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A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

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Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#31

Post by jstanley »

vertex-four wrote: post #25
jstanley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but some fan wasn't going to make it either way. Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?

Why not? The only reason to believe this is to believe that having more money means you're inherently more deserving of things, no matter the wishes of the people providing those things.

It's not about deserving in any sort of moral sense. If I offer you $1000 for something you're selling, and someone else offers $2000, who are you going to sell it to?

He obviously is willing to give you more, so give it to him. That's fair. That's life.

EDIT: And if you sell it to me for $1000, don't be surprised if I turn around and sell it to the $2000 guy. He wants it more than I do, and he's going to get it one way or another.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#32

Post by adekok »

laurencei wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #2

"Wiseguy learned that Ticketmaster's CAPTCHA system had only loaded 30,000 unique images into its database, rather than millions. So Lowson's team downloaded every image they could find as a .jpeg file, stayed up all night typing them out, and taught their bot how to match the images." Wow. I had the impression Ticketmaster had invested a lot of thought into anti bot tech. Apparently not.

What is more interesting about that statement is how did he learn that fact? Possibly some help from the inside? Or some other method...?

The birthday paradox.

After a few hundred to low thousands of manual captcha's, someone goes Hey... I've seen this one before!.

After 2-3 duplicates, they're pretty sure that the corpus is small. At that point, it's worth writing a script to grab as many captchas as possible. They can then manually analyze them.

A back of the envelope calculation shows that with 30 people, they should be able to solve all of the captchas in a working day, even accounting for breaks.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#33

Post by rhino369 »

rubber_duck wrote: post #14
knz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend. Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.

>Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers. He just told you - it benefits people who want to pay more but would otherwise have to rely on luck to buy the tickets - this is the entire reason the system works.

The people running the show could just sell the tickets using an auction mechanism. It doesn't make sense to let a middle man take a huge cut.

Well it probably does make sense for PR reasons. Nobody wants to be the band/team/event gouging their fans.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#34

Post by darpa_escapee »

jstanley wrote: post #17
tomtoise wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone's a winner. Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show. Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."

Sure, but some fan wasn't going to make it either way. Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?

Why should the fan who is willing to pay more be prioritized over the fan who was prescient enough to buy tickets on time?

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#35

Post by simonsarris »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

You reasoning is a pretty good example of why the median person should be very wary of anyone saying that free markets and their "efficiency" are a good thing, or will result in good outcomes for them. They will result in good outcomes for the richest, sure. We can agree to that.

You are conflating die-hard fans with die-hard wealthy fans which is a little silly. Not all fans have the same marginal value of pocket change. One median-income fan may be easily be more die-hard than another more blasé millionaire fan, yet he is also a die-hard fan of feeding his children. Just because he is unwilling to sacrifice his children to go to the concert does not mean he is less of a fan. The millionaire is not really a die-hard fan, but can easily pay, so he does.

So no, the fan who wants to see the gig the most does not get to see it. That's only true if everyone has the same amount of disposable income. They don't.

For the median person, "the free market" just means "the person with the most money gets to make all of the decisions." So much so that a person who cares much less can affect an outcome he hardly cares about, because he also does not care about the money involved, because he has so much of it relative to the median person.

"I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?"

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#36

Post by knz »

rubber_duck wrote: post #14
knz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend. Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.

>Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers. He just told you - it benefits people who want to pay more but would otherwise have to rely on luck to buy the tickets - this is the entire reason the system works.

> There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend.

And nothing stops those people from buying a ticket from someone who is no longer able to attend on StubHub. Bands aren't putting on a show so that their wealthiest fans can attend.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#37

Post by ctrl-j »

jstanley wrote: post #17
tomtoise wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone's a winner. Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show. Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."

Sure, but some fan wasn't going to make it either way. Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?

> Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?

They shouldn't necessarily have to. They should have to do the same amount of waiting in line, or struggling with whatever online box office system is in place.

Having more money doesn't imply being more deserving of going to an event. Without scalpers it would be more about the effort and desire to attend.

If you don't have time because you're working too much, consider that a sacrifice you're making to be more wealthy.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#38

Post by rhino369 »

conjectures wrote: post #10

I'm still trying to understand why they don't just auction tickets.

Probably because of bad PR. The relation between a band and it's fan is very personal. The fans would feel betrayed if the band was auctioning tickets.

I've heard of some venues using a hometeam scalping operation to get around this. They sell the tickets knowing that their scalpers will bot them. Then the venue gets a cut of the proceeds. Could be an urban legend however.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#39

Post by knodi123 »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

> If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them.

And if I'm an artist who wants to ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me? Should I be allowed to offer a concert where tickets cost 20% of market value, or should "the market" step in and say "no. I'm the one in charge, and I say that once you reach a certain level of fame, only rich people are allowed to see you live. sorry, but you've outgrown your original fanbase."

That feels like kind of a sick attitude.

The solution here is either the invisible hand of the market, OR tight controls exercised at the artist's discretion.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#40

Post by darpa_escapee »

jstanley wrote: post #31
vertex-four wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The only reason to believe this is to believe that having more money means you're inherently more deserving of things, no matter the wishes of the people providing those things.

It's not about deserving in any sort of moral sense. If I offer you $1000 for something you're selling, and someone else offers $2000, who are you going to sell it to? He obviously is willing to give you more, so give it to him. That's fair. That's life. EDIT: And if you sell it to me for $1000, don't be surprised if I turn around and sell it to the $2000 guy. He wants it more than I do, and he's going to get it one…

Would your explanation still be as just-so if I chose to sell the item for <=$1000 to you because you are a friend or family?
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