It used to be that ticket scalping would involve people lining up really early and buying as many tickets as they possibly can, and resell them at a much higher price. However with technology, this has become a lot simpler as scalpers can now deploy the use of bots who are presumably much faster at clicking and purchasing tickets than humans are.
Over in New York, last month the state made it so that online ticket scalping that involves the use of bots illegal, and it looks like President Obama has recently signed a new law into effect that pretty much makes it illegal across the entire US. Dubbed the “Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act of 2016”, it’s more or less the same as the law in New York where using ticket bots to purchase tickets will now be considered illegal.
The law reads that it is illegal “to circumvent a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on an Internet website or online service that is used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket purchasing limits or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules.” It also makes it illegal to resell the tickets obtained by a bot.
It also revealed that state governments will be allowed to bring civil suits to the US district court on behalf of residents, and that the FTC can intervene in those cases as well if necessary.
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