Senators passed legislation by voice vote Wednesday that would make using the software an "unfair and deceptive practice" under the Federal Trade Commission Act and allow the FTC to pursue those cases. The House passed similar legislation in September, but the bills are not identical so the Senate legislation now moves to the House.
The so-called "bots" rapidly purchase as many tickets as possible for resale at significant markups. They are one of the reasons why tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert or "Hamilton" performance can sell out in just a few minutes.
Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran sponsored the bill. He says it takes aim at artificially inflated prices.
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Senate Takes Aim at 'Bots' that Snap Up Concert Tickets
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:13PM
It's reassuring to know that the most powerful nation on the planet feels that protecting Justin Bieber fans is more important than trivia like appointing Supreme Court judges, fighting global warming, or ensuring their own citizens have health care.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:19PM
^^ ticket bot operator
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:43PM
At least they didn't bring out the mace:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @03:16AM
"One doesn't know whether to pity America because it puts so much effort into trifles, or envy America because it can." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, 18xx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @05:27AM
Yep the congress can only do one thing at a time. That thing is whatever you decide it should be.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:18AM
Why don't the original ticket sellers just put up the prices?
The middlemen run the bots because they know people will pay more the the "face" price. Why not simply increase the face price?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:51AM
Because they'll just tack on even more, no matter what the face value is. In 1979 I bought concert tickets for an all day mega concert at San Diego stadium (BOC, Cheap Trick, Pat Travers, more) for $10 each directly from the ticket office, in 1982 The Who Farewell Tour was $13 each. The last time I priced tickets you could only get them from a travel agent or Ticketmaster, and they were well over $100. Screw that, I won't buy from Ticketnazis.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:49AM
I never understood why Ticketmaster doesn't use dynamic pricing like airlines based on demand and seats remaining. It seems very 20th Century to just have one set face value regardless of demand for those seats.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday December 04 2016, @02:27AM
And reverse bulk pricing. Want 20? ok - extra 100% markup. 100? - 300% extra markup.
Or just limit bulk buys. The number of times you decide to treat 100 of your best friends to an event are few and far between.
But I suspect that if you track it down, you will find that the venue or the operators have some kickback deal with the bot operators or the resale markets. Follow the money.
Still I have to wonder if we really need government to step into this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Techwolf on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:41AM
Just put up all the tickets for auction. This part I don't understand, they are greedy basters, so why not auction them all for even more $$$$ of profits instead of letting the middle man take all the profits?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:43AM
Well, I can think of a couple of plausible reasons.
One is that not all profits come from concerts, that concerts are also part of the promotion for other sources of revenue - twitter/facebook paid endorsements, swag sales, and of course sales of the actual music. If the fans feel like the performers only care about gouging them, then all those other sources of revenue will suffer.
Another less cynical reason is that the performers don't want to just cater to the richest - most musicians don't come from wealthy backgrounds themselves and so have some level of empathy for their fans in similar conditions.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Sunday December 04 2016, @08:09PM
Also the 15$ half-shots of bottom shelf liquor and 10$ piss water and the food and of course the cut from the drugs being sold.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:25AM
Great, this means they are going to go after Wall Street's stock market behaviors and punish the high speed traders that use software to snap up and dump shares faster than people that do regular jobs and are stuck at work saving for retirement can realize that they need to reorganize the 401k plan to defend against their actions when they manipulate prices like that, they're going to punish them for causing the 2008 crash and all of the sub-prime mortgage share trading and stuff right?
Right?
Oh. I guess this is just that circus part of keeping the plebs from rioting. The Romans were pretty right about that.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:58AM
This is different from high-frequency trading. These aren't stocks being traded, they're tickets.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:29PM
Yes, that is why I drew an inference to high speed trading, to point out what I believed to be more important for our elected representatives to address, considering the same reasons listed by the FTC for the ticket sales abuses would be applicable reasons to the high speed trading abuses.
As to the comment of Flash Crash trader -- I won't beg and choose for such results, but I get the feeling he just didn't get a good lawyer. Making an example of one person and then doing nothing to address the problems is more akin to arresting someone peeing on the sidewalk and doing nothing about making public bathrooms available at the bar everyone is drinking at... than properly enforcing laws to stablize our financial system and prevent abuses in trading by already deeply pocketed businesses that can afford to keep investing.
Me? I am lucky I don't pee on myself in that analogy. I can't keep up because my job isn't watching the market all day. And if it was--I am sure I'd be tempted to use what legal methods are available and seek to make sure my cash cow is protected when it comes time to make campaign donations. What's a small slice of the profit to ensure future profits?
As a result, I do not expect many people on wallstreet to have a higher sense of morality than myself. I expect regulations (in this example) to enforce what the invisible hand is not.
That person getting prosecuted sends a message to people, but corporations are not people and cannot be held individually responsible for their misdeeds. Look at Wells Fargo; none of the people fired for following the requirements laid out by management are going to get their job back, and the CEO didn't take responsibility either. He left with a generous reward. He received an outcome far better than jail time, and the people fired for carrying out the business expectations were probably hoping for some other outcome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @02:03AM
The flash crash trader [wallstreetonparade.com] has been caught and punished.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @07:39AM
Serves him right. Damn upstart thinking he can trade like he's in the old boys club.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:38AM
I'm all for this. I stopped going to concerts years ago, but the same thing applies to comic book, science-fiction, and gaming conventions. Tickets for PAX East for example literally sell out within five minutes. I'm not about to buy 'em through some scalper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:58AM
Try getting tickets to Comic-Con. I gave up after trying for 10 years, it's a clusterfuck process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @09:48AM
I got in by showing up one year. If you show up when they still have tickets/cancels, you can get them (I had to wait an hour or two!) and then you will be priority registered for tickets the following year.
As a result I went two years in a row, the first by myself, the second with my dad. Interestingly the second year we spent basically no time on the floor and just sat in the viewing rooms all day moving between anime that seemed interesting. After that I didn't go the following year and lost ticket priority, and then Cons started showing up locally, at which point I decided they had become passe and why bother anymore.
So many things I used to like went mainstream, and hipster douchebags ruined it for the rest of us.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Sunday December 04 2016, @02:21PM
And how can you tell I'm a bot if I'm using a distributed network with multiple end points (different IPs)? I'm guessing this law got pushed through since all those ticket sales sites failed deploying anti-flooding \ DDOS measures because those very same techniques were used...
The really sad part about this idiotic bill is that it's all been researched and discussed regarding the financial transactions tax as means to deal with high-frequency trading.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @07:23PM
And, as is usual with politicians that don't understand technology, it will make zero difference.
There is so much revenue for Ticketmaster to make with their scam, that if the politicians outlaw using bots, all Ticketmaster will do is outsource the "bots" to India where humans will work for 5 cents per day to buy tickets, and they will have an "army of humans" snapping up every last ticket on opening day instead of an "army of bots".
And the result will be that the ticketmaster scam will simply continue.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday December 04 2016, @10:50PM
in the U.S.? If so isn't this just a form of that, so why need new laws?
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Monday December 05 2016, @03:55PM
In many places, you just can't sell the tickets near the venue, right before the event.
If you buy tickets legitimately, then find that you can't go, you can certainly sell yours to someone else, say on eBay