“Ticket Bot” Act Passed by Congress; Heads to President | Hacker News Reader

“Ticket Bot” Act Passed by Congress; Heads to President

playbill.com

20 pointstantalor30 comments

Something about this doesn't seem right.

Isn't ticket scalping just a symptom of some deeper issue? I'm not a US-resident or a concert goer. But based on the gripes I've read, isn't scalping just a natural consequence of the market dominance of a supply-restricting monopolist (one that engages in borderline abusive consumer practices)?

I agree, it smells like monkeypants to me

Scalping is just arbitrage. The core issue is that the retail price of the tickets is lower than the market price, which is probably high because the supply is limited (and probably artificially so by Ticketmaster et al).

This isn't really the whole story. It is only profitable to scalp if prices are kept artificially low by the original vendor. Usually this is because the want to be able to claim they sell out more frequently than they would under regular conditions. If the original vendor optimizes for profit, the problem disappears.

Which leads to the next problem: teenagers can no longer afford to see a concert. They take out their frustration on the artist.

Step 1 - Get a bunch on foreigners working for you to log in through a US proxy and order the tix manually.

Step 2 - Resell for profit.

Way to go Congress, you've just created a new industry that is marginally less profitable than the old one, and involves hiring foreign people in foreign countries.

> Step 2 - Resell for profit.

From the bill itself:

> (1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for any person—

> (A) to circumvent a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on an Internet website or online service that is used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket purchasing limits or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules; or

> (B) to sell or offer to sell any event ticket in interstate commerce obtained in violation of subparagraph (A) if the person selling or offering to sell the ticket either—

> (i) participated directly in or had the ability to control the conduct in violation of subparagraph (A); or

> (ii) knew or should have known that the event ticket was acquired in violation of subparagraph (A).

Unless they outsource even the selling to foreign countries, at which point what good are they as a middleman anyway?

Actually enforcing this seems to be a sizeable technical challenge.

How so? If you're a scalper how are you going to sell hundreds or thousands of tickets without an easy to find web front?

You don't stop scalpers by "fixing the selling motion", you fix it by putting the people who violate it into jail and/or bankrupt them and make it unprofitable.

> You don't stop scalpers by "fixing the selling motion", you fix it by putting the people who violate it into jail and/or bankrupt them and make it unprofitable.

That approach seems to have worked so well with the War on Drugs, too, hasn't it?

That's about the worst analogy I think you could possibly make. The war on drugs is a failure for a number of reasons, primarily among them because the drugs themselves are illegal, and users are prosecuted. If they simply made the distribution illegal, it would be a huge step forward but not remotely like this.

You don't buy drugs to get into an event that has people checking your entry at the gate. There's no serial number on your drugs. There's no entity you have to go exchange your drugs with for some other item/good/event.

Another solution: "Thank you for purchasing this license to view Hamilton. This is NOT a ticket. This is a non-transferable license to view the performance of Hamilton on 2016-12-21 at 9:00 pm in-person. This license constitutes a contractual agreement between the original purchasing party and the producers of Hamilton. By purchasing this license, the purchasing party agrees to be bound by this license. Only the original purchasing party may use this license to view Hamilton... etc." ;-D

So what happens when you can't make the concert? You just eat the entire cost, you can't sell it to a friend?

Yes, exactly.

tickets in Australia are generally always sold as "non-transferable". They just happen to be easily transferable. If they weren't, I imagine you might be able to decide closer to the event if you'd actually like to go, rather than have to buy your tickets within 2 minutes of the event going on sale, 3 months before the event happens...

Yep. However, fear not! We'll sell you Concert Ticket Protection Insurance for the low fee of only 15% of the ticket's face value.

Exactly! -_-

That's been the stipulation of every fan club ticket I've bought for the last decade. They're in my name, I must show up, I must show ID, and I must be entering the venue to use them.

Seems solid.

More on solving/bypassing captcha: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/21/ticket-touts-p...

Would this legislation apply to bots used to purchase goods and services?

Would these "ticket bots" simply move the bot outside the U.S.?

> Would this legislation apply to bots used to purchase goods and services?

I'm not a lawyer, but the text is available here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/318...

It looks like it's only for tickets to events.

> Would these "ticket bots" simply move the bot outside the U.S.?

The bill forbids a person to use such a bot; you can host it in orbit if you want, because it's not the bot itself that's outlawed, but the use of the bot to circumvent purchase limitations.

Right, but foreign persons could do it, no?

Same as now, yes.

I think this is generally good but I always wonder why sale prices of tickets are much lower than online scalpers can still them for?

This NPR Planet Money podcast covers a lot of the problems with ticket pricing:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/25/195641030/episo...

The biggest problem is that artists don't want to appear greedy by pricing their tickets at full market value.

But the artists also recognize the money that is being left on the table by pricing at a "normal" value. There are ways to recoup including adding more shows per city, onsite merchandise sales, higher-price "VIP" packages and box seats, and kickbacks from Ticketmaster in the form of "service charges".

It's generally bad and a good example of dumb over-regulation. I await stories about the unintended side effects of the BOTS Act in the coming years.

Ticket scalping exists for two reasons:

1) The sorts of people who put on public entertainment in size-limited venues are generally left-leaning and do not like the idea of their audience consisting solely of very rich people. This sentiment is fine, but ...

2) As such events typically take place in big cities and modern populations are very large, demand for these entertainment events then radically outstrips supply, meaning the actual natural market price of the tickets rises very fast. The entertainers have a collective freakout and insist that the tickets are sold far below the correct price for social justice reasons, converting the sales of such tickets into a simple race.

Having deliberately mispriced their tickets, the only way punters can distinguish themselves and get a ticket is by being faster than the other punters. And that's a contest machines will always win.

There are lots of solutions that don't involve Congress. Like, tickets could be allocated through a lottery process where entering requires ID verification. That would make it obvious that getting a ticket is a random process.

Both of your points are confabulated, which is unfortunate since I agree with your ultimate conclusion (i.e., that this act's intended goal could be accomplished without legislation).

1) Theater audiences consist largely of tourists, at least in New York. They're spending vacation money, but they're no wealthier than the average American on vacation. Taking out the tourist audience, the city subsidizes the theater district via public school trips (I was the recipient of more than one of these) and other public arts programs.

2) Demand doesn't "radically" outstrip supply, at least not for the vast majority of on-Broadway shows. For most, the two are about equal, and prices reflect this ($30-$50 if you buy at TKTS or reasonably in advance). The exception is blockbusters like Hamilton and The Book Of Mormon (if that's still the case) which are, again, boosted largely by tourist sales.

I was talking about the general case where scalping happens, not particular shows in New York. If no scalping is happening for those shows, then I guess you're right that supply and demand balance there.

> The sorts of people who put on public entertainment in size-limited venues are generally left-leaning and do not like the idea of their audience consisting solely of very rich people.

You're completely exposing a bias here. First, public entertainment is by definition always going to be in a size-limited venue unless somehow different parts of matter start to be able to occupy the same space at the same time. Secondly, instead of immediately invoking politics, consider than the artists/talent generally prefer enthusiastic fans of their work over people who would look at the ticket as more of a prestige item: something to impress a prospective client with or just buying a ticket to be seen at some high profile event where you care more about putting pics up on instagram rather than actually appreciating the performance.

The artists generally value an enthusiastic response and sincere appreciation of their work and you're shoehorning politics into a discussion that has nothing to do with it. Consider than humans are not rational, profit maximizing automatons and do place a nebulous, complex value on things that can not be transferred into currency. Everyone has some things in this world that they consider priceless.

It's your bias showing here, not mine!

Mispricing tickets doesn't guarantee people will be "enthusiastic", quite the opposite. You're more likely to get people who see if they can get a ticket just to avoid being bored on a Saturday and not out of any particular love of the artist - such people are just as likely to win out in an environment where ticket allocation is basically random, which is what happens when tickets are priced below demand. If prices rose, yes you'd get some vanity purchasers, but you'd also allocate tickets towards the genuinely deeply enthusiastic fans who are willing to express that enthusiasm with money.

By "public entertainment" I was including things like talent shows on TV where the audience size is unlimited.

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