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Scalpers Bought Tickets With CAPTCHA-Busting Botnet
alphadogg writes "Three California men have pleaded guilty to charges they built a network of CAPTCHA-solving computers that flooded online ticket vendors and snatched up the very best seats for Bruce Springsteen concerts, Broadway productions and even TV tapings of Dancing with the Stars. The men ran a company called Wiseguy Tickets, and for years they had an inside track on some of the best seats in the house at many events. They scored about 1.5 million tickets after hiring Bulgarian programmers to build 'a nationwide network of computers that impersonated individual visitors' on websites such as Ticketmaster, MLB.com and LiveNation, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said Thursday in a press release. The network would 'flood vendors computers at the exact moment that event tickets went on sale,' the DoJ said. They had to create shell corporations, register hundreds of fake Internet domains (one was stupidcellphone.com) and sign up for thousands of bogus e-mail addresses to make the scam work."
I'll never understand why "scalping" is illegal in the first place.
Nothing they did seems unethical or immoral to me.
If people are willing to pay more for a ticket, good for them.
That would be at my local bar listening to.. uh I dunno.. Dire Straits on the jukebox..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Agreed. From where I sit, you have a group of guys that figured out a way to get the tickets first. It's not like they hacked anyone's servers and got tickets that they shouldn't have had access to. They bought them just like everyone else. How is this any different than getting all of your friends and family to hop on Ticketmaster the second tickets become available to increase your chances? Trust me, I know lots of people who do or have done this.
I just don't get what the big deal is here.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
It's no different than what guys like George Soros do...
How is this any different than Ticketmaster scooping up all the good seats and auctioning them off on their own?
The difference would be that these guys are using a botnet and cause what is in essence a denial of service attack. Ticketmaster, on the other hand, probably has a deal with the vendors; these guys do not.
Bush administration: Defends corporate interests and their "right" to lock down on a market for maximum profit at the expense of the consumer.
Obama administration: Defends corporate interests and their "right" to lock down on a market for maximum profit at the expense of the consumer.
Holy shit, that is a profound change. I understand know why the people on the extreme right are up in arms over all this socialism.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Wait...
The events already had a monopoly on tickets.
The monopoly is a pre-existing fact, a built in shortage.
The BOUGHT the tickets, lots of them. Not ALL the tickets.
Just how do you equate this with a monopoly?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Your assumption is that if this is based on capitalism, there must be nothing wrong with it. I'm not exactly sure that's a good assumption. Take the recent credit derivatives debacle that threw our economy into a tailspin. Hey, Goldman Sachs and others created a product, people were willing to buy a product at a certain price. There's a risk element just like there is with any other security. That's capitalism, what's wrong with that? i think history demonstrates that, while based on capitalism, how unhealthy this activity was to our economy. As far as tickets go, let's say these tickets were priced at value that both the promoter and the artist agreed would be fair compensation. Their goal being to make some money for the work they produce while at the same time, setting the price in a range that allows a broad base of fans to enjoy. Scalpers come in, buy up the majority of the tickets and resell them at double the value. Sure, that's capitalism. But that act may have effectively shut out a large fan base that can't afford that new price. What's wrong with that? Well, from a market perspective, nothing (perhaps). It's supply and demand. But from a societal perspective, it starts to put a bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots. Entertainment/Sports/etc. becomes a industry that can be enjoyed only if you have a certain amount of wealth. In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base. It was the act of a third party that may have priced out a potential consumers.
Capitalism: The new religion of the 21st and 22nd century. Like all religions, dare ye not question it! For God is in the numbers. Everything has a price - everything must go! Sell your soul for a buck, you won't need where we're going. The only rule is that money rules all. Dig in, pig out, eat not your fill but everything you can take. Fuck your neighbours, what's yours is yours and what's theirs should be yours too! For the free market is divine and it commands that the only true virtue is greed. So pile on, like rats atop a sinking ship, for he who can reach the highest will eventually touch the sun, and be made supreme!
Welcome to paradise, don't mind the mess.
Someone stop the planet, I want off.
Goldman Sachs and others created a product, people were willing to buy a product at a certain price. There's a risk element just like there is with any other security. That's capitalism, what's wrong with that?
There is nothing wrong with that but those MBS and other derivatives were marketed as being less risky than lots of those guys knew they in fact were. There is nothing wrong with derivatives, the problem had to do with FRAUD up and down the line. People applying for loans gave fraudulent information to brokers, brokers fraudulently modified the applications farther or simply passed on the documents as vetted without doing it. Banks wrote the loans and then sold them to other banks fraudulently claiming their application processes were secure when they were knowingly doing nothing to verify what brokers will telling them. Those other banks lumped those loans into baskets of vary quality claiming that it was diversification and reduced risk. The trouble was because of all the FRAUD up and down the line many many more of the loans in those baskets of high quality mortgages were actually low quality. Knowing this they marketed the securities any way FRAUDULENTLY insisting they were safe. Then people bought insure on the investment which by this point many of these investors might not have know there were problems but many still did know and in those cases the FRAUDULENTLY characterized the risk the the insurer who went with it because they wanted to have the business to show their investors. The insurers probably knew what was going on as well but because of all the other FRAUD they were able to claim most of their exposure was only to high quality assets and push up their stock prices that way. Then because people had the insurance which was to affordable they used more leverage than they otherwise would buy more of the same FRAUD laden crap and repeated the process until it was unsustainable.
So the problem was not capitalism, but FRAUD and sadly none of the solutions actually involved prosecuting anyone from FRAUD.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's not like they hacked anyone's servers and got tickets that they shouldn't have had access to.
It sounds like that's exactly what they did in order to build a botnet to purchase the tickets for them.
I don't disagree with your points on fraud. The point is that people often mistaken or excuse fraud in the name of capitalism. That same fraudulent argument applies to ticket scalping as well. Ticketmaster (or whomever) set rules in place regarding the sale of tickets. These people FRAUDULENTLY misrepresented themselves by FRAUDULENTLY identifying themselves as individual purchasers. Then they resell these tickets at a FRAUDULENT value that is well and above the MSRP. Just because the market may bear that price doesn't make it legal or ethical. Hence the quote from the article "These defendants made money by combining age-old fraud with new-age computer hacking," the DoJ said in its press release.
It doesnt matter *how* they do it, the end result is the same. The artist wants $10/seat, but a fan ends up paying $50/seat because they have to go through a third party. Ticketmaster is just as bad as any scalper. This time they just got pissed because someone else beat them to it.
How is this any different than getting all of your friends and family to hop on Ticketmaster the second tickets become available to increase your chances?
1) Your family isn't doing it for profit.
2) You're not reselling the tickets at a markup, which is illegal.
3) You and your family hasn't paid up with the right politicians to get favorable protectionist laws written up for them.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So if you sign up for gmail and say that you are from Beverly Hills 90210 and your name is Darth Vader then you should be convicted and go to jail for committing fraud against Google because you are using an assumed name?
"In order to access certain Services, you may be required to provide information about yourself (such as identification or contact details) as part of the registration process for the Service, or as part of your continued use of the Services. You agree that any registration information you give to Google will always be accurate, correct and up to date."
That is merely a civil matter. Why are there criminal charges involved here? After all, they did not defraud ticketmaster, they PAID for the tickets.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You're the only one who used the words "rights". I never stated such at thing. The argument is not around entitlements, but your selective quoting missed that. Let me fill in the missing piece of the entire quote: "In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base." The artists/producers who are more knowledgeable about what price will sustain a certain consumer market set a price. Artificially increasing this price may be a detriment to that industry itself since it may drive consumer demand down for that product -- and I don't mean for just that single concert; that's a very short sighted perspective on business. This is about maintaining an equilibrium in the supply/demand of the industry, not inherent rights.
Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
You obviously don't give a fuck about music. If you did, you'd be pretty pissed off by people who deprived you of a chance to see your favorite band live in order to make a quick buck. There is a reason why even the big ticket vendors put barriers in place to prevent this sort of behaviour.
If your idea of a free market is "burn all the competition's first aid kits if there is a hurricane, and sell your own at a premium", this is pretty much it. If you're a scalper: FUCK YOU
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
as long as the opportunity for profit exists, then there will be capitalists ready to take advantage of it. It doesn't really matter how strongly you make your anti-capitalist arguments, the reality of this will still be there.
What's happening here is something like this: You bring along enormous tankers, and you empty all the ground tanks in every gas station. Then you sell gas from your tankers at a premium right outside the gas station. You've provided nothing of value, but you create an artificial scarcity in order to skim money off of other's work. Additionally you deprive people of the possibility to see a band live at the price which the band and venue agreed would be reasonable. This is very much a scam, in fact it is illegal where I live (fortunately I don't live in the land of the free and the brave). Also, to all scalpers, let me give you a heartfelt FUCK YOU.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Exactly. Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
If the true market value is higher than the face value, then I think the right of first sale should apply. I should be able to buy something for $X, and sell it for $2X if the market will support it.
They weren't interested in paying more than other players, they were interested in hijacking access.. The free market model of capitalism requires all players to have equal information and access. In the real world this rarely happens because a few players will have some small to medium advantage over another player but that's just because information and access can't be perfectly distributed at the same time to all players. These guys registering thousands of placeholder domains and shell companies were artificially creating an INSANELY HUGE advantage for themselves and did not even vaguely represent a free market capitalism operation.
...by all the "legal" scalpers that control the market, Ticketmaster, Live Nation, etc. Great acts in small clubs where you can pay directly are where it's at.
Why? Why is what the market will support the moral arbiter?
Setting that aside, there's a reason tickets like those are priced lower than what the venue could get for them. It's to create shortage.
You're wrong. The band and venue wants primarily as much people they can get attending, secondarily as much money as they can get (I work closely with people in the business). The scum from the article is skimming off the good work of the artist and the fans, this is in fact illegal where I live. Their goal is to create an artificial scarcity of tickets and sell theirs at a premium, thus fucking over the fans of the band. It has nothing to do with a free market. If you're a ticket scalper: FUCK YOU!
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
And yet people still pay the higher price. Scalping nets out to be third-party market optimization, even if the whole process is illegal or at best unethical.
Fair? Of course not. But nobody forced you to open your wallet either - seeing a concert or a game isn't a life or death situation. If this happened with something life-sustaining, then real problems arise.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
What I don't understand is that the ticket vendors seem to be so concerned that the ticket purchaser is a real person who won't resell the ticket. But that's a problem that has already been solved by the airline industry. Security requirements dictate that airline tickets be non-transferrable - they're assigned to a specific individual at the time of purchase. You buy your airline tickets, and when you get to the airport you have to prove you're the person whose name is on the ticket. A driver's license or passport is the most common ID, but you can use the credit card used to buy the ticket as well.
If the ticket vendors really want to stop scalping, why don't they just attach a name to it at the time of sale? Then when a ticket holder tries to enter the venue, they can just cross-check the name associated with the ticket in the database with the ID proffered by the ticket holder. If you wish to buy a ticket as a gift, just make sure you use the recipient's name on the ticket. For people who suddenly can't attend the event, they can implement a buy-back system which credits the original purchaser with (say) 50% the ticket price. They can then sell that ticket to people waiting in a "standby" line the day of the event.