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Congress Joins Battle Against Ticket Bots (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: A pair of companion bills now pending in the House and Senate would define the use of bots to buy tickets as an 'unfair and deceptive practice' under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act. It would also become a federal crime, and create a right of action so that private parties can sue in federal court to recover damages. But if a similar law in Tennessee is any example, making the practice illegal doesn't make it any easier to find the people responsible for the bots. The Tennessean reported a year ago that, 'despite the apparent prevalence of the practice, no one has been prosecuted for this hard-to-prove crime in Davidson County.' This may be just another example of members of Congress not understanding the problem, but some experts say that making the bots illegal is at least a start. 'It helps to shine a light on a problem,' says Rami Essaid, cofounder and CEO of Distil Networks.
You see, if buying the tickets with bots is illegal, it would now be lawful to do something nasty like turn away bot-purchased tickets at the door. You might not be able to identify them it time to block the transaction but if you can reasonably identify them you can stomp them later. Even if you have a relatively low detection rate the blowback might be nasty against the re-sellers. Of course you'll take your own blowback too.
Legal precedent: possession of stolen property is a crime
Why can't it be up to individual ticket sellers to set their own policies/terms of service? Why does the law need to get involved? What if I want to sell tickets to bots? Am I not allowed to?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
How is this any different from High Frequency Trading?
Because one made regular (ungodly large) campaign contributions to the loops in Washington and the other one does not?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It's a short hop from outlawing ticked-buying bots to also outlawing automated stock-trading software. This might be just the thing that the ordinary man needs to take back control of the economy.
I thought it was going to be about Photo Radar bots issuing speeding / red light tickets.
Why should it be illegal? Why should I care about this? If something is too expensive because the ticket face price is too much, or the reseller's price is too high, I don't go. I don't see what the problem is.
I don't respond to AC's.
All the ticket sellers have to do is use reverse auction style ticket pricing. Start with (very) high prices when the tickets initially go on sale then drop the price on a day-by-day basis as the event gets closer.
That way there is no practical way to buy low sell high.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Why would you want to screw over your fans by selling all your tickets to scalpers?
Because you are actually running the scalping operation so that you can claim fraudulently low face value for the tickets.
I don't understand why this is a problem for the ticket seller. Once the money for the tickets changes hands, who cares after that? Plus, what's wrong with reselling tickets? Right of first sale is something we see getting stomped on pretty darn often.
I see the same thing happening at RV parks and hotels when a popular event comes to town. As soon as it is available, all spaces at the RV park get purchased.
If ticket sellers want to do something, just raise prices. There will be a price point where the bot purchasers will be priced out of the market, and they will go away. Basic invisible hand economics.
Why would you want to screw over your fans by selling all your tickets to scalpers?
If you set your prices properly, there should be no margin for scalpers. Scalpers are a symptom of a market failure. Trying to fix the problem with legislation is doomed to failure. Laws should not be protecting dumb business practices.
What ends up happening is that if 3/4 the tickets are taken up by bots, and they only sell 1/2 their tickets you still have a venue that looks empty. Concessions are down, and the talent complains because the seats aren't filled.
This might indeed be what's happening. Don't forget that Ticketmaster, the biggest online seller of tickets, also owns the biggest scalping site.
Who's to say that they don't just sell large numbers of tickets directly to their subsidiary company?
I don't read AC A human right
Because I'm fine with the capitalist system, I'm for holding 'dutch auctions'. IE a section of seating is sold by people putting in what they're *willing* to pay, then the system sells that lot of seats for the lowest winning bid price (IE if there's 1k bids on 100 seats, the 100th highest bidder sets the price over the 101st, and the #1 bidder is probably not paying anything near what he bid). Keep about 10% of the seats back to catch late-comers, as you hand out tickets early enough to make travel plans.
Whether you charge ~10% more for the held back seats, because late-comers are willing to pay more on average, or keep the same price can be 'studied'.
This leaves minimal room for scalpers, as the people willing to pay more got their seats.
Step 2, to help ensure a full concert and get some of their poorer/younger fans in, well, these aren't the types who would be traveling anyways.
So:
1. Hand out tickets as prizes in radio competitions and such.
2. Sell any remaining 10% tickets, back at their original prices, at the door.
3. Advertise that once the pre-show starts, all *pre-existing* tickets are now invalid and sell any unclaimed spots at reduced fire sale prices(actual percentage starting at 90% and decreasing). You'll be nice and re-assign anybody who shows up with a ticket an open spot if their original one was resold, in case of late arrivals. The important part is that there's no profit margin for buying from a scalper, and margins for profit for them are minimal - rather than being able to raise rates, there's a good chance that they'd be stuck with an unsellable ticket, that the attraction can effectively sell again.
I don't read AC A human right
The solution is a reverse auction. You set a high initial price, say, 30 days before the event. Some people will pay that price, because they want to be sure to get a seat. Then you lower the price by a few percent each day. If sales are lagging, you lower the price faster. If sales are ahead of predictions, you lower the price more slowly. Frugal people may wait, to get a lower price, but then they run the risk of getting nothing. You end up with no empty seats (unless people are unwilling to attend at any price), everyone pays what they think it is worth, and, since there is no margin for scalpers, all the money goes to support the venue and the performers.
Or we could just pass a law, raise taxes, and hire more police.
By only charging $50 when they could have charged $200 and still sold out they know that some of their younger or at least less wealthy fans will be able to have a chance to come see. Bots negate this and put the rapacious capitalism back into place
Exactly. The people doing this are the ones ruining it for everyone else.
What the bots (read: the people running the bots) do is not much different than a schoolyard bully elbowing his way into the lunch line ahead of you to grab the last couple of desserts that you wanted, and then offering to sell them to you at an inflated price.
Is it legal? Mmmmmm...maybe. Possibly. The fact is that I'm not really sure whether or not it's legal...but I know it's wrong in the greater scheme of things.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard, and I get to weigh in because I'm a gigging musician as well.
If a family member can't get all the tickets for their group, then that really sucks ass.
Secondly, if the venue looks empty, then that's because the scalper couldn't sell all the tickets in the first place, which means the venue actually sold more than they would have anyway, so they have little to complain about.
I don't think you SHOULD have any legal say about what I do with my tickets I purchase; they're mine. This sets an AWFUL precedent.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
What the bots (read: the people running the bots) do is not much different than a schoolyard bully elbowing his way into the lunch line ahead of you to grab the last couple of desserts that you wanted, and then offering to sell them to you at an inflated price.
I disagree, that's a bad analogy. It's more like the schoolyard bully getting to the line before you (without any elbowing or bad behavior at all, but maybe he can run faster), grabbing up all the desserts, and selling them to you at an inflated price. You should have gotten to the line faster.
The only argument I've found against this practice that really holds water is the idea that the performers want to keep tickets affordable so all their fans have a fair chance to attend, instead of jacking up the prices so only the wealthy fans can.
I disagree, that's a bad analogy. It's more like the schoolyard bully getting to the line before you (without any elbowing or bad behavior at all, but maybe he can run faster), grabbing up all the desserts, and selling them to you at an inflated price. You should have gotten to the line faster.
But that's just it...you can be in line before them, and their massive, tidal-wave hammering of the site with their botnet means you still lose out.
Saying, "You should have gotten to the line faster" is like saying "You should have bought those tickets before anyone else could", or possibly, "You should have run your own botnet to make sure you had a fighting chance."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You can split the diff. Use a technology that scans the credit card, confirms the "reservation", and then prints the tickets at the door. Now, only the original purchaser can attend with his party.
This is wrong because you don't want to punish people who's plans for that weekend were changed by circumstance. I've had vacation plans ruined before because of a serious illness in one of the people involved. Locking the ticket to a CC number means that the original owners can't even GIVE the tickets away for free. Most concerts and such do not allow you to cancel reservations after a certain date. It would be better to give the FBI something legitimate to do for once and have them locate and prosecute all the bot owners.
That would apply if you're just hanging the ticket on your wall as a small expensive painting.
If you're using the ticket to gain admission to a venue, the venue isn't yours. You don't own the venue, and the owner of the venue can let in anyone he wants to let in. If he only wants to let in people who purchased tickets without reselling them, that's his prerogative. He has no obligation to let you in just because you bought a ticket from someone else.
In any other market, the practice of scalping is known as "arbitrage" and is generally regarded as a good thing.
Or bots doing microtransactions on Wall Street.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?