New York criminalizes the use of ticket-buying bots

The law's aim is to end the "frustrating" buying experience for New Yorkers. (One would assume this would also apply to ticket buyers outside of New York who want to buy tickets to an event in New York.)

https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/20/new-york-scalper-law-ticket-bots/

The bigger question is who has the time, money and resources to pursue the people using bots. Really, no one. I don't see this being a huge help.

HogansHero said: "re who has time and money to pursue... law enforcement. That's why a criminal law was needed. If they take 1% of the resources they've been spending chasing small time drug dealers, they will have ore than enough to combat this.

re how this changes things, it's not really hard to catch these crooks. If you buy a ticket, you paid for it. If you paid for it there is a trail to real money in a real account. Couple of subpoenas, couple of search warrants. And you don't really need sophisticated software to ID the bots-you and I could identify the major players between now and show time tonight with a quick scan of stubhub and TM.

Naysayers are just so cool though....





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This post is a great example of someone who pretends to know what they talk about, such as law enforcement which is far more complex, when they really know absolutely nothing. You do know there are ways to pay for things without leaving a paper (or even digital) trail, right?

Liza's Headband said: "This post is a great example of someone who pretends to know what they talk about, such as law enforcement which is far more complex, when they really know absolutely nothing. You do know there are ways to pay for things without leaving a paper (or even digital) trail, right? ""

The one thing I know for certain is that you don't know anything about me. Re your treatise on what can be hidden from the cops, I'll leave it up to them tosolve, but I would poit out they kinda figured this out long ago, or do you think these ticket scalpers are more sophisticated that internationl money laundering operations? Get back to me when you ACTUALLY known something. thanks.

With all due respect to your uncles, when Eric Scheiderman sends a memo making this a priority (and he will because, to him, it is), those investigating are not going to be police detectives.

I'm shocked by the pessimism. I hope everyone will come back and revisit this in a couple years. And by the way, the penalty is a year in the pokey and a fine of twice the gain. All those millions will look pretty sweet in the state's treasury.

Liza's Headband said: "We are not pessimistic, you just give the government and law enforcement way too much credit. I am sure you have a hidden agenda here but you're beyond delusional in thinking some new law (and increased reinforcement) is going to change what scalpers have done for decades... long before the "bots" were around. Sorry. "

Well scalping remains legal; what the law combats is the mechanical vacuuming of the primary market. Pessimism is a lack of confidence that something will happen which makes you a pessimist on this by definition, but that's beside the point. And my agenda is out there in the open: I want the market to operate fairly, as markets are supposed to do.

Yay Hamlet!

@headband, the nice thing about the law is that it does not ask anyone to enforce "fairly." It burns the legislatures sense of fairness into the specification of offense conduct that is objectively determinable. That's how criminal laws work.

@ sarahb22 "Theoretically, yes; practically, I'll bet there isn't a law enforcement person in the five boroughs that's going to put ticket scalping ahead of the mountains of murders, assaults, rapes, and other horrible crimes they deal with every day. Pass a law? Sure, anything to shut the rich people up. Enforce it? That's another thing.

What I'd like to know is, why is scalping legal? If anything would halt the scalpers in their tracks, it would be a law that would make them unable to resell their tickets for ridiculous prices on StubHub and Ticketmaster. Or at least, put a ceiling on it so you can't sell it for more than 200% of its original value. "

As rehearsed above, this sort of operation is not the business of police precincts and are not restricted to the 5 boroughs; they are run out of the attorney general's office, and this will be.

I support changing the scalping law itself, but it is more complicated because I don't want it to be illegal for me to sell a ticket I can't use, or to buy Yankees tickets at well below face value. I'd support your 200% idea, maybe even 125-150%, to include the costs involved. But the new law addresses supply issues only-not pricing. The support for the latter is not unanimous as this one was.

Carlos, this law isn't about people selling fake tickets-that has always been illegal. This is about bots and scalping. However, it's a very complex issue. Scalpers are bottom feeders who try to make a few bucks on tickets-they've always been around.

I think the bigger issue and the one I am not so sure the government wants to confront are the authorized reseller corporations. Ticketmaster, for instance, is a "respectable business" that "sells tickets to high demand events at a premium so fans can get exactly what they want." They are lawyered up and ready to go. Their reselling is not scalping if you ask them.

I know people who work at arenas who buy up great seats before on sale and then resell them through the official sites. The inside people are the ones who truly must be pursued, not just some scalpers.

wonderfulwizard11 said: "Personally, I think they should have just made scalping illegal, but I guess this is ok."

Scalping SHOULD be illegal. If the courts can decide on a legal definition of 'scalping' - for instance, selling any ticket for more than X% of its original value - then legislation could theoretically move forward to make such sales against the law.

Would that stop your average on-the-street scalper who hangs out in front of the RRT hoping to make a sale? Probably not. He'd just go hang out around the corner, or in some other place where he could scalp tickets without a cop chasing him.

BUT! What it WOULD do is make it less profitable for those online scalpers with the bots to go scoop up all the hot tickets before the general public even has a chance. Without a 'reputable outlet' like Ticketmaster or Stubhub to hawk their obscenely marked-up tickets, most scalpers would just go find some other way to make their money…and regular folks could finally have a chance to buy decently priced tickets to popular concerts and shows. You think 'Hamilton' is bad? Try buying a ticket to Taylor Swift.

But, that probably won't happen, because Ticketmaster and StubHub make HUGE amounts of money on those scalped tickets. And let's face it: it's not really a priority. So some tech-savvy guy in Russia is making tons of American $$$s from his bots. So what? We've got bigger problems.

So, very likely nothing will change except every once in a while someone will pass a piece of important-looking but meaningless legislation to make it look like something's getting done. And nothing will really get done.

@sarah, not all of your premises are correct but it's really not worth drilling down into them. Yes it would be nice if scalping were illegal. @headband, yes this will take new laws and, as I said much earlier, followup federal legislation. I hope you would support that.