A lawsuit filed in California by concert giant AXS has revealed a legal and technological battle between ticket scalpers and platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS, in which scalpers have figured out how to extract “untransferable” tickets from their accounts by generating entry barcodes on parallel infrastructure that the scalpers control and which can then be sold and transferred to customers.
By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS.
So Ticketmaster and AXS are suing to maintain their monopoly on scalping?
This is one of those fights where you just hope everyone involved loses. Beyond losing, I’d prefer they all fall into a bottomless pit, but I’m not sure that’s attainable.
I’d
buyscalp tickets to watch that.Nah, I want Ticketmaster specifically to loose. Fuck them.
Scalpers are a problem that transcend Ticketmaster. Heck, they transcend the world of event tickets. Scalpers are a pain in so many areas. Fuck them.
Let’s hope for a long legal flight where Ticketmaster ends up getting broken up, but Ticketmaster drags the scalpers down with them in legal fees.