Scalpers Earned $25M Gaming Online Ticket Sellers 574
SeattleGameboy writes "An indictment has been issued for online ticket brokers known as 'Wiseguy Tickets and Seats of San Francisco.' From 2002 to 2009, they used bots, server farms, and CAPTCHA hacking to buy vast number of premium tickets (Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, NFL, MLB playoffs, etc.) and made $25 million in profits. 'They wrote a script that impersonated users trying to access Facebook, and downloaded hundreds of thousands of possible CAPTCHA challenges from reCAPTCHA. They identified the file ID of each CAPTCHA challenge and created a database of CAPTCHA "answers" to correspond to each ID. The bot would then identify the file ID of a challenge at Ticketmaster and feed back the corresponding answer. The bot also mimicked human behavior by occasionally making mistakes in typing the answer, the authorities said.' I guess you can break any system like CAPTCHA if you want it badly enough."
What a lot of work. (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't it have been easier just to make the money legitimately?
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, 25 million USD is easy to make legitimately, that's why everyone is doing it!
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Yes, 25 million USD is easy to make legitimately, that's why everyone is doing it!
guess you can break any system like CAPTCHA if you want it badly enough."
Moreover, this shows that the used security mechanism is worth at least 25 million USD.
The problem is that the CAPTCHA approach is flawed. Any similar type of challenge-response system can be abused for illegal activity. At the very end, the only thing an attacker has to ensure is that the cost of obtaining enough challenge-responses is less than the outcome of the illegal activity.
Say, if they pay a group of Chinnese guys USD $0.39 an hour, you can get a fair amount of human identifying challenge-response
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The real flaw here is that the captchas were reused and identifia
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:5, Insightful)
It did mention they may have hacked into Ticketmasters systems, and if they did break in, ok, I can see that.
However, using scripts/applications to log into a site and buy tickets, I don't see how that is illegal? They are just using a program to mimic what human could do on a website that only reacts to input and doesn't care itself if a human or a scripts is behind the computer connection being made.
Is it against the law to study and make a database of captcha's?
Like I said..I hate scalpers, they grab all the best tickets for places that allow scalping, and even in states where you can't scalp, they grab the tickets and sell to people outside the state keeping locals from getting tix (since they can't by law pay more than face value).
But, I have a hard time viewing the mere fact that someone devised and used a program to auto-purchase tickets as being something illegal? What if an enterprising person that really loved going to shows did the same type thing to ensure that he could buy the best seats for a show that went on sale for himself and his friends? Same principal? In the old days when you had to call in for tix, would they have arrested people for having speed dial (new at the time) and using it to an advantage over people dialing by hand? Hmmm....
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What I want to know is, why was a few hundred thousand reCAPTCHA challenges enough to have a reasonable chance of getting a duplicate? Shouldn't the number of possible challenges be several orders of magnitude higher to discourage this kind of attack?
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:4, Interesting)
I met a guy who was a pilot in Vietnam. They had (and still have) a system where everyone carries a card with a grid of numbers and letters on it, and you can authenticate someone over the radio by picking a couple spots on the grid and they respond with, for example, the character adjacent to them. Well, he forgot his card one day and was queried by a controlling agency using the authentication card. He told them to stand by, switched frequencies, and issued the same challenge to another agency. They responded, and he switched back and passed it along to successfully authenticate himself.
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The indictment actually states that, ". . .Wiseguys and its owners made more than $20 million in profits. . ." (p. 2 of the indictment [wired.com]), so let's start with the $20 million number.
Keep in mind that:
(a) The $20 million was made over an eight-year period, 2002-2009, so the average was $2.5 million/year;
(b) The profit of the enterprise was split among the two principals (the CFO received $165,000 and the programmer received $150,000, natch...), so that brings it down to an average of $1.25 million/year for the two principals (I think we can agree that the salaried guys did not do well in their risk/reward ratio calculations); and
(c) The "profit" figure used in indictments is nearly always what a legitimate businessperson would call "gross profit [wikipedia.org]," meaning, to quote Wikipedia, "the difference between revenue and the cost of making a product or providing a service, before deducting overhead, payroll, taxation, and interest payments." As a criminal enterprise, these guys didn't have to worry about taxation (at least, the correct amount of taxation), but they did have to pay the salaries of the other 10-15 people working for Wiseguys Tickets, Inc., and all the other expenses associated with running the enterprise (computers ... ). All of that would have to come out that $1.25 million/year/indictable person. A quick look through the indictment shows the several persons on staff in the US being paid from $55k to $142k/year each, and the ones in Bulgaria being paid from $1 to $1.5k/month each, so you do the math.
The point being, the retirement plan associated with these types of schemes is typically poor, as it's usually at a federally-funded establishment. These guys ran a small tech company with overseas offices, and could have done the same legitimately at a salary of probably $150k/year which, once benefits were included, would be equivalent to $250k/year in cash (to make a direct comparison to their criminal enterprise). In a legitimate business, the CEO also would have had significant stock options and other perks given to him by the company's board to motivate him to grow the company. With even moderate growth over that period, the CEO could be very well-off. As I say, it's easier to make money legitimately.
And you sleep better.
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice work. You forgot one thing when discussing what "easier" means -- entry into market.
Let's use porn as an example. Legitimate media is extremely competitive. Want to start a TV station? A Newspaper? Put out a movie? Music? Those things are dominated by incumbent players who do not like new competition. On the other hand, porn is forced into a low profile, so even though there are big players in the industry, brand names and other matters of high public notice barely even exist. So nearly anyone can make porn.
And since we are talking about event tickets, we are also talking about a pretty well limited and controlled market. It would be unthinkable for someone to just appear out of thin air and start making that kind of money legitimately. Scalpers, on the other hand, are delivering the premium goods with no need of marketing, reputation or other complications required for legitimate business.
So when you are talking about "easy" there are other aspects to consider.
Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't rob the bank.
They didn't print fake dollar bill.
Every single dollar that they paid good money for purchasing the tickets are REAL money.
What's illegal about what they have done??
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Q:
What's illegal about what they have done??
A: Nothing
IANAL, but I think parent is right in saying that these guys have actually not done anything illegal
The issue here is more of morality: while they didn't actually scam anyone per se, as a direct result of their actions, thousands of legitimate concert-goers had to pay more for their tickets than they should have needed to. In other words, they were sneaky and manipulated all these people into paying them more $.
...
OTOH, it is possible that the ticket vendors had some sort of legal agreemen
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Gee, smells like unbridled capitalism to me. But what would I know? I'm a socialist/libertarian.
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Not really [wikipedia.org].
From the same page: "Left-libertarianism combines the libertarian premise that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership with the egalitarian premise that natural resources should be shared equally."
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your question presupposes that it is necessary, desirable or even possible to stop it. Attempts to stop tickets from selling at a price people are willing to pay for them is like trying to stop the tide from coming in. The only question is whether the price will be charged by the original ticket seller or a scalper.
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It's like if you're wanting to goto a venue to buy some food & finding all the entries blocked by a gang, you can eighter buy the food from the gang for insanely inflated prices, or hope the gang leaves before the stock is gone completely.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming there is something wrong with scalping in the first place. These evens are all optional to attend. If someone pays more for a ticket than face value why is that a problem? The scarcity of the ticket drove the price up and the person who paid did their own personal value calculation for the ticket.
If you're for banning scalping do you also want to ban people who sell tickets below face value? I routinely wait till a couple days before an event and pay less than face value for tickets (if you're willing to go to a weekday sporting even for example). Should that also be stopped?
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Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Scalpers create the scarcity.
Venues compete on price, location and other stuff. This brings prices down. When scalpers step in, the venue has already been locked in. There is no more competition.
If the band or the label were to scalp, it would create a lot of bad blood. If the venue were to scalp, nobody would play there. The practice is so negative, that venues who actively discourage scalping get better acts.
I'm not a big believer in passing more laws, but it should be easy to create laws saying that advertising a ticket for more than 150% of the list price is "Scalping". Enforcement is hard, but having the laws on the books can at least discourage it from being done openly. Venues often spend a lot on having doormen looking for scalpers, offering tickets at the door and other tricks to stop these guys.
As for why it shouldn't be illegal to charge less? it's a fictional problem. You don't have people bidding down the prices of tickets before an event.
Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me, but a piece of my tax money went to funding the creation of this stadium in our city. The point to building that stadium was to attract large acts and attractions to the city, making it a more enjoyable place to live. Now you're going to tell me that when those acts come to town, only the upper third of the city is going to
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Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
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But the thing is, if "all" the tickets hadn't been scooped up by scalpers, there would still have been legitimate
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You missed the point. The scalper did you a service by even giving you the chance to see the concert. If there were no scalpers and every ticket sold was legit then there would be no tickets on ebay and your action of missing the ticket sale means you have zero options to attend.
Would you prefer that the concert simply have been priced at the scalpers prices from the get go? At least that way there might be some tickets left when you finally got around to checking the box office.
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I think you missed the point.
The scalpers are scooping up tickets and skewing the price. MrKaos pointed out that out:
With scalpers in action, he's unable to get tickets anymore and is forced to use scalpers. Without them, he's able to get his tickets directly even a few days after they went on sale.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a long-winded explanation of a remarkably simplistic observation.
The artifical scarcity produced by the scalpers who make it harder for people to find the tickets is important.
Isn't this what TicketMaster does in the real world? Buys out the box office and marks up the tickets?
What's good for the goose...
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Do you think scalpers are buying and burning tickets to provide scarcity? The scarcity is caused by the size of the venue. It's real scarcity and there are only so many seats to go around. So what's the best way to distribute tickets? The click lottery or through a market mechanism? Right now we have both since people can win the click lottery, or if they don't they can buy tickets at true mar
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
You missed the point. The scalper did you a service by even giving you the chance to see the concert. If there were no scalpers and every ticket sold was legit then there would be no tickets on ebay and your action of missing the ticket sale means you have zero options to attend.
Logical fallacy present. You're assuming tickets would have sold at the same rate whether scalpers were present or not. This is pretty laughable (appeal to ridicule *points and laughs* ). If there wasn't monetary interests being indulged, you'd have much slower movement of tickets by people with legitimate interests involved. This is patently obvious simply because there's fewer people involved. Scalpers create *artificial* demand. They are the antithesis of free market. After all, they don't care if they sell ALL their tickets, just that they make a profit, so the more they buy, the higher they can set *their* per ticket price, and the fewer overall they'd have to sell. Scalpers don't provide a service, they break the system.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
A broker looking to make an arbitrage profit is not the antithesis of the free market. They've found a pricing discrepancy in the supply/demand chain, and it's so far out of whack that they can still profit without moving 100% of their goods. That is precisely the free market.
The only system being broken is the one where the venue sets a "fair price". That fair price is turning out to be much lower than the price the consumer is considering worthwhile. The venues are doing a terrible job pricing supply/demand for the more popular concerts. That's great for the consumer, so great that a marketplace has grown up around exploiting the arbitrage.
You know, I find it really sad that the term "fair price", as offered by the seller himself, is denigrated that way. Not just in your post, but in countless posts in this discussion.
Apparently not jacking up prices as high as you can - even if the markup is 500% and beyond - and screw everyone not able to afford it - is bad because it's a "market inefficiency". And scalpers are the good guys because they "fix" this "inefficiency", and as we all know, the only goal worth pursuing is an "efficient market" - it's a thing by itself, to be reached much like nirvana. If some people just want to be nice to other people - well, too bad, 'cause that's "inefficient".
Yet, when we look at this while taking the actual utility or harm done to the society, scalpers are clearly harmful. They don't produce any useful product. They don't offer any useful service (to remind, we're talking about the kind that buys 100% of tickets in the first few minutes after they go on sale, not low-scale resale). The only ultimate effect of adding a scalper to the picture is that customers end up paying more for exact same thing.
All in all, this story, and the comments to it, show a good example of why I consider unconstrained free market worship a form of sociopathy.
Original Live Aid and the Scalpers Scalped! (Score:5, Informative)
But isn't it similar to the success spammers have with spamming? If no one answered the spam emails they'd go out of business, and it's the same with the scalpers ... if you simply don't buy off them they will also go out of business!
That said, I don't see what's wrong with it and how you can make general scalping illegal and yet still permit Joe Schmo to sell a couple of spare gig tickets if some of his mates can't make it on the day?
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IANAL, but I think parent is right in saying that these guys have actually not done anything illegal
Did you even consider reading the indictment? It's linked to from TFA. Or are you just going to assume you know all the facts, and make your judgement? Maybe the government lawyers were just winging it when they wrote up a 43-count federal indictment, right? Here's a hint: one of the things they did was break into other people's networks to steal source code. Maybe that's not illegal in your world, but it is in the one where they got charged.
BTW, writing "IANAL" is not an excuse for ignorance. I've ne
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It's illegal because the artist, locationowner and distribution company are the ones supposed to make the money off the tickets, so a fixed price is agreed upon, and the royalties etc. are contractually determined in advance. Anything more is "scalping" because the scalper gets the money rather than the artist, who is usually the recipient of up to 50% of the ticket sales.
So if 20.000 tickets are sold for $50 each, thats $1M, of which half goes to the artist. Simple math. BUT, if 1000 of those tickets are s
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that's just it they paid retail for tickets so the artist and the stadiums made the money they thought they were going to anyways.
scalpers usually buy tickets at normal prices and then sell them for more. now sometimes they do under cut the theaters or staduims but most of their money is on big games. were the $30 cheep seats suddenly become worth $70 or more.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright?
Where the hell does copyright come into this?
They're not printing extra tickets.
So if 20.000 tickets are sold for $50 each, thats $1M, of which half goes to the artist. Simple math. BUT, if 1000 of those tickets are sold for say, $100, by the terms of the contract, the artist is supposed to get half of 19.000x$50 + 1000x$100 and who pays the extra ?
Nobody.
and that's how it should be.
If the artist wanted $50 per ticket rather than $25 per ticket then they should have sold them for more in the first place.
If I make a game, print 20,000 disks and sell for $50 each, thats $1M and if I've got a particularly lucrative contract as the developer I get half. Simple math.
BUT, if 1000 of those tickets are bough by someone, I get my 250K cut and then they sell those games second hand to someone else for $100 each and make a profit then that's their buisness.
I've already got my cut.
I have no right to a cut of their second hand sales.
If I wanted more then I should have charged more in the first place.
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Horsefeathers.
All the parties have already made their money on the tickets.
The "scalper" only makes money by selling a scarce item at what the market will bear. Had the tickets been priced higher, he could only lose money. Besides, it's a dicey business because if as a "scalper," you set your price too high, you're gonna lose everything.
Pure supply and demand. "Scalping" is the best proof of free markets anywhere.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
When AC/DC toured last year these asses their botnets overloaded the official ticketsale sites preventing any real customer to even access them, in Belgium the sites were unreachable 2 days before the sale even started.
If i had my way, ticket scalpers would be scalped for real.
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Belgium the sites were unreachable 2 days before the sale even started.
And what makes you think that was due to automation? Don't forget we ourselves have taken down a server or two in our times.
"Bots" were their own, not bot farm (Score:4, Interesting)
In the old days, ticket wholesalers would hire hobos to stand in physical line. In the Internet era, is it now necessary for ticket wholesalers to not only put a hobo in front of a computer, but to apply for a credit card for the hobo as well? And this is because Slashdot readers now all of a sudden support click-through EULA's on websites? The crux of the indictment is that Wiseguys defeated Ticketmaster's et al human identification by defeating Captchas and using purchased varied IP addresses.
The ticket windows (Ticketmaster et al) are trying to engage in price control, which never works. Ticket windows had limited success in outlawing ticket brokers. Now in the Internet era it seems ticket windows have discovered a legal avenue to harass the ticket brokers by calling automated Captcha completion "hacking".
Wiseguys never engaged in malware or theft. They merely sought to purchase what the ticket windows had for sale in response to the market distortions -- in the form of price controls -- the ticket windows had set up.
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What's illegal about what they have done??
There system obtained access to resource (the tickets) under false pretences (pretending to be different individual people rather than one organisation). That, I believe, is fraud.
Anyway, the poster you replied to stated "legitimately", not "legally". In common parlance "legitimate" covers both "legal" and "moral", and taking advantage of people in this way is generally seen as NotTheDoneThing. If you had to pay twice as much (or sometimes it can be several times as much) for something that you wanted simpl
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then simply don't buy the overpriced tickets, and these guys will go out of business very quickly. If people are stupid enough to pay the hiked up prices, why shouldn't these guys do it? I fail to see anything illegal in what they're doing any more than if a supermarket buys up a whole bunch of coffee or rice and sells it on to their customers at a higher price, or McDonalds and Burger King making insane profits on their drinks.
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Well, if the supermarket doesn't just buy up "a whole bunch of coffee" but is basically waiting at the pier when the ship loaded with coffee arrives and buys all of it although they only needed 0.1% of it for themselves then it is dishonest and they're clearly trying to exploit others.
What are you talking about? Their job is to sell stuff. If they can sell 100% of it, then they need 100% of it.
Also, this is a classic case of where "voting with your money" just doesn't work because the profit margins and the demand are both so high that even if you could get say, 80% of the prospective customers to agree not to buy from scalpers you'd still be looking at them selling a boatload of tickets
That is people voting with their money. If they are stupid enough to value the tickets to a live concert so highly, then that in fact shows the "real" value of the tickets to the fans.
Re:Why is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would start up a tire company, make the tires, and sell them for $400. I would undercut the tire "scalpers" and make the other guy feel stupid for selling something for $25 when it was clearly worth $400-$500.
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In other news... (Score:2)
there's a small town in the mountains (Score:2, Insightful)
every sunday a guy shows up with 20 bags of flour. the townspeople line up and buy the flour from the guy, $2/ a bag
one sunday, this asshole shows up really early, buys all 20 bags for $40, turns around and faces the townsfolk and says "ok, that will be $5 a bag from each of you"
understand the illegality yet?
incidentally, this puts the lie to libertarians and free market fundamentalists who believe the market is healthiest when left alone. a healthy market needs to be heavily policed by the government to be
Re:there's a small town in the mountains (Score:5, Insightful)
understand the illegality yet?
Nope.. if the townspeople simply refuse to buy the flour at that price (either doing without flour for the week or buying from a different location), the asshole is down $40. If people know that most of what they're paying is pure profit and yet still pay the price, they're simply idiots. This is exactly how a free market is supposed to work.
Re:they STARVE genius if they don't buy the flour (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a form of robbery, it's what happens in a free market, and if people don't buy the food (seriously, you think they'll starve after a week? I don't know how long flour lasts though). Unless it's happening all over the board then they can get other forms of food. If they all die then the scalpers would lose all their customers anyway, so they'll bring their prices down until most people can actually afford it. Yes, some people will still not be able to afford it, but that's how these things work in non socialist countries. Otherwise by your reasoning anyone that ever makes a profit is simply a robber and a parasite. In this case the scalper doesn't really add any value, but what he is doing is not illegal, and the townsfolk can also go to a different source, unless they guy has some kind of monopoly (which is in fact illegal).
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Re:you bring up a good point (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like capitalism to me. He's taking a risk by buying up all the flour. If he prices it over what people are willing to pay they won't buy it and he'll lose money. Some other smart business man will call his contact in the town over, buy up a bunch of flour there and sell it in this town for a 200% markup. He'll make a profit, undercut the 400% profit guy and put him out of business if he doesn't lower his prices. Some other smart business man will see the demand for flour booming and will buy up some high quality flour and sell it at an even higher price to folks who can afford, and desire, higher quality.
The original 2 guys make money, the 3 new guys make money. 4-5 other guys get jobs hauling flour. The other towns that make flour increase their sales. I like it.
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Perfectly, if people are willing to pay $5/bag for it. If they're not, then the guy will have 19 useless bags of flour. What will most likely happen is someone else will come in and offer cheaper flour, it's the nature of the market since such a high price will create a deadweight loss. Free market at work.
At the end of the day, isn't that what the supermarket does anyways? They buy flour for $x and then they resell it for $x+$y. What keeps them in check? Competition from other supermarkets.
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>> understand the illegality yet?
No.
>> , and so some people like you can't appreciate their evil up front.
Good thing we have you around to protect us from ourselves!
This is mickey mouse Econ 101 stuff. The only way your scenario ends in 'people starve' is if there is only one supplier of flour (i.e. flour is controlled by a monopoly). Even libertarians (many of us, anyway) agree that monopolies have to be treated a little differently, at least in cases where the nebulous 'public good' is involve
its called anticompetitive practices (Score:4, Insightful)
monopolies, cartels, price gouging, barriers to entry, price fixing, etc...
these are the enemy of capitalism, not a part of capitalism. capitalism is the refinement of competition to achieve a maximum of efficiency. anticompetitive practices therefore have no place in natural capitalism. anticompetitive practices therefore are a greater threat to capitalism than communism
its illegal most everywhere robbery is also illegal, because its the same thing as robbery, but diffuse rather than specific
please educate yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticompetitive [wikipedia.org]
its illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticompetitive [wikipedia.org]
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To be honest I don't see what they have done wrong. Their actions are no different from normal retailing. You buy low at a bulk supplier and sell high to individuals.
Sellers could cut them out by raising their prices so that demand matches supply.
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And wouldn't that be great? Instead of the venue, artists, promoters, ticketing agencies, etc., all covering their costs and making a healthy profit, they could... make a bigger profit. Woohoo!
Of course, for the millions of people attending events, they'd be spending a lot more than they were, or able to attend fewer events, especially if they want to sit in anything remotely resembling a good seat. And front row seats would on
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Or, maybe, just maybe, in the interests of culture, fixed price ticketing is actually a good thing...
So then how do you distribute tickets, other than having a mad, random rush to sell them in the first few seconds they are on sale?
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Registries of interest. Membership sales and similar schemes. Lotteries. Pre-sales. Phased sales. You know, any of the many ways that are already used.
There isn't a perfect solution where everyone who wants to go to an event where demand exceeds capacity can go. But pricing according to demand is probably, culturally speaking, just about the worst solution you could come up with
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about an auction? The first tickets released would get bid up to insane levels by superfans/rich a-holes who want to guarantee they get a seat. Once that high demand level is filled, the medium demand audience bids up tickets to medium prices, then whatever is left over purchased at lower prices by the low demand audience. This type of price discrimination [wikipedia.org] allows multiple price points for otherwise identical products without having a middleman (i.e. the scalper) cutting into the profits of the artists/promoters/venues.
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Artifical scarcity? Get a grip. It's actual scarcity. There are only so many tickets available. It is impossible for everyone to be able to attend every event they want.
Demand-based pricing wouldn't change that ('make things better for everyone?' Are you nuts?) except for the richest. But instead of ability to attend being based on timing and luck, essentially, it biases attendance towards wealth. This would make it worse for many. Further, it would reduce the diversity of those attending. That would be bad
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Not really, no. I think you're confusing 'reasoned conclusion' with 'assumption' there.
With a demand-based pricing system, prices would inevitably rise for any popular event where demand exceeds supply. A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices, inherently so (the exact degree to which that
Re:What a lot of work. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still trying to figure out how what these guys did was wrong.
The real criminals are the monopolists at Live Nation and Ticketmaster, whose merger will create an entity that controls over eighty percent of the live concert promotions business [wordpress.com], and who already demand a $12.50 "service" charge for the privilege of being able to buy a ticket online and another $2.50 just so you can print the ticket out on your own printer. (I guess that last fee is just a penalty they make you pay because you are saving them the cost of having to print and ship a ticket. No good deed goes unpunished, you know.)
The question now, is "just how high can ticket prices go?".
There used to be mom-and-pop music promoters in just about every town in America, putting on live music in bars, parks, gymnasiums and VFW halls. They've created musical venues that allow musicians of all types to ply their wares and make a living. That's going to end now that Live Nation/Ticketmaster are going to create a $4.4 billion behemoth [rollingstone.com] that's going to put the small promoters out of business and control nearly every single live venue.
You know what? These scalpers aren't the problem here. When a system sucks this bad, why shouldn't scalpers game it? You want a "free market" system? Welcome to life.
Personally, I stopped going to the "big" concerts some years ago specifically because of the Ticketmasters and Live Nations (now one entity), and I go to see music in much smaller venues as often as I can, hoping to support the music and not put money in a monopoly. Now, that's going to be harder because at some level almost every dollar spent on live music will be going to these bastards. Maybe I'll just start putting all my entertainment dollars into the hats and guitar cases of the many excellent buskers that inhabit the streets of my city (at least once winter ends).
Scalpers are legitimate (Score:3, Informative)
Or rather, scalping *would* be a legitimate profession, if people would embrace them, rather than try to shut them down.
There is a far easier way to 'break' CAPTCHA (Score:2)
A friend of mine mentioned when the technology just came out that you could just setup a 'free pr0n' website and you would get a horde of humans entering the letters for you for real cheap.
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That probably works for creating hotmail accounts to send spam from, but not if you need to solve hundreds of thousands of capatchas in the space of a couple of seconds at 7am when the tickets are released for sale.
Except, as here, it can be done in advance (Score:3, Informative)
Except, as here, it can be done in advance. Once you can generate an ID of that image -- and that can mean simply a hash value of it -- you can store it in a database, and use it in that small window of oportunity when you need it.
Virtually every captcha I've seen applies a transformation or two of that image, from a small set of effects. So effectively you can end up with just one image for a given word, or a small finite set of distinct images. Add to that the fact that most use words from the dictionary,
So, umm, the difference is...? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, when we're talking about people already doing stuff that's immoral and often illegal, if the only barrier the captcha offers is "Sure, if you've no moral qualms about what you're doing"... then it seems to me like the most useless gimmick ever. Does anyone actually think that the kind of people we needed captchas against would go, "man, I only wanted to cheat, scam and pollute with email and link spam, but OMG breaking a captcha would be just morally _wrong_. I just can't do _that_."?
Plus, that was not the argument made back then for this crap. Everyone was ranting about how it's such a great defense. If you just tried to point out the ways it can be circumvented, everyone would treat you like you're some kind of a crazy conspiracy theorist.
Well, now it's been officially done, and it's been done for almost a decade, judging by how long these guys operated. Now what?
I'm not saying this as schadenfreude, but I find it genuinely sad that for so long millions of users have been outright excluded from some services, in the name of a solution which just simply doesn't work.
Some captchas are getting so obnoxious, that even I have trouble with some two times out of three, and God help you if you have eyesight problems. And most audio versions I never could decode in the first place. I guess the garbled, low signal to noise thing might not be that bad if you're a native English speaker, but God help you if you aren't.
And for what? For a stupid solution that only works if you have a moral problem with breaking it?
Wiseguy?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Any company calling itself "Wiseguy" is surely going to pull some heat. It's like having a prescription signed "Dr A. Fraud."
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You don't say. Of the Sicilian flavour.
Well done. (Score:5, Funny)
$25m seems an entirely adequate reward for circumventing reCAPTCHA.
I don't get it (Score:2)
'They wrote a script that impersonated users trying to access Facebook, and downloaded hundreds of thousands of possible CAPTCHA challenges from reCAPTCHA. They identified the file ID of each CAPTCHA challenge and created a database of CAPTCHA "answers" to correspond to each ID.
So how did they generate the answers? Did they brute force them with a dictionary search? Or was there some other technique their hired programmers used, but which was not described in the article?
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They probably hired poor people [theregister.co.uk] do do it for them.
Anti scalpers scheme that works... (Score:4, Interesting)
In his Glitter and Doom tour, Tom Waits pioneered an effective anti scalpers scheme.
Tickets for Waits' summer shows were limited to two per person but, in an effort to beat ticket touts, a valid I.D. (passport or driving licence) matching the name on the ticket was required to gain entry. Any concert-goer who did not have a valid I.D. or was found to be in possession of a ticket that had been resold – electronic scanners were employed – was not allowed in and did not get a refund.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitter_and_Doom_Tour#Tickets [wikipedia.org]
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That wouldn't stop scalpers. Idiots would still buy them, especially if they claimed that these tickets didn't need ID.
The buyer wouldn't get into the concert, be out of pocket, and the scammer would have upped and legged it long before.
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Tickets for Waits' summer shows were limited to two per person but, in an effort to beat ticket touts, a valid I.D. (passport or driving licence) matching the name on the ticket was required to gain entry. Any concert-goer who did not have a valid I.D. or was found to be in possession of a ticket that had been resold – electronic scanners were employed – was not allowed in and did not get a refund.
If you RTFA (I know...), you'll note:
The perpetrators took orders from ticket brokers, who were required to provide credit card numbers and account holder names in advance of a purchase so they could be programmed into the bot.
All they would have to do to defeat the ID requirement is add that to the list of items they need to purchase the tickets. And people would still pay extra to them because 1) they wouldn't have to try very hard to get a ticket, and 2) they would have a much higher chance of getting a ticket.
It worked for Waits but it won't for Cyrus (Score:3, Insightful)
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And that would be a bad thing how exactly? Less brainwashing of our youngsters, and very easy to bag'n'tag the freakoes who attend the latest Disney "pre-teen pop-queen" shows despite not having the kids there as an excuse. ^^
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In his Glitter and Doom tour, Tom Waits pioneered an effective anti scalpers scheme.
A different, simple scheme that benefits the artist: Once the venue is sold out (say 90% to scalpers) announce another concert on the next day. If that gets sold out, do another and so on. Result: Lots of money for the artist, who will play in many sold out but mostly empty halls. No money for scalpers.
Re:Anti scalpers scheme that works... (Score:4, Insightful)
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why browser knows captcha id (Score:2, Interesting)
Dutch Auction (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a dutch auction?
Start the price offensively high, and drop it as the concert date approaches. The organiser gets paid the price the market will bear, the scalpers are out of the loop - because by definition, anyone willing to pay a stupid price for a guaranteed ticket will already have paid it.
You still get the same effective problem - that rich fans are prioritised over poor fans, but more money goes to the artist and the organiser, so they could throw a few benefit concerts or something to sweeten the deal.
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I like the idea, but for all practical intents it's almost impossible to do.
Because you'd then have to auction off each seat in an order determined by order of importance, which would be logistically a nightmare with up to 100.000 seats available for an event.
For instance: I can afford to pay $500 for two tickets to a concert, but I want the best possible. If I wait for the best tickets to drop in price, they may sell out before they reach the pricelevel I'm willing to pay, so I need to buy the second best
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Because you'd then have to auction off each seat in an order determined by order of importance, which would be logistically a nightmare with up to 100.000 seats available for an event.
I don't think that is true. They can just let a succesful bidder choose whatever remaining seat he wants. The seller does not have to decide which seat is the best for you. That way you can just wait until the price falls to $250 per ticket and grab the best seats available.
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This makes plenty of sense. In any concert there are bandings of seating with a price attached. The better the view, the more expensive the seat. This is worked out in advance by the venue based on their 'values', but really it is the view and values of the ticket holder that matter.
So, price starts at $1 million and slowly drops as the cut off date for purchasing a ticket approaches.
If the guy who spent $1 million for his seat wants to sit to the left side of the back row - who are we to tell him he can't
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> they may sell out before they reach the pricelevel
> I'm willing to pay, so I need to buy the second best
> tickets, but these sold out at $100 even earlier.
This is easily solved, and along with it the problem that some people might rank the seats differently than others (e.g., one guy wants to be right in front of the speakers, and somebody else would rather be near the center of the stage).
The solution is simple: all the tickets are the same p
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The 'clock' in a dutch auction takes about 30 seconds to go to zero. That means that a sequential auction for 100.000 tickets would take about a month. That should give all people interested ample opportunity to attempt to buy a ticket at the desired price.
However, just like the stock exchange, the day price of a ticket would depend on psychological factors. That means that the price would fluctuate and the a price that is perceived high one day is percieved low another day. This creates opportunity for tic
Re:Dutch Auction (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a dutch auction?
Start the price offensively high, and drop it as the concert date approaches. The organiser gets paid the price the market will bear, the scalpers are out of the loop - because by definition, anyone willing to pay a stupid price for a guaranteed ticket will already have paid it.
You still get the same effective problem - that rich fans are prioritised over poor fans, but more money goes to the artist and the organiser, so they could throw a few benefit concerts or something to sweeten the deal.
The problem is promoters and talent want two things - sold out venues and maximum price per ticket. Scalpers act as a hedge against lost sales and inaccurate demand / pricing - they take the risk of getting stuck with tickets or losing money; something promoters don't want to accept themselves. Dutch auctions would probably condition people to wait because they learn prices will fill - which causes prices to fall - and promoters have no idea how much money they make nad when. They hate scalpers because, in their mind, they are taking "their" money; and convenientlyignore the risk mitigation role.
Laws barring reselling of tickets, IMHO, merely serve to restrict the market and raise ticket prices overall so promoters can make more money. There is no rational reason to bar ticket reselling anymore than to bar reselling of any other good.
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I doubt that most of the "scalped" tickets are actually sold by scalpers. Most are probably sold by friends and employees of the event and/or venue.
Think about it--before tickets go on sale, roadies and janitors get a chance to buy premium seats at face value, maybe even with an employee discount. The performers don't care, the venue doesn't have to pay employment taxes on this unofficial employee benefit, and the employee gets some extra cash.
What is the ethical difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Between WiseGuy's and Goldman Sachs? Both use computers to game their respective markets.
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they donate to politicians?
Seems to be the difference between acceptable and not acceptable is how in favor you are with the politicians who write the laws.
This is pretty ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not illegal to resell tickets above face value in most states (check out stub hub [stubhub.com] for TicketMaster's very own foray into person-to-person ticket sales), and business can be conducted in alternate states with more lax restrictions on ticket resale.
Beyond that, smoking a CAPTCHA system with a bit of cleverness is not hacking or unauthorized access in any reasonable way. This is just a ridiculous attempt to criminalize scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic behavior on the part of one party (scalpers) at the expense of another scuzzy, crappy, opportunistic party (TicketMaster). This strikes me as another case of people trying to misuse the law to remedy the unexpected (only by idiots) defeat of a faulty system. If one reads the article, it seems like Wiseguys (seriously? That's your name?) made purchases on behalf of ticket brokers (ticket-broker is to scalper as escort is to hooker) with detection-avoiding measures in place to keep TicketMaster from blocking the regulars.
It's an attempt by TicketMaster to wipe the egg off of their face, a face that most of America hates with a passion. Perhaps they should find a better way (reverse auction, anyone?) to find the natural market price instead of using time-release scarcity to spur impulse-buys that inevitably result in person-to-person ticket resale later on stub hub [stubhub.com] where they get to come back for a second skim off the top...
Oh.. right...
Just ban scalping... (Score:2)
Anyone who sells a ticket for more than its face value (with a suitable legal definition of "face value") would be hit in a big way. Any tickets they are in possession of would be forfeited back to the event organizer (who could go ahead and resell them)
If the penalty is serious enough (say jail or huge fines) scalpers wont bother.
Event organizers/ticket sellers could limit the number of tickets they will sell to any one person (so scalpers cant come in and buy 50-100 tickets or whatever)
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Are you telling me... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Bigger scum than TicketMaster in same business! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow ,,,,
$25 million gaming dollars (Score:3, Funny)
Is this like the South Park episode where Butters earned $300 million theoretical Internet dollars?
Love/hate relationship (Score:3, Insightful)
Ticket scalpers and domain squatters: Love 'em or hate 'em!
Sometimes I believe /.ers are pissed at these types because they didn't think of the idea first.
It's a free market (after all, don't markets want to be free?)...I say kudos to them for figuring out how to scam the scam.