Lose, humans will, in a competition with a bot. Smarter people in the stock market know this and acknowledge that bots play a major role in their online trading system. This has yet to occur in the online ticket sales area. The CBC documented an ex-bot operator on how bots rig the system. I do agree, and something must be done about it. Tragically Hip concert tickets selling out to bots before humans means that fans will pay a huge premium for tickets, and none of this premium will go to the artists. This is simply not right.
Bots account for ~50% of internet traffic, of which 20% are white hat search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu. The other 30% are malicious bots such as content spammers, content scrapers, and other bots who’s intent is unknown. Obviously for ticket sellers bots account for 66% of ticket site traffic, and none are white hat bots. The problem is also global, so there is no way a Canadian law banning bots is workable. If a Russian or Chinese bot hits the Canadian seller site, how will this suggested law prevent bot behaviour. In short, it cannot.
A human simply cannot compete with a bot. A bot can do many transactions over many web sites in milliseconds, while a human needs to think, react, read, type. Nothing in human ticket internet activity happens in milliseconds. Humans are simply completely outclassed.
A technological solution to a technological problem is required. Sure, find ways to ban bots from buying tickets, but you can bet that bots will get through. Tech solutions will always be bested, as they are part of the tech arms race.
Lowson says spotting bots would be easy if artists or ticket sellers were serious about cracking down.
“Take your credit card records and look at any card that bought more than two shows in different states in the same hour” and you’ve found a bot, he said.
If you see a credit card that bought more than 2 shows in different states within the same hour, then cancel their tickets. All the bot operator needs to do is use different credit card numbers. IPs and locations can all be spoofed. A tech solution will not be easy. There is no sure fire way to differentiate a bot from a human, and this will get more difficult in time. There is too much money to be made for bot operators to stop. If charged they will simply move offshore to countries that will not prosecute them.
A human solution is required, one that will make bot ops not lucrative. Reselling tickets needs to be banned. There is no need for all tickets to be sold out in 10 seconds. When this happens rather than think “Wow, this show is popular”, you should be thinking “Wow, those bot buyers are really efficient, and damn, ticket prices have just gone up”. How about at the entrance of a show ask for proof of the credit card. If the credit card does not match the online purchase then cancel the ticket. While any of these solutions have complications, something must be done to combat bot buying, People other than the artists are getting very rich with their bots.
I also don’t believe brokers do not use bots. It is in their best interest to be as efficient as possible, and the use of bots is unsurpassed. It would be too tempting to not use bots.
Items in short supply will always go for a premium, but in the case of concert tickets, there is no need for this. If all tickets sell out within the first week is not that god enough?
When bots buy up almost all the tickets, humans should feel like chumps, because they just got cheated. We simply cannot compete with bots nor should we need to. Change the social engineering rules to allow a more even competition for humans. It is only fair to all.
Addendum: Oct 21 2016 ‘There’s a big problem’: Two-thirds of Tragically Hip tickets weren’t sold directly to fans
2017 Sept 04: Taylor Swift’s Ticket Auction method
2018 Apr 21 In digital era, new thinking needed to combat ticket touts
2018 May 21
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