Slashdot Mirror

My father is a scalper. He makes decent money at it. He does not buy out who stadiums or rows or anything. He just shows up the day the tickets go on sale. Waits in line. Picks up a pair for something front and center. Waits until about 3-4 weeks before and doubles his money. No computer involved. I conservatively estimate he makes 2-3k per month doing it. Once and awhile he gets a home run and some fool pays him 2k for something he paid 50 bucks for. At worst he gets stuck with it and goes to a concert.

Why did the bots show up? Money. Instead of making say 100-300 bucks per set. You can make 10k easy per day. https://www.stubhub.com/

This is a good insight into the kind of people who do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

They are not happy winning 1 or 2 items. They want *all* the money. Many times the people owning and running the bots are one in the same as the ones this dude dealt with. I have not met a car dealer that was not hip deep into every scam out there. I include my father in that group.

Q:

The issue here is more of morality: while they didn't actually scam anyone per se, as a direct result of their actions, thousands of legitimate concert-goers had to pay more for their tickets than they should have needed to.

Sounds like ticketmaster's own scalping service, stubhub.

It's not illegal to resell tickets above face value in most states (check out stub hub for TicketMaster's very own foray into person-to-person ticket sales), and business can be conducted in alternate states with more lax restrictions on ticket resale.

Beyond that, smoking a CAPTCHA system with a bit of cleverness is not hacking or unauthorized access in any reasonable way. This is just a ridiculous attempt to criminalize scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic behavior on the part of one party (scalpers) at the expense of another scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic party (TicketMaster). This strikes me as another case of people trying to misuse the law to remedy the unexpected (only by idiots) defeat of a faulty system. If one reads the article, it seems like Wiseguys (seriously? That's your name?) made purchases on behalf of ticket brokers (ticket-broker is to scalper as escort is to hooker) with detection-avoiding measures in place to keep TicketMaster from blocking the regulars.

It's an attempt by TicketMaster to wipe the egg off of their face, a face that most of America hates with a passion. Perhaps they should find a better way (reverse auction, anyone?) to find the natural market price instead of using time-release scarcity to spur impulse-buys that inevitably result in person-to-person ticket resale later on stub hub where they get to come back for a second skim off the top...

Oh.. right...

It's not illegal to resell tickets above face value in most states (check out stub hub for TicketMaster's very own foray into person-to-person ticket sales), and business can be conducted in alternate states with more lax restrictions on ticket resale.

Beyond that, smoking a CAPTCHA system with a bit of cleverness is not hacking or unauthorized access in any reasonable way. This is just a ridiculous attempt to criminalize scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic behavior on the part of one party (scalpers) at the expense of another scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic party (TicketMaster). This strikes me as another case of people trying to misuse the law to remedy the unexpected (only by idiots) defeat of a faulty system. If one reads the article, it seems like Wiseguys (seriously? That's your name?) made purchases on behalf of ticket brokers (ticket-broker is to scalper as escort is to hooker) with detection-avoiding measures in place to keep TicketMaster from blocking the regulars.

It's an attempt by TicketMaster to wipe the egg off of their face, a face that most of America hates with a passion. Perhaps they should find a better way (reverse auction, anyone?) to find the natural market price instead of using time-release scarcity to spur impulse-buys that inevitably result in person-to-person ticket resale later on stub hub where they get to come back for a second skim off the top...

Oh.. right...

TicketMaster strongly suggests that promoters use the auction service. They also knowingly have tickets held that are not sold. Look at Madonna - Ticketmaster auctions the tickets they then announce the show is sold out, customers then are forced to use the auctions, then tickets suddenly become available. I'd rather go to http://www.ticketliquidator.com/ or http://www.stubhub.com/

I was a witness to the same kind of issue with Madonna selling her 30k tickets for her two shows in Montreal within 40 minutes (with online servers bogged down silly and people lining up a week in advance...) Why in the world aren't they auctionning those tickets? In an efficient market, she would get a major premium wherever she goes. She can redistribute that money if she doesn't need it (to me, for instance, or any other charitable cause). Fact is, many people are making money by reselling these tickets. I've seen prices in the thousands online!

Showtime contact form