account might find the email lists very useful.

[ColemanMaskell]

4. Yeah, lapucelle seems to have it right. +Maybe nobody "owns" the list - Finders Keepers maybe

-- Lots of people probably have copies of large portions of the list, e.g. all the Trump supporters in a state or an area. It's hard to believe anybody "owns" a list -- on what grounds? Not copyrighted, not patented; is it a trade secret? Doubtful.
Are there nondisclosure agreements? Seems unlikely.

Don't see what grounds anybody would use for a lawsuit. True they might sue even on flimsy or zero grounds, but how can anyone prove that a voter list you have was obtained from one place and not another? Surely the Republicans keep lots of lists. If the names on the existing lists happen to match the names on Donald's list, that doesn't mean anything.

Seems to me the lists of Donald supporters might be good sources for targeted ads for ammunition, miraculous sunglasses, car parts and automotive supplies, snake oil cures, scam charities allegedly helping either Veterans or Missionary work, the anti-Planned-Parenthood League of Concerned Scammers, mail-order Russian brides, low-priced escort services and porn, and of course every prince and benighted high official in Nigeria.