Judge Orders Software Firm To Stop Selling Software For Beating Ticketmaster's Ticket Queue
from the i'm-sure-you-can-buy-a-scalped-version... dept
There's been a lot of talk recently about how ticket scalpers have been able to score so many tickets to Ticketmaster events, locking genuine fans out of buying tickets at list price. The NY Times had a detailed story on the debate a few weeks ago. That story noted a number of things. First, lots of people are pissed off at Ticketmaster for making it so difficult to get tickets. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Ticketmaster, in this case, it might not be the company's fault. As it noted in its defense, it often does not get to sell tickets for an entire event, as large percentages of tickets may be reserved or offered through other methods. But, more importantly, Ticketmaster pointed the blame at RMG Technologies, a company that apparently makes software popular among scalpers. The software somehow gets around Ticketmaster's ticket limits, allowing them to buy up vast quantities of tickets the instant they go on sale. The article noted that Ticketmaster had taken RMG to court, and now a judge has banned the sale of the software. There are certainly plenty of reasons to want to make the ticket buying process more fair -- but it does seem questionable that this needed to end up in court. Basically Ticketmaster is admitting that it doesn't have the technical chops to build a site that can actually limit how many tickets an individual can buy (or to come up with an entirely different system that allocates tickets more fairly). While what RMG is doing does seem unfortunate, why should it be illegal?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: scalped tickets, software
Companies: rmg technologies, ticketmaster
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Tickets
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Re: Tickets
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Fixes that problem.
I do admit - I won't bother to buy tickets anymore. you can't really get them from the source, there are always a couple of middlemen getting a cut too.
Sorry, they just too pricey for what you get out of it.
Then they want 7.50 for a beer at the stadium and I can't even smoke... lol
Hmm, Home, TV... indeed :)
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Ticketmaster
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Ummmm
This is not a threat to their business model. It allows one person to buy all of the available tickets at once...from ticketmaster...RTFA.
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Re: Ummmm
Actually, it is a threat to their model, just not a competitive threat as we would normally consider it. They are assuming that people will buy from them and pay their markup. If other companies are constantly taking all the sales before the individual customer can buy them, the individuals will stop going to ticketmaster and even trying in the first place. This would open the door to the competition in a big way. Pretty soon, if the companies that are autobuying all of ticketmasters tickets stop doing so, and the individuals have found other sources, who would buy from them?
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Re:
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Re:
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Safe Guard
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Ticketmaster vs RMG
Ticketmaster created a site that has a prescribed manner for purchasing limited availability goods. Thus, when a party works to actively circumvent the prescribed manner for obtaining those goods, Ticketmaster has a right to use the law as a remedy. The most apparent basis for such action, in my view, would be that RMG has violated the DMCA in order to provide access to the Ticketmaster system in a way that was not intended.
If the goods being sold were not of limited availability then I might not be so keen on using the law as a remedy. I would also prefer that Ticketmaster go after those companies and individuals that are using RMG's tool, but if I recall the ruling properly then those entities are also prohibited from using RMG's software to access the Ticketmaster site.
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Make this the enforcement issue it should have been to begin with, and force Ticketmaster to track the IP numbers of all sales. Then it is up to Ticketmaster to do their own police-work, or pay some outsourced company to do it for them competently. It's not like Ticketmaster doesn't make enough money gouging overhead from the actual value of the ticket anyway. If the use of the software is made illegal, the company writing such scumware will obviously feel it in their bottom line as a legal and clearly intentional side-effect.
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It is a threat
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they should raise prices
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Anybody that's ever sold tickets realizes this very quickly. The market ultimately determines the prices. There are two scenarios here, though the public rarely thinks of the second scenario.
Scenario 1: Broker buys at face, sells higher. The prices were set too low, and the re-sale market adjusts itself. This is when people get mad because they feel like they're getting gouged (yet they still pay for the tickets).
Scenario 2: Broker buys at face, sells lower or not at all. The prices were set too high, and the re-sale market adjusts itself. The show might sell out, but the venue is no where near full.
Nobody seems to realize it, but brokers loose money on the majority of their bets. Scenario 2 is much more common than Scenario 1. Fortunately, there's a ceiling to losses (what was paid for the ticket). For gains, the sky's the limit. The small amount of tickets that fall in the Scenario 1 category more than make up for Scenario 2 for the good brokers.
Trying to stop ticket brokers is ridiculous and pointless and ultimately hurts the consumer.
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forgot to add...
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I'm torn
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Economics
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Ticketmaster and RMG
I would be glad to fix their webpage for a sum no less than 2Million$$.
Ticketmaster, please give me a call.
And nobody try to tell me thats too much, you know they make way way way more than that in a year for such a large charge .. PER ticket. Its not like that convience charge is once per transaction, its per ticket.
Thats why I only go to events I can buy the tickets for right at the venue. I will not be scalped by ticketmaster. That is how I view their charge.
Oh wait, this is America in 2007, they might sue me for such a comment. But then I wouldn't fix their webpage for such a small chunk of change from them. Oh yah, they don't need me, they have our legal system backing up their sloppy coding for some reason.
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Re: Ticketmaster and RMG
Ticketmaster, please give me a call.
And nobody try to tell me thats too much, you know they make way way way more than that in a year for such a large charge .. PER ticket. Its not like that convience charge is once per transaction, its per ticket.
That is too much because there's likely someone out there that will do the same job for less.
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Why sell tickets?
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TM's crap service
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And just why is this illegal? I can put anything up on a website and claim that it is legal - just because I do that does not make it illegal.
TicketMaster for valid reasons may want to limit the number of tickets an individual (or company) purchases but because someone is able to buy more than TicketMaster wanted them to does not make it illegal. Granted, TicketMaster has the right to not sell those tickets in quantity to someone but the burden is on them to prevent it. No law I've ever seen says "you may only buy x tickets".
What if the scalpers bought 1000's of tickets from TicketMaster and then turned around and sold them for the same as or less than TicketMaster? Would the current "outrage" about this even exist?
TicketMaster is upset that they are getting bad publicity about this. I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be nearly as upset if they sold all those tickets and everyone wasn't mad at them.
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Re:
Absolutely there would still be outrage. It happens every day...
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now a judge has banned the sale of the software.
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Why does TicketMaster even care?
Forget the customers angle; if that was my company, I'd happily become the broker to the scalpers if that's where the money is.
And aren't they a middleman company anyway? Why should they care about becoming just another middleman rather the the "only" (ha ha) middleman?
Using software to get an advantage isn't illegal. "Ticketmaster is admitting that their web coders suck so bad, they can't prevent this."
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Why does TicketMaster even care?
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It is not illegal, per se,
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1. Ticketmaster has a contract with most venues in the U.S. making them the exclusive ticket broker for their venue. They have a near monopoly. This allows them to charge the ticket fee, convienence fee, print on my own printer fee, $5 for a 40 cent stamp fee... You, me AND the automated purchase pays these fees. Pearl Jam tried years ago to fight this, without much success. Ticketmaster is not out money by the automated process.
2. In using their site, you are agreeing to follow their rules. This is common in most ecommerce sites. A violation of such rules is a legal issue. If they say purchase by third party software is illegal, it can be defended (and was successfully) in court. They can write code to enforce this or enforce it in court. Both can be effective.
3. Their algorithm for finding 'best available' is horrible!!
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Solution to buy ticketmaster bot
Please contact us on:
AIM:ticketbots@aim.com
Yahoo:ticket.bots@yahoo.com
MSN:ticketbots@live.com
Gmail:ticketbots. com@gmail.com
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