Comment by ikesau

2 years ago

Really good post! I also found this quote which distilled their position in the 404media coverage of the situation.

> “What I can say for sure is that TicketMaster and AXS have had every opportunity to support scam-free third party ticket resale and delivery platforms if they wished: By documenting their ticket QR code cryptography, and by exposing apps and APIs which would allow verification and rotation of ticket secrets,” Conduition told me in an email. “But they intentionally choose not to do so, and then they act all surprised-pikachu when 3rd party resale scams proliferate. They're opting to play legal whack-a-mole with scammers instead of fixing the problem directly with better technology, because they make more money as a resale monopoly than as an open and secure ecosystem.”

from https://www.404media.co/scalpers-are-working-with-hackers-to...

33 comments

ikesau

Reply
cypherpunks01  2 years ago

I dug up the court docs referenced in that article, it's pretty interesting-

AXS Group LLC v. Internet Referral Services LLC (2:24-cv-00377) District Court, C.D. California

Amended complaint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906148#40910690).

Basically, brokers are using the "secure.tickets" and similar websites to proxy ticket barcodes to buyers, without going through the actual ticket transfer mechanisms on the primary ticketer AXS/TM, (similar to how this blogger does). Then resellers are delivering these ticket URLs, hosted on random websites, to Seatgeek and Stubhub customers, and those platforms are supporting their delivery by telling their customers that the tickets are legit. Sounds like AXS is fighting back against this practice.

  • snotrockets  2 years ago

    The underlying issue is that those tickets have a "no resale" provision that doesn't apply when the original seller acts as a broker.

    Do other brokers, when they go and work around that limitation break the sales contact? Maybe. The legal system would churn an answer in a few years.

    Do AXS et al with their "only we are allowed to engage in a secondary policy" are abusing their monopoly on original sales? The legal system would churn an answer about the legality of this in few years, but I think it's obvious they at least break rules in the spirit.

silexia  2 years ago

Monopoly is the keyword here. Ticketmaster and Boeing and all the other nefarious companies here use PATENTS to prevent competitors from eating their lunch. Patents need to be done away with to allow free competition, don't believe the propaganda about patents helping creators

  • mattmaroon  2 years ago

    I love it when a system has been working for hundreds of years through by far the most prosperous time in human history but people on the internet are sure it is wrong. No proof, no evidence, not even logic, just certainty.

    Also, I don’t think any of the issues with Ticketmaster have anything to do with patents.

  • Steven420  2 years ago

    If you don't have a patent on an invention then how do you protect it from people who will just steal what you have spent time/money creating?

    • treyd  2 years ago

      This is what patents used to do, but the economic and technological circumstances under which they did have changed dramatically over the last couple hundred years. All they really do now is entrench the power of the massive corporations with the capital to buy them up and sue anyone that they think encroach. It's not promoting innovation anymore, it's stifling it.

      1 reply →

    • rundev  2 years ago

      1. If you are first to market and still can't make money off your amazing invention, that might be a skill issue. 2. Patents wouldn't be as forceful if they didn't last that long. A decade or more is basically forever in a fast-moving field like tech.

      5 replies →