Ticketmaster Claims Hacking Over Ticket Resale Site

FlopEJoe writes "Ticketmaster claims that RMG Technologies is providing software to avoid security measures on their website - even to the point of utilizing bots to get large blocks of tickets. RMG says it just 'provides a specialized browser for ticket brokers.' From the New York Times article: 'The fact that tickets to popular events sell out so quickly -- and that brokers and online resellers obtain them with such velocity -- is clouding the business, many in the music industry say. It is enough, some longtime concertgoers say, to make them long for the days when all they had to do to obtain tickets was camp out overnight.'"

Comments

Where are all the Libertarians now?

[Shimmer]

C'mon, WWRPD (what would Ron Paul do)? This is an ideological test for you all, and you're flunking! This is the free market at work, right? Scalpers are able and willing to buy in volume. What, you want the Nanny State to come in and regulate? Bunch of crybabies. Ayn Rand would be so disappointed.

supply and demand

[v1]

I see this as supply and demand at work. If these resellers were able to SELL the tickets at 10x face vaule, then the original people selling the tikets (ticketmaster etc) were clearly not pricing them at their market value. If you have 10,000 of an item and can sell it at $4/ea to make a proffit, and you realize that at $/ea you will sell 100% of your inventory, and then you look at say if we charge $20/ea we wil STILL sell 100% of our inventory, well, duh. higher price of course. Tickets like this are obscenely proffitable and ticketmaster wants to invest a good chunk of that proffit in customer good will by selling the tickets to them cheaper than they could. They are gettting upset because you can buy the tickets and resell them at a markup ("ticket scalping") and make money.

When scalpers can turn a buck, it means you are grossly undercharging for your product. So quit complaining and raise your prices. I guarantee that will put a cap on the scalping.

This problem exists because there are people out there willing to pay $200 for a ticket that could be sold for $20 and make a proffit. If you want to blame anyone, blame the fans. They are the ones causing the huge gap between real value and market value, which is just going to attract scalpers. The sellers can't change the real value of the ticket, and the scalpers are just playing a free market for all it's worth which is to be expected.