Ticketmaster Finally Dropping Captcha System...For Ad-Driven Captcha Clone

from the captcha-is-advertising-and-advertising-is-captcha dept

I hate Captcha systems. Now, I don't only hate them because they're only mildy effective while being creatively annoying, but also because I'm a toaster-class Cylon and I consider them an affront to my intelligence. Okay, that isn't true, but the fact is that Captcha hasn't evolved all that much in the past several years and it's generally an annoyance. You type in barely legible words, that occasionally have a strikethrough, and the best you can hope for is that the word combinations say something laughable so you at least get a little entertainment out of the experience.

Pictured: Security
Image source: CC BY-SA 2.0

Fortunately, one common user of Captcha is dismissing it from their site. Ticketmaster has decided that Captcha is now too hated to use. Are you ready for the massive change?

Ticketmaster has moved to ditch it in favour of a simpler system. It means users will write phrases, such as "freezing temperatures", rather than, for example, "tormentis harlory".

Oh. Okay, well that's...mildly different, I suppose. If you're wondering how this almost noticeable change in user input is going to be achieved, allow me to explain. See, instead of using whatever 8-year-old-boys-playing-Madlibs algorithm that's currently employed to generate the response words in barely legible form, the system will now be a sort of Q&A, chiefly used to allow advertising in the form of questions. For instance, you might be given the name of a well-known brand of gum followed by a request to input what the brand name is commonly associated with. You might also get to answer in multiple choice format. While the choice to include advertisements within the system may seem odd, at least everything will now be legible. Testing thus far appears to show positive results.

The average time to solve a Captcha puzzle was 14 seconds, while the new system was taking users an average of seven seconds to figure out.

Halving the input time is certainly an improvement. It remains to see how many advertisers want to be associated with a system not all that different from one almost universally hated.

Filed Under: ads, captchas, evil
Companies: ticketmaster

Does Ticketmaster Undercount Tickets Sold To Underpay?

from the concert-accounting dept

Over the years, we've noticed some questionable "accounting" practices in various parts of the entertainment industry. There's recording industry accounting, where labels make a ton of money and most musicians end up in debt. There's Hollywood accounting, where some of the most successful movies of all time are somehow declared "not profitable" so they can avoid paying actors any residuals. Then there is music performance rights accounting, where only the top 200 touring acts get to collect royalty money.

So what about ticket sales for events? Eric Goldman points us to an ongoing lawsuit, in which a producer of events, Club Escapade 2000, is suing Ticketmaster for severely undercounting ticket sales at an event. The event was a soccer match held at the University of Texas El Paso's stadium between two Mexico City soccer teams.

According to Plaintiff, the event was “extremely popular” — traffic was backed up on the highways and news outlets reported large crowds of twenty to forty thousand people attending... Much to Plaintiff’s surprise, Defendant reported that it had sold only 13,151 tickets.... These numbers seemed too low to Plaintiff, and Plaintiff began an investigation of Defendant’s audit reports... Plaintiff allegedly found that on the day before the event, March 24, 2009, Defendant reported that the number of tickets sold was 14,408... The very next day, though, the reported number of sales dropped to 11,098... According to Plaintiff, this was suspicious because there were no refunds or exchanges... Based on this suspicion, Plaintiff hired an expert in digital imaging who examined the video footage of the soccer match... The expert estimated that attendance was likely as high as 24,311.

Kinda makes you wonder if this is standard practice... and if this is why the legacy entertainment guys seem to assume that all fans want to screw them over. Perhaps they're just used to every one else they run into trying to screw them over.

Filed Under: accounting, booking, concerts
Companies: ticketmaster

Judge Refuses To Dismiss Criminal Charges For Violating Ticketmaster's Terms Of Service; Trial Moves Forward

from the read-the-fine-print dept

We've discussed how it's becoming unfortunately common for companies to use the The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to turn things that should not be criminal cases into criminal cases. What's often done is that someone will find a part of a website's terms of service that was not obeyed, and then use that to claim that the access to the website was "unauthorized," thus triggering criminal charges under the CFAA. We've seen it in the recent Facebook/Power.com lawsuit as well as, most famously, in the Lori Drew case, which eventually was dismissed, only after a jury ruled on the matter.

During the summer, we had discussed how the same issue was coming up in a case involving a ticket reseller who had created computer systems to get by Ticketmaster's attempts to limit ticket sales. They would get around purchase limits and things like CAPTCHAs with some automated software that, from the sound of things, was incredibly effective. Now, violating the site's terms of service might be a contractual violation, but a criminal one? As much as people might dislike scalpers buying up tickets to popular events and then reselling them, that doesn't mean we should let those feelings cloud the specific legal questions.

Unfortunately, a judge has decided to punt on the matter, at least for now, refusing to dismiss the case at this stage, and setting a date for a trial next year. While the judge is aware of the Lori Drew case, she claimed that the fact pattern there was really different and, anyway, the decision on the appropriateness of using the CFAA was ruled on after the trial. That last point seems rather meaningless. The appropriateness of the CFAA doesn't seem like something that requires a trial. In the Drew case, the trial was a total waste for everyone involved, because after it was decided, the judge decided to toss everything out anyway. Why not save everyone the time and handle it up front?

Filed Under: hacking, terms of service
Companies: ticketmaster

Live Nation's Plans To Annoy More People?

from the tone-deaf dept

Last week, we briefly mentioned how sad it was that Ticketmaster/Live Nation's boss Irving Azoff seems so confused into thinking that stronger protectionism really is better for content creators. In that post, I mentioned that last year I spoke with a few top Live Nation execs, who appeared to understand the value of treating customers right, and looking for ways to enable CwF+RtB-style business models. They even talked about using companies like Zappos -- a company which has built up incredibly loyal customers though amazing customer service, even if it means taking a big financial hit itself -- as an example to learn from. I have to admit that I was impressed, but realized the company had a huge negative image to overcome -- and that merging with Ticketmaster wasn't going to help. Still, I thought that it would be quite a story if the company really could embrace that kind of thinking and rebuild its reputation.

So far, it doesn't look good. Beyond Azoff's bizarre anti-consumer tweeting, the company's plans seems to be about as tone deaf to consumer concerns as you can imagine. Now, obviously, this is a giant company, and it has Wall Street investment bankers to please, so it has to tell some sort of numbers-based story. But, the story it's telling is basically "we can squeeze more money out of consumers and artists overseas, so we're going to focus on that," which isn't compelling to anyone (artists, fans or investors -- who note that the company hasn't had as much success overseas).

It seems like perhaps there's a tale of two views at Live Nation: one that's actually focused on building out a sustainable business, and the other that appears to have gotten data happy. I'm a big fan of collecting and analyzing as much data as possible, but it's possible to get lost in that data at times, and lose sight of the big picture. So, right now, the data is telling Live Nation that US fans don't want to pay as much, and US artists want a bigger cut. So it wants to focus elsewhere. But, it seems to be forgetting to figure out why that is. Azoff seems to want to blame file sharing, but that's a red herring. Perhaps the company should look at the company's own image and how widely it's hated out there. People pay for Ticketmaster/Live Nation tickets in spite of the company, not because they like the company.

Azoff apparently scolded investors asking him questions about the company's poor performance, blaming them for not "getting the message." This is the same approach the company recently took in trying to explain its ticket fees, saying that the problem was that fans just didn't get what Ticketmaster was doing. Blaming everyone else for just "not getting" you, isn't an approach that's going to win over many people. You need to actually start showing people through actions.

One of the reasons why the company's margins might be so tight in the US is that it has focused on trying to squeeze every last dime out of fans without giving them enough value in return. Zappos isn't the cheapest retailer out there, but people buy from them because they know the experience is worth it. Perhaps Live Nation/Ticketmaster should take a step back from the data and look at ways to actually wow fans and artists with an experience that over-delivers, rather than has them holding their nose every time they have to hand over money. That is, why not focus on actually adding value, rather than looking for every nook and cranny to charge people more.

Filed Under: concerts, data
Companies: live nation, ticketmaster

Don Henley Still Really Confused: Actually Claims Copyright Office Is Not An Advocate For Copyright Holders

from the wtf? dept

The aging rocker brigade continues to make foolish statements about the internet and copyright. We've already mentioned John Mellencamp's and Stevie Nicks' anti-internet comments, but we should probably include Don Henley in there as well. You may recall that at the beginning of August, after actually winning a copyright claim against a politician who used his song in a commercial, Henley went on a tirade about how evil YouTube is, and how the government needs to do something.

Apparently he wasn't done yet, though his version of the government's take on copyright seems to come out of a parallel universe. Rolling Stone did a short interview with Henley, where he spews some of the most uninformed garbage on copyright law that I've heard in a long time:

While the onus of legally pursuing infringement has always been on copyright owners, the U.S. Copyright Office clearly has not been a strong enough advocate for copyright owners, particularly when you look at its most recent decisions. I think that fact has been lost over the last 10 years, especially with respect to digital media.

This is incredibly laughable if you know anything about the Copyright Office, which has been the leader in pushing for ever more draconian copyright law and has a history of almost always siding with content creators over the public. The 1976 Copyright Act, which completely flipped copyright on its head in this country came out of the Copyright Office, and some of the same folks are still there (including the boss, Marybeth Peters) -- and haven't changed their opinion much. Peters, in particular, has always been a staunch supporter of copyright holders over the public.

But Henley wants to believe in this fantasy world of a different sort of Copyright Office... and he even has an equally laughable explanation:

Because the Copyright Office is a part of the Library of Congress, and the mission of a library is to provide free access to the public, there is an inherent conflict of interest. Perhaps the time has come to separate these institutions so that they are not at cross-purposes. After all, the Patent and Trademark Office is part of the Department of Commerce and, since U.S. music, film and other creative copyrights comprise one of our country's most lucrative sectors, here and abroad, moving the Copyright Office under Commerce Department's umbrella might be the most effective way of enforcing the law.

Mr. Henley is woefully misinformed, yet again. The idea that providing access to information is somehow "a conflict of interest" with copyright law would make almost any copyright scholar choke with amazement. The entire purpose of copyright law was to provide more information to the public. And yes, it was through a system of monopolies by granting exclusive rights, but to suggest that these two ideas are in conflict is wrong. And, Henley also seems a bit confused about the Library of Congress, falsely thinking that it's something like a giant public library, and extrapolating from that.

As for the idea of moving the Copyright Office into the USPTO or into a similar role under the Department of Commerce, that again inherently confuses the purpose of copyright law. However, even if that did make sense, it's got nothing to do with being a more "effective way of enforcing the law." The Copyright Office does not "enforce the law," so the whole concept of Henley's comments makes little sense.

Separately, it looks like Henley has been talking to someone in the RIAA about how that darn DMCA (written with the help of the RIAA) just isn't working any more:

Congress should amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), eliminating or dramatically limiting the Safe Harbor provisions so that ISPs [Internet service providers] and websites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook have legal liability for hosting infringing content. Just as distributors and retailers have equal liability under the law for distributing and/or selling bootleg or infringing music, films, software, and other intellectual property, so should online companies bear similar liability at law.

Doesn't that message sound pre-written out by someone in the industry, rather than something that just popped out of Henley's mouth? Either way, it's also quite ignorant of the situation. There's a very good reason why the safe harbors are in the DMCA and that's to make sure the right party is liable for copyright infringement. The reason that distributors and retailers can be liable for distributing or selling is because they're the parties actually responsible, rather than a separate third party tool provider. The ISPs in this case are more like the companies selling the CD players that play the bootlegs. Does Henley think those consumer electronics firms should be liable as well?

From there, Henley -- again, apparently living in a parallel universe -- claims that the labels never should have removed DRM:

The recording industry was bullied by online retailers into removing protective measures, such as DRM, from their sound recordings or else facing the prospect of these retailers refusing to distribute their catalogs. Yet, so far, digital royalties on music have failed to live up to the hype; in fact, removing such protective measures has increased the theft of music and other intellectual property.

First of all, the labels weren't "bullied" into removing DRM, they finally came to their senses after consumers revolted from DRM, and there was example after example after example of DRM harming legitimate customers (or leaving them high and dry after a server was taken offline). And the idea that removing DRM increased infringement is equally laughable. Everything that was released with DRM had that DRM cracked and was available online already. Removing DRM hasn't changed anything when it came to infringement.

We've seen lots of really clueless music industry folks, but this interview really takes the cake as a new low.

Separately, I should mention that I only came across this interview because of a (typically) angry tweet from Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff angrily tweeting about it. His complaint wasn't about Henley's blatantly laughable statements. Nope. He was downright angry that Rolling Stone referred to Henley's ignorant comments as "conservative." Seriously:

Don's views are "surprisingly conservative" to whom? The writer? Please be sure to thank him for his editorial comments. It's interesting that a writer from a magazine empire that was founded and built around music and musicians now seems to be taking a position in opposition to it's content providers. How about free copies of Rolling Stone for everybody - in perpetuity?

Calling someone's views on copyright "conservative" hardly is taking a position "in opposition to content providers." On top of that, it's downright obnoxious that Azoff seems to think that writing about music and musicians means supporting greater and greater government-granted monopoly rights for those musicians. As we've seen time and time again, less copyright tends to lead to greater creative output and greater net benefit. So, if you actually looked at the evidence, it would seem to suggest that a publication supporting music and musicians would also support less copyright.

But, of course, what copyright really supports is (you guessed it) middlemen and gatekeepers. And what's one of the biggest gatekeepers around in the music industry these days? Oh right... Ticketmaster. Frankly, this is pretty disappointing. About a year ago, I met with various Live Nation execs who really seemed to get the whole new business model/CwF+RtB concept, and were talking about ways that they could better enable that for musicians. While Live Nation definitely didn't have the greatest reputation, I was actually excited maybe a major player in the industry would start to enable new business models, focusing on the future and the opportunities of setting the infinite free and selling scarcities, rather than misguided whining about copyright. Then the Ticketmaster merger closed, and it looks like with Azoff in charge, those plans are going nowhere fast.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, dmca, don henley, irving azoff
Companies: copyright office, ticketmaster

Ticketmaster Says People Don't Like Service Fees Because We Don't Understand Them

from the I-don't-think-that's-it... dept

If you follow the music business, you probably already know about or follow Ticketmaster boss Irving Azoff's Twitter feed, which he kicked off earlier this month by calling two different reporters "jerks," and generally jousting with some of his critics. He went quiet for a bit, but caused a bit of a stir over the weekend by announcing (sort of) that Ticketmaster had "full disclosure pricing." Considering just how much hatred there is towards Ticketmaster's "service charges," this certainly picked up some attention.

The only problem? While the tickets Azoff pointed to highlighted prices that included fees (amusingly, the fees on the cheapest ticket markup the official ticket price by a whopping 50%) some quickly discovered that this wasn't, at all, what they expected. That's because despite the implication that these prices now showed you full fees, some noticed another $6.50 fee tacked on at the end. After people pointed that out, Azoff again responded by claiming that Ticketmaster simply can't show you all the fees until it knows how many tickets are being bought and what the shipping method is.

A few hours later, Ticketmaster launched a blog, where the first post tries to delve into this by suggesting that the problem isn't the fees, it's that you don't understand the fees. Yeah, really. This is incredibly tone deaf on Ticketmaster's part. People understand fees just fine. As Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired points out "each dollar that comes out of their wallets is identical." No one cares that Ticketmaster has to pay various third parties, such as "promoters, venues, teams, artists" out of those fees.

Years ago, we discussed a nearly identical situation with phone bills, showing how people were incredibly annoyed with massive unexplained fees, and the telcos insisted they were necessary to "recoup costs." But, as we pointed out, in most businesses you recoup the costs in the list price and don't break out fees. Otherwise, we'd have lots of companies doing this sort of crap: Want a pizza pie? It's just $3, but there's a $3.50 "crust fee," a $9.38 "oven fee," a $4.50 "service fee," and a $2.18 "cleanup fee." Plus tax.

That, of course, is ridiculous and would piss people off -- just as telco fees do and just as Ticketmaster's fees do. If Ticketmaster wanted to make people happy it would stop telling people they need to be better educated about fees -- a subject they don't care about -- and just offer straight up, all-in, pricing. If Ticketmaster has to pay a bit more to some third party because of this, well, why not figure out a way to bake that into the overall price. It's called forecasting, and most other businesses predict their cost of goods sold using various forecasting methods, and it seems rather silly that Ticketmaster apparently cannot.

Filed Under: concerts, convenience fees, fees, irving azoff, live, service fees
Companies: ticketmaster

Some Simple Concepts For Better Engaging With Fans At Shows

from the ditch-ticketmaster dept

We recently wrote about the live music market, noting that lots of people seemed to agree that the massive additional fees and surcharges seemed to be a huge problem -- and most of those fees seem to come from Ticketmaster. So it's interesting to see that some are finally looking at ways to get around the old way of handling tickets. Shane Richmond at The Telegraph recently discussed his experience going to see The Pixies in London, where the band used some rather straightforward and simple tools to make the concert-going experience a hell of a lot more enjoyable:

As soon as I got the email I went to the Pixies' website and bought tickets. The tickets -- not a receipt but the tickets themselves -- were emailed minutes later in PDF form. I printed them off on the day of the gig and they were scanned at the venue by an iPhone-wielding staff member.

Apparently, this was all done via a new Topspin app. In this case, The Pixies had apparently used Topspin to put together an email list -- starting from scratch and got it up to over 100,000 pretty quickly -- and then sent a single email out announcing the show, selling the tickets directly. You can see the iPhone scanning operation below: At Hypebot (the link above) Rogers noted: "100% of fans acquired via Topspin, all marketing direct-to-fan via Topspin, every ticket sold via Topspin, and every person entering the venue after being checked in by the Topspin iPhone application." While that's nice buzz for Topspin, certainly other tools could be used to do the same thing (or something similar). The really interesting part is the lack of Ticketmaster.

But, perhaps even more interesting is some of the other aspects of how the band then took a few very simple steps to make the concert going experience even more enjoyable. Going back to Richmond's post:

Anyway, a couple of weeks before the show I got an email from the Pixies:

"If you're reading this email, it means we'll see you at TROXY London for two shows in June. We're looking forward to it. What songs do you want us to play? Reply and tell us."

Just before the show they emailed again thanking everyone who sent requests and saying that they had a setlist they thought we would like. Now for all I know, some guy who works for the Pixies might have dealt with all the emails and the band themselves may never have looked at them but it doesn't much matter. The engagement -- even if it was an illusion -- helped to build my excitement about the gig.

A few weeks after the gig, the band emailed again, this time sending me a link to a download of two songs from the gig I went to. So I now have a very nice souvenir of the show too.

Now, I'm sure that some will respond to this with a "so what?" There's no whiz-bangery going on here to make all this happen. This is all pretty straight-forward and simple. And, that's part of the point. None of this needs to really be "new," it just needs to be done well, and that means focusing on the stuff people like, such as making things convenient and making people feel like they belong, and minimizing the stuff people hate, such as excess fees and surcharges and feeling like an afterthought rather than a valued part of the community, and you can really do an amazing job connecting with fans (and, oh yes, giving them a reason to buy).

Filed Under: engagement, experiences, live shows, pixies
Companies: ticketmaster, topspin

Not Reading Ticketmaster's Terms Of Service Shouldn't Make You A Criminal

from the yet-again dept

There have been an awful lot of similar stories lately, but it is really quite troubling just how much the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is being abused to turn actions like not reading a website's terms of service into a criminal offense. We had just recently discussed how this was playing out in a lawsuit involving Facebook and Power.com, but it's showing up elsewhere as well. In fact, the judge in the Facebook/Power.com case apparently based the decision on an earlier case involving Ticketmaster and a ticket reseller which used automated means to order tickets, that it could then resell.

In a similar case, it appears that there has been a criminal indictment of the company Wiseguy Tickets, who similarly automated ticket purchases from Ticketmaster's website. This isn't to say that ticket scalpers and resellers who buy up all the tickets aren't necessarily a problem, but should they be criminally liable because they violate a website's terms of service? The EFF and some others have now filed an amicus brief in the case, suggesting that this is a ridiculous outcome. No one should be criminally liable for not obeying the terms of service on a website. If that's the case, it's easy to make anyone a criminal. I could just quickly put up a terms of service that says something as ridiculous as "you must be 8 feet tall to read this website." And, if you're not, you've then violated the terms, and are guilty of criminal hacking under the CFAA -- which could potentially result in jail time. That makes no sense, and the EFF is hoping the judge recognizes this:

"Under the government's theory, anyone who disregards -- or doesn't read -- the terms of service on any website could face computer crime charges," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "That gives Ticketmaster and other online services extraordinary power over their users: the power to decide what is criminal behavior and what is not. Price comparison services, social network aggregators, and users who skim a few years off their ages could all be criminals if the government prevails."

Filed Under: computer fraud, hacking, terms of service
Companies: ticketmaster

Ticketmaster Trying To Cut Down On Scalpers... Or Increase Fee Collection For Itself?

from the some-good,-some-bad dept

Earlier this year, we had covered the news that Ticketmaster was pushing paperless tickets as a way to cut down on scalping, and now that story seems to be getting much wider coverage. The idea is that if you buy a ticket, you have to be the one to show up, with an ID and the credit card you used, in order to attend. Ticketmaster will allow you to transfer... but it can limit the price of a transfer and charge you a fee for the transfer. That makes it seem like this is a lot more about collecting more fees from the secondary market, than really cutting down on scalping. Not to mention that it seems likely to cause problems. How do you handle buying tickets for someone else as a gift? Under this system, you'd need to buy... and then "transfer" at a fee. And what if you really can't go, but the ticket has already been transferred once (a limit they set on the system). Finally, does it really make sense to block out basic market mechanisms? I recognize that there's an issue of scalpers buying up huge blocks of tickets, but there are better mechanisms to deal with that, that don't involve limiting what legitimate purchasers can do with their tickets.

Filed Under: e-tickets, reselling, ticket scalping, tickets
Companies: ticketmaster

Ticketmaster Takes Another Stab At Shutting Down Scalpers With Paperless Tickets

from the two-sets-of-rules dept

When it's not been busy trying to get into the scalping business itself, Ticketmaster has been trying to push scalpers aside. It claims it does this for altruistic reasons, but those claims generally fall on deaf ears, with many people believing it's simply trying to capture the scalpers' revenues. It's escalating the battle now by expanding its use of paperless tickets for concerts, and will use them for the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour, after an earlier series of shows sparked a flurry of complaints about scalpers. Ticketmaster has been testing the program for a little while, and trying to sell it as a convenient solution: instead of getting a paper ticket for a show, buyers don't receive one before the show, and instead must present the credit card they used to purchase their seats to get in. On its surface, this seems like a fairly effective way of cutting out scalpers by making their transactions with their customers much more difficult. But it's still not clear why Ticketmaster sees such a need to interfere with the market -- beyond its own self-interest, of course. It's hard to imagine that Ticketmaster really cares that scalping goes on, except for the fact that it's not making any money from it.

One inevitable (and legitimate) complaint about this system is that it not only takes out scalpers, but other secondary transactions, too. Want to buy tickets as a gift, or for your kid? You'll have to take the recipient to the show and go up to the gate with them. Buy tickets for yourself, but then can't go to the show and want to give them to a friend? You're out of luck, unless you and your credit card can get there (and, of course, there are no refunds). It seems likely that Ticketmaster will have to do something to rectify this, particularly given the political scrutiny they've attracted lately, and the solution seems obvious: Ticketmaster sets up a secondary market that lets people resell their tickets and reassigns them to a new credit-card holder (taking a cut for all the hard work, of course). The company has been growing its reseller business, in particular making efforts to become the "official fan resale" partner of various sports leagues and teams, and it's hard to see it not using paperless tickets as a way to expand this business. Ticketmaster hates scalping -- unless it's the one doing the reselling. But if it wants to benefit from the free market, the market should really be free, and not one established and controlled by Ticketmaster.

Filed Under: events, paperless tickets, scalping, tickets
Companies: ticketmaster