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Businesses The Internet United States

New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots (engadget.com) 214

Posted by msmash from the don't-spoil-the-fun dept.
An anonymous reader writes: If you failed to get tickets for your favorite band, even though your finger was poised on the "buy" link the instant they went on sale, don't worry -- you never stood a chance. They were probably snapped up by bots that, in one case, bought 1,012 Madison Square Garden U2 tickets in less than a minute. The state of New York has declared that scalpers who use them could get fines and even jail time. "New Yorkers have been dealing with this frustrating ticket buying experience for too long," says state assembly member Marcos Crespie. Using such bots was illegal before, but only brought civil, not criminal sanctions. However, a three-year investigation by NY attorney general Eric. T. Schneiderman found that the practice was so widespread that the state had to take harsher measures. Ticketing outlets and credit card companies revealed that bots scoop up the best seats in seconds, which scalpers then resell at prices many times over face value. Scalpers who exploit such software could now face criminal, class A misdemeanor charges.
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New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots More

New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots

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  • But will they pursue charges? (Score:3)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:34PM (#52354609) Homepage
    Investigations are expensive. Forensic IT is even more expensive than regular investigations. If anything, they should make the companies allowing bots share the liability that way those companies will just outright bring an end to facilitating the bot purchases.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 )

      And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets

        The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear. These are tickets to shows, not necessities like food and water. If Ticketmaster or whoever really wants to solve this perceived problem, they can implement multiple captchas and call it a day. It's hard to justify having the government make this into a criminal matter when the entire event invo

        • multiple captchas will not stop all scalpeing.

          What about 1 time a year event's with an limited number of slots? Where there is an rush to buy where people with bot's or just happen click refresh at just the right time get in?

          Locking to name to with no refund and no resell will just lead to people buying and if they can't go then the event having open unused slots or people who feel like why should I get no refund and the event gets to make X2 off one ticket when I give it up?

        • The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.

          That's called "economic rent". It has a few impacts.

          With the lessened consumer buying power, fewer jobs are available. Tickets become more expensive, and so your average consumer now has less money to spend. That money, when spent on goods, creates a need to produce those goods, which creates employment; when the cost-per-good increases, the proportion of all incomes spent on that good increases, and diverts away from other goods. Because income is both made and spent over time (e.g. per year), the en

        • The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.

          Probably because it pisses people off to hell and back. I see a high speed stock situation happening. where scalpers sell to scalpers who then sell to more scalpers and then its scalpers all the way down.

          If your free market example is to be adhered to religiously, a whole shitload of people hwo do nothing but buy and resell will make money, but the venue will suffer. After all, the only way to find out what the market will bear is to exceed what it will bear. And everyone has a different max price they w

    • IANAL but, if an investigation brings up a potential crime, they may be able to take the money involved in these company's accounts via civil forfeiture. Potentially, that could make investigations not merely inexpensive, but downright profitable to enforcement agencies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        IANAL but, if an investigation brings up a potential crime, they may be able to take the money involved in these company's accounts via civil forfeiture. Potentially, that could make investigations not merely inexpensive, but downright profitable to enforcement agencies.

        As satisfying s that sounds, civil forfeiture is a cancer that needs to be killed with fire, not expanded to target "People We Don't Like." Two wrongs don't make a right.

        • I agree. But the potential to make use of it may have been what motivated pushing this idea through; it may motivate what causes funds to be devoted to actual investigations. As, without investigations, this law won't result in a single charge being brought.

    • Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KindMind ( 897865 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @03:57PM (#52355349)

      Yes - the companies selling the tickets need to have a financial stake in stopping the bots. Without a financial motive, the ticket sellers will continue to have crappy code. Currently, the incentives are all wrong. The ticket sellers sell tickets quickly and get all their fees under the current system. The bulk scalpers are good business for them, and they have no reason to stop them.

      If anything, the ticket sellers should be required to have a system that prevents bulk scalping, with penalties for failing to do this.

  • easily exploitable software? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:35PM (#52354619)

    I am just trying to understand a little bit about this automated software.

    I mean, we have been dealing with automated bots in the online world for a long time.

    The general solution is stuff like CAPTCHAs.

    Do these types of systems not exist in the ticket buying world?

    It sounds like this is just legislation around lazy business practices.

    By all means, feel free to point out my logical fallacy.

    • Re:easily exploitable software? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:49PM (#52354755)
      I go to quite a few concerts and have had to buy bot bought tickets to get to some shows.

      The big two, Live Nation and TicketMaster do have captchas, and they give them several times throughout the buying process. However, it is very easy to fake many of these systems. In addition, at least live nation now offers resale tickets on their own website. That means they are double dipping, the original sale+fees, plus commission+fees on resale tix. The have no incentive to stop this process.

      IMHO, that is where the problem lies, not the scalpers. The system as it is is broken, but it is allowed to be broken by the companies that sell tickets as the market operates in their favor.

      The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Qzukk ( 229616 )

        Every single person likes it the way it is, except for the people who complain while paying the scalpers to do it again. That's what it boils down to.

        The real "fix" would be an auction system where everyone puts in a bid for whatever they'd pay to see the show and the tickets are sold highest bid first when the bidding ends. Instead of paying the scalper $500 for your $60 ticket, you'd just pay $300 or whatever your bid ends up being. Scalpers could bid too, but then they're stuck with tickets that they

      • associate a CC or ID with ticket + ticket lottery (at least some small events with limited room)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase

        Actually that would be pretty good solution. The airlines will have you swipe a CC and enter your destination airport to look up your e-ticket / reservation. Does not have to be the CC used to buy the ticket they are only using it to get your name. Reading mag strips is fast.

        For gifting simply supply the name of the recipient when you buy the tickets.

        When someone buys a ticket associate a pin with the name send them the pin on the receipt.

        So at the show, its swipe + pin. Now TM does not even have to p

      • The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.

        - Inability of resale: the ticketing venue could easily buy your ticket back at salesprice minus a small fee, or auction it off through their website - with a deadline, of course. Some already do.
        - Gift: just say it's a gift when you purchase it. Gift tickets are limited to 1 per creditcard, but don't have to be accompanied by creditcard. Alternatively, you declare who it is meant for at purchase, and an ID or CC has to be brought when converting the gift certificate into a ticket.

        Longer, slower lines at ve

    • You mean like limiting tickets per transaction to something reasonable like 6 and locking a credit card number for 5 minutes? 5 minutes would be an eternity when whole tours sell out in 10 minutes.

  • Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:36PM (#52354633)

    Require tickets to be tied to a person (first name, last name) when sold. Require that person to have valid ID on arrival. And prosecute anyone caught using fake ID's.

    Airplane, boat, and train tickets require the ticket match the person. Any area subject to ticket scalping should require an ID too.

    • This!!! And if the buyer does want to sell the ticket, make the buyer sell it back to the venue. I was talking to a friend about this recently with regard to college football tickets. I think this is where it all started because the colleges were complicit with stubhub. The face value of tickets is a joke, as the purchaser pays much more. My friend makes a required donation to the school every year to gain the right to buy a season ticket. The price of the season ticket is peanuts in comparison to the donat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      The largest percentage of tickets sold do not go to the general public, they go to AMEX and are sold to card holders as rewards. Depending on the concert AMEX may get 50% of the tickets before they ever go on sale.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The largest percentage of tickets sold do not go to the general public, they go to AMEX and are sold to card holders as rewards. Depending on the concert AMEX may get 50% of the tickets before they ever go on sale.

        Actually, a lot more than 50%.

        The promoter gets a share of the tickets. The artist gets a share of the tickets. The venue gets a share of tickets. Then credit cards, media, etc get a share of tickets. Etc.

        It ends up being anywhere from 66-90% of tickets are sold before the general public gets them

    • That's great, until I have something come up that prevents me from attending the event. When that happens, am I required to throw away the tickets? Am I allowed to transfer or sell them to someone else who can go? And if that is allowed, the suggested solution breaks down, because the bot operators just need to provide fake names, then sell the tickets to people who have real names and IDs.

      I'm not sure I like tickets being non-refundable and non-transferrable.

  • it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?

    • it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?

      Because the punishment should fit the crime?

  • Bad for individuals but (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:50PM (#52354765) Journal

    This is bad for an individual to do but OK for the 2nd hand reselling companies that snap up 100's of prime seats and sell them online for ridiculous amounts. Reselling is OK if you don't do it on the street in front of the venue, where it is considered scalping in many places. I've been to shows where the first 3 or 4 rows were corporate owned seats that rarely fill up, and heard the performers complain about the empty seats and call for the fans to fill them up, stating it gives them energy to have true fans up close vs. wine sipping corporate douche bags sitting on their hands.

    https://seatgeek.com/tba/artic... [seatgeek.com].

  • Why not a reverse auction instead? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @02:57PM (#52354819)

    Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?

    Something like a reverse auction -- start the ticket process extremely high, like $10,000 per ticket and keep cutting the ticket price by small amounts based on sales volume. If volume remains fairly constant, then the price stays constant. The ticket price will then reflect what people are truly willing to pay, and ticket brokers won't be able to arbitrage the low face price versus the actual demand price.

    Brokers can snap up all the $10,000 tickets they want on a day 1 of sales, but it will be both a huge capital outlay and they will not be able to sell many tickets for those prices plus their own profit premium.

    You will still run the risk that as volume flags and the price falls, the tickets will hit a threshold where brokers believe they can still bulk purchase tickets, but I'd guess that the risk of being stuck with tickets they can't sell at a high price would be a negative incentive.

    The bad thing would be -- well, tickets will be more expensive if you want to go, because you will be paying a higher price. But right now, the price is artificially low and acquiring tickets from the box office is more akin to a lottery than a marketplace.

    • Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?

      Probably a bunch of reasons:

      (1) Many of these bands don't need to maximize profit anymore; they want to minimize the risk of having a venue that is not sold out because that makes them look bad. (2) Many of the venues are publicly subsidized and/or at the receiving end of political attention, so it is in their interest to appeal to voters in

    • Because fuck capitalism, that's why. Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans just because their businessman tells them that's the way it should be.

      • Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans

        No, what the artists are interested in is fucking their fans over, by giving away many tickets as favors to the rich, famous, and connected, and watching a feeding frenzy over the remaining tickets. It makes those "artists" feel powerful and important.

  • Ticket lottery system is needed

    A system like that is more fair / get's rid of the rush to buy with sites some times lagging out / crashing also helps people in different times zones have a fair chance at getting tickets.

    • Just increase the number of bots and you still have the majority of bots being the "lottery winners".

  • Legislation isn't the answer - economics is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20, 2016 @03:02PM (#52354871)

    Concert tickets are a luxury good, not a basic good to which citizens have some unalienable right.

    They should thus be treated like any other luxury good - i.e. let the vendor raise prices until demand reduces to match supply.

    If scalpers are able to resell tickets for "many times" their face value, then the original ticket vendor should have sold them at "many times" their face value. I'm sure the State would appreciate the extra tax revenue.

    But doesn't this mean only rich folk get to go to concerts? Yes, but only rich folk get to drive Ferraris or buy Rolex watches, and no-one complains.

    Or have a secret auction. Let everyone bid whatever amount they're prepared to pay, subject to a public minimum. The amount you bid is then deducted from your credit card, to discourage time-wasters When the auction closes, the winning x bids get allocated tickets, and the losing bids get refunded.

    But doesn't this mean I might end up paying more than the dude in the seat beside me? Yes, which is why you should only bid what you're prepared to pay, i.e. what you believe the concert to be worth.

    Scalpers won't be able to resell tickets in this system, since anyone prepared to pay an inflated price (higher than the scalper paid) would have had the opportunity to legitimately bid that higher amount during the auction, and in doing so would have been allocated a ticket ahead of the scalper.

    • Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Holi ( 250190 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @03:21PM (#52355035)
      The rich don't pay scalper prices. They get them from AMEX, who gets far more tickets then anyone else, far far more then the scalpers. No it's the poor and the middle class who get stuck paying scalper prices.

      • About your sig... [OT] (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Monday June 20, 2016 @03:57PM (#52355351) Journal

        Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.

        Only if you presume that a teleporter reconstructs you out of subatomic material available at the destination. If instead, the your quantum wave function were to be directly manipulated so that the probability of the collection of particles that represents you is reduced at one location while being increased at another location (subject only to uncertainty principles that are unavoidable at quantum levels), then you are not killed at your old location at all, as the probability of you being at the original location drops to zero (while the probability of you being somewhere else is 1 minus that probability), you would quite literally cease to be there in any way, and would simultaneously materialize at your destination. The "you" at the destination is not a copy of you, any more than a particle that has experienced quantum tunnelling is a copy of what it was before it tunnelled. Of course, the practical limitation on distance that this is liable to ever be achieved over is small enough that it would probably always be more efficient to simply walk.

        • One hurdle that would need to be overcome is the speed at which your quantum wave function were manipulated. Every living cell of your body contains thousands of enzymes catalyzing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of reactions per second. Failure to suspend, or nearly suspend, molecular and atomic motion prior to manipulating the quantum wave function would result in massive cellular disruption, not just in enzymatic activity, but structurally, as proteins would undergo conformational changes if a bind

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            I was channeling a little more sci fi author than quantum physicist, to be perfectly honest.... I was talking about teleporters here, after all.
    • There is a caveat to this that someone else mentioned... the venues are often subsidized in some part by the public via taxes. So there is at least some expectation of ordinary tax payers getting to benefit from the place they helped pay for.
    • it sucks for the band. There's a small group of people willing to pay the inflated prices. They crowd out the regular ticket buyer. There's a _lot_ more money to be had in ticket sales catering to that smaller group. Trouble is very, very few bands get a cut of the tickets. They make their money on CD & T-Shirt sales. If Ticketmaster sell 10000 tickets for $10 the ticket seller just made $100k and the band gets to sell a lot of merch. If the same concert sells through 1000 tickets for $200 Ticketmaster

  • I'm sure these guys are quaking all the way to the bank.

  • "High Frequency Trading" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bugler412 ( 2610815 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @03:31PM (#52355109)
    So this bot driven scalping activity is illegal now in NY? How about they apply the same principal and block a similar practice by large Wall Street firms in our stock, commodities, futures, etc. markets? Bot driven trading has an identical effect in blocking out human participation, or making that participation less lucrative for human participants in the market. I guess if a large bank does it then it's ok then eh?

  • Limit re-sales (Score:3, Interesting)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday June 20, 2016 @04:01PM (#52355397) Homepage Journal

    If you really want to slow down wholesale scalpers, tie at least 1 ticket in each purchase to a real person and don't allow any one person to buy more than 10 tickets per purchase without registering as a "group purchase."

    The other tickets can have names assigned to them or not at the time of purchase as the buyer sees fit. The original purchaser can assign names to the unnamed tickets any time up to the event or they can be left un-assigned as "bearer tickets."

    However:

    * "Unnamed/bearer" tickets are not valid until at least one "named" ticket has entered the event.
    * Once a name is assigned to a ticket, the name can be only be changed with a time-consuming phone call, paper-mail, or in-person visit that would include some form of identity verification. The venue can (and probably will) limit the number of such changes to a few dozen per year per person to curb abuse.

    In exchange for making it somewhat harder for "Average Joe" ticket-buyers to re-sell their tickets, venues and authorized ticketing agents like Ticketmaster would promise to buy back tickets for a full refund for the ticket price and the convenience charge up to, say, a week before the event and refund the full price of the ticket up to a day before the event, subject to limits to prevent abuse.

    Tickets sold to registered groups would come under different rules.

    This system is NOT designed to stop or even put much of a road-block in the way of small-time scalpers or people who resell their season tickets. It's designed to increase the cost of doing business for organizations who buy and resell hundreds or thousands of tickets per year and who are determined to "beat the system" by
    * Forcing them to have lots of different "buyers" with lots of different credit card numbers so their high activity won't be flagged
    * Forcing them to assign a name to at least one out of every 10 tickets
    * Forcing them to make sure at least 1 of every 10 tickets is represented by a warm body who shows up at the event before the other 9 people in that "ticket group" do

    This will make large-scale scalping non-cost-effective for events where the secondary-price of the ticket isn't a whole lot more than the face value of the ticket. Since the non-mass-ticket-buying public can get a full refund, they won't have an incentive to sell tickets to scalpers at anything less than face value.

    Wholesale ticket-buying by scalpers will still be an issue for high-demand events. For those events, either a ticket lottery with every ticket having a name on it and a full refund may be the only way to ensure the general public can get tickets at reasonable prices. Alternatively, a dutch auction wouldn't save ticket-buyers any money but at least the ticket revenue would go back to the venue and those running the event rather than to scalpers.

  • The authorities don't really want to "solve" this problem. There are many solutions for managing bots, such as CAPTCHAs and order limits.

    One real solution is to auction off every ticket. The auction would begin as early as possible, and continue until the event begins. As soon as a ticket is bid for (requiring an escrow) the auction for that ticket would continue for another hour. If, at the end of that hour, no one else has bid, it goes to the last bidder. If someone else has bid, then it goes to them. The

  • if ever there was Streisand effect.... yeah, yeah... money is not speech. Until it's code.

  • If anyone could make a consistent profit by speculative buying of tickets for resale, obviously the event operator would be first to adjust ticket prices to match the established new market. This is really about a graft-ridden city making a perfectly normal market activity, reselling tickets people can't use, illegal by giving it an ugly name like 'scalping'.

    Meanwhile here in Arizona, it's legal to resell any event or game ticket, right up to the Super Bowl. Reselling is done openly outside stadiums to acco

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