Ticketmaster Hopes To Speed Up Event Access By Scanning Your Face (engadget.com) 129
Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, has announced that they have teamed up with and invested in a face recognition company called Blink Identity. The ticket sales giant may have plans to scan your face instead of a ticket to grant you access to a venue. Engadget reports: In its first quarter financial report (PDF), Live Nation has explained that Blink has "cutting-edge facial recognition technology, enabling you to associate your digital ticket with your image, then just walk into the show." According to Blink's website, its system can register an image of your face as soon as you walk past a sensor. Blink's technology can then match it against a large database in half a second -- in a blink, so to speak. It's also apparently powerful enough that you don't even have to slow down for its system to recognize you: Just walk normally, and if the technology gets a match, it'll automatically open doors or turnstiles to let you in.
Re:And if it doesn't... (Score:4)
Pity the fool who goes in KISS makeup and confuses the system
Personally, this will guarantee I never go to another concert. Facial recognition is one step too far
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Pity the fool who goes in KISS makeup and confuses the system
Personally, this will guarantee I never go to another concert. Facial recognition is one step too far
Or an entire Insane Clown Posse audience/crowd in Juggalo face paint.
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You do know that there are smaller venues/artists that aren't affiliated with Ticketmaster, right?
Never going to another concert is like never eating another apple because red delicious apples suck.
Re:And if it doesn't... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that Ticketmaster has what amounts to a monopoly [ultimateclassicrock.com] on many of the larger venues in the US. Back in 1994 Pearl Jam, which at the time was one of the biggest bands in the world, tried to book a tour without using Ticketmaster and they found that they simply couldn't do it. And as the linked article indicates, Ticketmaster has only gotten bigger and more powerful since then.
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Then don't see Pearl Jam. There are plenty of other artists in the world. In any little city over about 20k people I can almost guarantee that on a given weekend a bunch of people are playing music that you can go see.
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Well, sure I can do that, and personally this issue doesn't affect me a whole lot anyway, because when I go to see music it's usually at a club rather than a big theater or stadium. But I think it's outrageous that I don't even have the *option*. For example: I would have liked to see Leonard Cohen's final tour, and that would have almost certainly required dealing with Ticketmaster. They're a horrible company that I don't want to give any money to, and that was true even before they began asking me to h
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Ticketmaster is a monopoly where I live and the problem becomes the venues. Do you think they'll turn the system off at other times or do you think they'll collect as much data as they can and sell it?
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Ticketmaster isn't a monopoly anywhere. You're telling me that every bar, dancehall, lounge, and club where you live uses Ticketmaster? Bullshit. Most of them are probably collecting $10 in cash at the door and stamping people's hands when they enter.
Does Ticketmaster try to monopolize large venues and very popular bands? Sure. But that's a fraction of the music in the world, and a tiny fraction of the venues.
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The live music scene where I live is on life support outside of major venues. It's a sad state of affairs.
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a sad state of affairs
Now that's a great band name!
Those systems have a 99% accuracy (Score:2)
Which is even lower depending on the subjects, chances are high that if you just walk towards the gate, it'll open for you. After all that system will be optimized towards letting people through even if the match is not very accurate.
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You can set the system to minimize false positives, and then fall back to manual ticket check for false negatives.
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How do you check for false positives, tho?
You don't. You set the system to err in side of caution, in order to minimize getting them to begin with. Then you ask for a physical ticket in case of a false negative.
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Expediency. If, say, one in a hundred gets denied, that means 99 people got to just walk through instead of holding up the line while being checked, and more will keep going through while that one person is off to the side getting manually processed. Also, if going by that figure, reducing the number of people needing manual processing by 99%, means fewer staff needed to do just that.
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Hm, having written that it occurs to me that we're talking about events here, which probably means security searches, which makes ticket processing a negligible part of the time consumption.
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Correct, this is more about eliminating ticket scanning employees than saving event-goers time.
Except now when the system fucks up there will be one beleaguered ticket checker stuck with an impossibly long line, instead of plenty of other people there to check tickets for you.
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The point is that it makes it more of a pain to buy the tickets on a secondary market. Ticketmaster and the like have absolutely hated scalpers for ages, I'm sure they're doing this as part of an effort to reduce the risk from scalping.
Also, they've probably figured out some way of selling or using the data they collect to make this happen.
Re: Those systems have a 99% accuracy (Score:1)
Ticketmaster is part of the secondary market now. They just want 100% of the action. A wealth of sophisticated scalpels has cropped up and they transfer ticket sales via tm Apis. Tm gets a fee for the transfer. It's really gross.
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Much simpler solution that's infallible:
Put a QR code on the tickets with the person's name and the last four digits of the credit card used to pay for them.
Scan the ticket, swipe the card, you're in. Now go to the metal detectors and bag search queue, which takes much longer.
Don't have that credit card? Go over to the other queue and show your ID.
It would be very difficult for scalpers to beat that and it's a lot cheaper and more likely to work than facial recognition.
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Better yet, don't go to the metal detector and bag search queue. Get rid of that Orwellian shit. Yeah, yeah, you can't make the world perfectly safe.
Also, what's wrong with scalping? If there's financial gain to be had, the tickets are mispriced in the first place.
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Even simpler solution: respect the "Right of First Sale" and be happy you sold any tickets to begin with.
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How do you check for false positives, tho?
You don't. You set the system to err in side of caution...
Each person gets to enter the venue once. If the same guy shows up a second time and can produce a ticket, you had a false positive and a ticketless person may or may not have gotten in.
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I want to know how they'll 3D scan your face when you're buying your tickets from home.
Apple sheep aside: How many people have a big brother style facial scanner at home?
And b) The gates aren't going to simply open and let you waltz right in, they'll still want to make sure you aren't smuggling your own drinks+snacks into the area.
Whatever the reasons behind this multi million dollar investment are, we can be sure it ISN'T for user convenience.
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Whatever the reasons behind this multi million dollar investment are, we can be sure it ISN'T for user convenience.
Clearly. This either has something to do with security, or with cutting labour costs (less people at the gate - the security guard is now the person who also checks the occasional person who needs to show a ticket, instead of having both a ticket inspector and a security guard at each gate), or both.
There is no way this will be faster than with experienced (by which I mean, people who have done more than 2 shows) ticket people at the gates. Turnstiles and automatically opening gates...right. There's a reaso
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Its called "Facebook" and you don't even have to go home to use it.
Seriously, if this system is not an offense against the GDPR, the GDPR is a total failure.
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And now the law of unintended consequences kicks in. If this wonderful system gives anybody without a ticket a 1 in 100 chance of simply walking through (more if you bear a resemblance
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If this wonderful system gives anybody without a ticket a 1 in 100 chance of simply walking through (more if you bear a resemblance to somebody else going, e.g. a sibling) then you're going to have people trying to do just that.
How many people are willing to go through all the effort to show up at an event for a 1% chance of getting in ? If that's 10% of the total amount of people, you only need 0.1% extra empty seats to accommodate them without arguments or fights. That's probably already less than the no-shows.
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I'm also being generous with the 1 in 100 false positive. Chances are in practice it's a lot worse.
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Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's mostly to stop ticket touts selling on tickets at inflated prices. If the name on the ticket doesn't match your id, you don't get in.
Re:Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown (Score:5, Insightful)
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"I wouldn't want my children's facial data in some database controlled by Ticketmaster"
Grow some fucking balls man!!!
I wouldn't want mine or anyone's facial data in some database controlled by Ticketmaster
It's worse than that (Score:2)
TM doesn't control the database. BI does, and guess what... they have a relationship with Homeland Security.
All to aggregate everyone's behaviour.
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I wouldn't want my children's facial data in some database controlled by Ticketmaster
Don't worry, for extra $5/ticket, you could put just the parent's faces with full biometric info
And for a convenience fee of only $17.50 per ticket, you could still buy tickets the old-fashioned way!
Re:Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown (Score:5, Insightful)
It's mostly to stop ticket touts selling on tickets at inflated prices.
Well, now that we've unwrapped this bullshit burrito, let's get down to the corn-riddled meat of it. This isn't about curbing inflated ticket prices. This isn't about protecting vendors who thrive on gouging customers with onsite food services. This isn't even about security.
This is about building a fresh database of facial recognition data, to include men, women, and children. This is about testing the accuracy of said system. This is about testing the tolerance level of the masses to accept such surveillance as the new "norm" in our world.
In other words, this is about Control.
If the name on the ticket doesn't match your id, you don't get in.
Two years ago no one was talking about this. Now, matching a physical person to every ticket sale is suddenly a critical requirement? Also remember who ultimately pays for a mult-million dollar system like this, as if ticket "service fees" weren't high enough. Oh, and let's not forget about the massive amount of additional law enforcement resources that will be showing up at venues like this. They will be there to abuse the new do-my-job-for-me system to literally scan the masses for wanted criminals, and perform arrests onsite. Your service fees and tax dollars at work. I haven't even started down the potential rabbit hole of abuse, and that's before this database inevitably gets sold and/or stolen.
When people bitch about an Orwellian future, they should remember that silence coming from the masses defines acceptance.
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Two years ago no one was talking about this.
Ticket scalping has been a problem since these events were created. This is just a new attempt at a solution using technology that didn't exist 2 years ago.
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Two years ago no one was talking about this.
Ticket scalping has been a problem since these events were created.
And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that? What, you're going to capture pictures of the gullible victims? Listen to their drunken "guy wearing a hat, I think" descriptions of gone-by-now scalpers? Oh, and nothing like deploying yet another treat-everyone-like-a-criminal system in order to catch the bad guys. Yeah, that punch in the gut for every law-abiding citizen is justified once again.
This is just a new attempt at a solution using technology that didn't exist 2 years ago.
Facial recognition has been around a lot longer than 2 years. If it wa
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And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that?
You compare the face with the face in your database of all people that bought a legit ticket. If that doesn't produce a match, you ask for the ticket and ID, and do a manual check.
Facial recognition has been around a lot longer than 2 years.
But not with the quality that's needed.
selling this database to every bidder who comes along
If that's what you're afraid of, then make it illegal. In the EU that would already be the case with existing laws.
Re:Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown (Score:4)
You compare the face with the face in your database of all people that bought a legit ticket. If that doesn't produce a match, you ask for the ticket and ID, and do a manual check.
Matching tickets to names and forcing the buyer / person indicated as attendee at the time of the purchase of the ticket to be the person who uses a ticket is a terrible way to fight scalping.
Can't I buy tickets for a friend as a gift? What if I misspell his name or am unaware of his legal name in his ID (example: lots of East Asian people living in North America adopt English names informally...I know the guy as "John" but his actual name in his passport is "Zhenyu")? Can't I give the ticket to a friend or family number if I am unable to attend? Finally, what's wrong with re-selling the ticket at face value (i.e. without me making any sort of profit) if for some reason I cannot attend (I get sick, have to attend a funeral, whatever)? To prevent a relatively rare occurrence in terms of number of tickets sold (scalping) you're inconveniencing a large number of people. OK, for some events where scalping might be actually or potentially through the roof (I don't know, like, the FIFA World Cup final or whatever), this type of policy may be justified...but for the local concert in your city for which you bought tickets via Ticketmaster? It's overkill.
There are much easier ways to fight scalping other than deploying a massive surveillance system. You'd probably catch and convict a whole bunch of scalpers with less money. Not to mention simple solutions (max. amount of tickets you can buy in a single transaction and/or within a given period of time, etc.).
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"what's wrong with re-selling the ticket at face value (i.e. without me making any sort of profit)"
What's wrong with re-selling the ticket at any value? Genuinely curious to understand what all the fuss is about. Why is this market so special?
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The problem with giving tickets to friends if you can't use them, selling at face value, and scalping is that Ticketmaster can't charge service fees for it
Ticketmaster has a system for reselling your tickets, but I'm sure they get to double-dip their obscene service fees if you do that. Matching buyer with attendee is only to force people to use their system and pay more fees if the ticket is to be transferred.
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They already did, the fee was paid when the ticket was originally purchased.
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And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that?
You compare the face with the face in your database of all people that bought a legit ticket. If that doesn't produce a match, you ask for the ticket and ID, and do a manual check.
3rd party resellers account for over 25% of ticket sales today. When upwards of 1 in 3 gate-check faces will never match the ticket-purchase face, it questions the entire point of a system claiming to "speed up" processes.
selling this database to every bidder who comes along
If that's what you're afraid of, then make it illegal. In the EU that would already be the case with existing laws.
Laws won't prevent the theft of such a database.
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We don't ask for ID now, last time I bought tickets I didn't have to give the name of everyone who was going with me, I didnt even have to decide who was going with me until right before the show.
If scalping is really this huge problem (and it isn't, certainly not for ticketmaster who still gets paid... shows still get sold out and the inability to get tickets just increases what people are willing to spend the next time around) then we would be tying ID to tickets already, it really wouldn't be that hard.
T
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Ticket scalping has been a problem since these events were created.
So? How does that affect Ticketmaster? Why would they invest millions of dollars to prevent it?
Scalping is only a problem for buyers, not for sellers.
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Scalping is only a problem for buyers, not for sellers.
If that were true, the problem could be solved by Ticketmaster auctioning off all tickets instead of selling them for a decent price. They'd make a lot more money.
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If they're doing it "for the fans" then the problem can be solved a lot easier than this.
eg. By printing names on tickets and requiring people to show ID. I'm sure a true fan wouldn't mind that.
It's also pretty much garanteed to work, unlike this system. I bet the foul-ups caused by this will make quite a few headline stories.
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Scalping is only a problem for buyers, not for sellers.
If that were true, the problem could be solved by Ticketmaster auctioning off all tickets instead of selling them for a decent price. They'd make a lot more money.
Ticketmaster already does that. Before tickets go up for sale, Ticketmaster "sells" them to third party auction sites. The biggest one being ticketsnow.com .
Then those sites sell off the tickets however they feel like. Auctions or just super expensive straight sales.
Anything that gets unsold is returned to the Ticketmaster pool. Ticketmaster then bangs the drums and announces that more tickets to that hot event will be available on a specific date.
Then the repeat the process. Why do you think Ticketmast
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So? How does that affect Ticketmaster? Why would they invest millions of dollars to prevent it?
To quell the competition. Ticketmaster depends on reselling tickets at inflated prices too, and don't want a fair playing field.
There is a fairer system, and it's called "payment at the gate".
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geekmux nailed the real purpose of this advance of Big Brother.
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If the name on the ticket doesn't match your id, you don't get in.
Two years ago no one was talking about this.
Ten years ago when I was evaluating ticketing systems for a tribal casino in California, everyone was talking about ticket verification systems that tied tickets to IDs as an option. Most of them were focused on counterfeit detection, however.
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It's mostly to stop ticket touts selling on tickets at inflated prices.
Well, now that we've unwrapped this bullshit burrito, let's get down to the corn-riddled meat of it. This isn't about curbing inflated ticket prices. This isn't about protecting vendors who thrive on gouging customers with onsite food services. This isn't even about security.
This is about building a fresh database of facial recognition data, to include men, women, and children. This is about testing the accuracy of said system. This is about testing the tolerance level of the masses to accept such surveillance as the new "norm" in our world.
In other words, this is about Control.
I've never really worried about government control. The govt knows who I am, they have my biometrics (passport), my NI number (tax), my car registration, my fingerprints were first taken when I was five... If they were to do something untoward with this information they'd have acted by now. What the government has are a load of rules around this data that are enforced and there would be a lot of warning signs before any of this changes.
Private industry on the other hand has no qualms about screwing me ov
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I've never really worried about government control. The govt knows who I am, they have my biometrics (passport), my NI number (tax), my car registration, my fingerprints were first taken when I was five... If they were to do something untoward with this information they'd have acted by now. What the government has are a load of rules around this data that are enforced and there would be a lot of warning signs before any of this changes.
How well did you really think a "load" of rules surrounding data privacy and protecting sensitive information ultimately prevent theft? Perhaps you should ask one of the millions of citizens who were victims of the OPM data breach.
You really need to understand the fact that we should not be asking any organization HOW are going to protect data; we should now be asking WHY they're collecting it in the first place, because it is absolutely fucking inevitable that the data will be leaked or stolen. Your gove
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I'm sure it's not about speeding up the process at all. I think anyone can see through Ticketmasters BS. I bet you'll only be able to resell tickets through Ticketmasters own official market place for resllers with Ticketmaster taking a cut of course. Don't get me wrong scalping and fake tickets are a real issue but there's nothing about this move from Ticketmaster that's of real benefit to the customer just them protecting their own interests aka profits.
That's a cute theory you've got, but this has fuck-all to do with ticket sales, speed at venues, or even scalping.
You don't make a million-dollar investment and build a facial recognition database of men, women, and children to not sell it to every bidder who comes asking for it. You really need to start thinking of the value of such a database. Ticketmaster sure as shit has.
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" it's no longer acceptable to just have a ticket, but you must (as a group) have the ID of who purchased the ticket(s) on you"
And I'm out.
Fuck. This. Shit.
Why do we as a society tolerate it?
Everyone is going to get pushed harder, and harder, and harder for additional information, scanned ID, scanned personal imagery, matches in Government endorsed facial recognition databases (have you seen the Chinese social credit system [bbc.com]? Scary as hell!), until what? Where do you stand? I sure as hell won't tolerate bein
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Re: Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown (Score:1)
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But getting loaded before the event and then making a mess inside is a-ok?
You have strange laws.
pro sports and some events have metal detectors (Score:2)
pro sports and some events have metal detectors now days.
ambivalent on this (Score:1)
This is a use of technology that, done properly, adds value and makes everybody (except the jobless ticket checkers) happy. Reduced scalping, shorter queues, lower hassle, happier event goers.. lots of good things.
I just don't think they can do it properly. I don't think the technology is reliable enough, I don't trust them to adequately protect their database and even if they're that mythical company that does actually want and successfully implement good data security, they'll still have to hand over all
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Do you even own a face scanner?
It's online sales, how are they even going to scan people?
(Apple sheep aside)
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Scanning face faster than scanning ticket? (Score:2)
... its system can register an image of your face as soon as you walk past a sensor. It's also apparently powerful enough that you don't even have to slow down for its system to recognize you: Just walk normally,
Seems like it would be even faster to just hold up my ticket (presumably w/ QR or Bar code) and have it scan that. Face matching seems more like a way to keep people from reselling tickets -- and stepping on your privacy.
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The system is meant to replace manual identity checks, not ticket checks.
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The system is meant to replace manual identity checks, not ticket checks.
Uh, let's not blindly dismiss that first part; we should be asking why the hell manual identity checks are required in the first place, in order to even justify implementing a system like this.
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we should be asking why the hell manual identity checks are required in the first place
To combat ticket scalping.
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we should be asking why the hell manual identity checks are required in the first place
To combat ticket scalping.
So in other words, for no legitimate reason other than market capture.
You could have just said that.
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Accuracy (Score:4, Interesting)
I was just reading this earlier
https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]
used by south wales police (uk) it identified around 2500 people as persons of interests and around 450 arrests were made but only around 200 were actual matches
is this likely to be better?
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is this likely to be better?
Yes, I would expect this to make Ticketmaster a lot of money.
In "buy a regular ticket" fee, "my face changed" fee and "sell the face database to everyone" profit
This will never be misused.... (Score:5, Funny)
...and the companies involved will always be ethical and judicious in what they do with the massive amount of biometric data such a system would collect.
I mean, seriously, Ticketmaster. They're above reproach, right up there with luminaries like Monsanto, Haliburton, and Comcast. There's no way we could ever regret this move.
TicketBastards is going after scalpers? (Score:1)
So TicketBastards is going after scalpers? Again?
What ever happened to the doctrine of first sale?
Obligatory Half life 2 reference (Score:2)
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet America, concert watches you!
The real reason (Score:2)
Agreed. Their claim is a lie. (Score:2)
While on one hand, it's good that they are - scalpers ruin the whole system for everyone else - but on the other, they're being unnecessarily deceptive and are going to make it impossible for someone to give their ticket to a friend if they can't go.
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They’ll let you do that in limited ways using only the TicketMaster-approved second-hand market.
Legislation needed (Score:2)
That's why a few law needs to be passed, e.g.: limiting the price of such re-sell to the exact price at which the ticket was bought.
(France has such laws).
Other wise you can bet that the "TicketMaster-approved second-hand market" will reimburse the original owner the price of *original* ticket (minus a fee) and will bill the new user the *current price* of the ticket (plus another fee), and the second hand marker owners (and their shareholders... Ticket master) will pocket the price difference and twice the
Yet another reason (Score:2)
Ticketmaster is evil....
whew (Score:2)
Great if no ID required (Score:2)
Wow this is great, so if I buy my ticket with cash, bitcoin, or a temporary credit or debit card, all I need is my face when I buy it, and all I need is my face when I claim it, right?
Note the implication here is that now nothing is tied to the ticket except my face, not my name, address, real credit card, ID, or anything. This would actually be acceptable, unfortunately I'm guessing this is not the case...
Fails ... (Score:2)
Golden State Killer and how this is related (Score:2)
The GSK was caught by a harmless, private company collecting biometric data in a very positive way on the surface. "Send us your data and we'll tell you about your ancestry!" One of the GSK's distant relatives bought the service, and that eventually turned into the government's tool to turn a quiet, seventy-somthing retiree into a soon-to-be convict.
In that case, privately collected data was used for "good", but it won't always be government entities (see China). As for the private sector, they're probably
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While I tend to agree with most of your points, China is a government entity. Even most of their nominally corporate actors are de facto government entities.
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Slow admitance is desirable (Score:3)
This solution attempts to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
First off, as many have pointed out, it's the security checks that tend to really slow down admittance to an event.
Second: Slow admittance is a safety feature. You don't want tens of thousands of people rushing into the corridors of an arena all at once. Slow admittance spreads out the crowd.
Re:One more reason. (Score:4, Insightful)