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CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

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Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#61

Post by landl0rd »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #12
landl0rd wrote: post #10

I'd rather see bot resistance (important for everyone) and privacy (important for everyone) take precedence over accessibility (important for a small minority) and have laws change to reflect that.

I disagree that bot resistance is important to anyone, or even a reasonable goal for anyone at all. Bots are just users

Objectively a lack of bot-resistance can make the service unusable for everyone. Good examples include twitter, where interesting stuff gets flooded by spam DMs and indian payout farmers, and the mentioned ticketing example, where objectively a lack of resistance leads to rent-seeking middlemen scalping tickets.

Similarly a lack of privacy hurts everyone.

The question is basically "would you rather have an equally-shitty service for everyone in the name of egalitarianism or a good service for most?" This seems a really easy choice for me because I don't see egalitarianism/accessibility as a moral imperative.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#62

Post by jszymborski »

amai wrote: post #58

What about this schema: The first ticket you buy costs the normal price. The second ticket costs twice the price. The third ticket is four times the price and so on. Scalpers who buy many tickets at once will go bankrupt before they can buy all the available tickets.

You can even limit max tickets sold to one person at two or three, but the trouble, as I understand it, is that it's hard to identify individuals as being... well individuals.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#63

Post by mschuster91 »

The solution is, as always, simple: regulation. In this case:

- break up Ticketmaster, Live Nation and their European friends. Ban vertical integration. And for good measure (and to placate the public who is out for blood, and I mean that one in the literal sense - ask a random on the street about what they'd do to scalpers and TM, I'd bet good money on at least 50% going for one or another form of violence), place their execs behind bars for a decade.

- mandate that a ticket holder has the right to transfer a personalized ticket for free (plus, in the case of actual paper tickets, a reasonable small service charge for postal fees)

- in conjunction, ban the sale of tickets above face value, including any sort of deals, and place significant fines on violators of both ends. This completely eliminates the "second hand" scalper market. Of course, black markets will still crop up, but when both sides cannot be certain the opposing trade partner is a cop...

Unfortunately, this would also kill a lot of income for the big players - chiefly, the ticket sale platforms that currently make an insane amount of money on bogus charges for name changes on tickets as well as running their own resale markets where they can double or triple dip on fees (depending how often that specific ticket gets sold back for whatever reason). And that is why such a movement will probably never happen during our lifetime.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#64

Post by charcircuit »

izabera wrote: post #52

every time this comes up, the thread immediately gets 300 comments suggesting that everyone pays whatever amount to keep the bots at bay twitter sells blue checks for $8/mo and it's full of bots

The problem is not that bots are buying tickets. The problem is that the tickets sell out too fast.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#65

Post by singpolyma3 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #14
singpolyma3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that bot resistance is important to anyone, or even a reasonable goal for anyone at all. Bots are just users

Bots are not just users in the battle against spam.

Then you want antispam not antibot

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#66

Post by layer8 »

modeless wrote: post #44

I am unsympathetic when people insist on selling things for the wrong price and then come up with these elaborate schemes for fixing the problems they themselves caused. If they would simply sell tickets for the prices people are willing to pay in the first place then they wouldn't need to invade privacy or any of this stuff. I've heard the arguments they use to justify why they don't and they're all hogwash.

Why do you think they don’t?

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#67

Post by lurk2 »

Loughla wrote: post #34
frabcus wrote: post #19

The option that strikes me as missing, is making users pay a cost before they are randomly entered in a lottery for the ticket. So, for example, everyone pays $0.01 on their credit card, or does a holding charge on their credit card, or registers their identity. All in a 5 minute (or 1 day!) window. And then after the window, tickets are randomly distributed amongst every card which so registered. You could check mul…

The Savannah Bananas do that. You have to enter a lottery to buy tickets. And if your ID doesn't match the ticket, you don't get in. It's successful in keeping tickets in the hands of families and fans instead of resale.

Pearl Jam does something similar with annual membership in their fan club. Each concert has some designated seats set aside for members of the club, with the best seats going to the members with the longest consecutive subscriptions. Allowing the membership to lapse resets your priority level if you subscribe again.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#68

Post by Spivak »

hackingonempty wrote: post #25

The reality now is the ticket sellers and bands are the main scalpers and everyone else are now secondary scalpers. Now that tickets are all electronic and the ticket sellers operate secondary markets there is no "face value" anymore and pricing is dynamic. Not all tickets are released at once and many are offered at "platinum" prices at first. All through the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's concert tickets were arou…

Concert tickets are still that low, you just can't go to stadium shows for supermassive artists at that price. A saturday night at a popular EDM venue with a 2k capacity headlining an artist with ~500k monthly listeners on Spotify will run you about $25 for the floor or $50 for VIP. A "sticky floor" bar venue ticket with a capacity of maybe 300 for an alt-z band with somewhere in the realm of 250k-3M monthly listeners on Spotify will run you about the same.

Being up at the rails at a Girl in Red concert set me back $60 at a 5k person venue. If you want to see supermassive artists for that kind of unit price you have to "buy bulk" and go to festivals.

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#69

Post by mqus »

Incipient wrote: post #55

This is a trivially solvable problem with essentially little friction for buyers. The industry doesn't WANT to solve this. I don't see why anyone believes or entertains the idea they are even trying.

The author builds a ticket system and says it's not trivially solveable. What's your trivial solution then?

Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

#70

Post by lurk2 »

londons_explore wrote: post #48
londons_explore wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the key thing is that the industry really wants scalpers, but must appear to act against them.

Actual cash income the moment the tickets go on sale. Removes all the uncertainty and risk and puts it on the scalpers.

This was my theory but there is a problem with it: Unless there is a constant churn of scalpers failing to turn a profit, the scalpers are presumably selling off their tickets at a profit. This means the market demand from individual purchasers exists, and the ticket sellers are just leaving money on the table by not raising their prices.
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