A group of “Wiseguys” beat the CAPTCHA challenge in order to move closer to the front of virtual ticket lines. And they are now facing the standard federal prison sentence pile-on.
These four guys purchased quality tickets to events (such as Springsteen concerts, New York Yankees games, etc.) and resold them, earning $28.9 million along the way.
As I see it, what they did was no different, in an ethical sense, from the host of scams used to cut in line at a real ticket window (“I had to step out of line to give my brother my cell phone.”). And the involvement of wire does nothing to change that.
More sophisticated for certain. And really rude. But is it worthy of decades in federal prison?
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From the linked article, it says they hacked the ticket sellers’ computers, which I think is a pretty legitimate crime. I don’t know if they really hacked their computers or if the article was just throwing out a generic, ambiguous computer crime word. If the Wiseguys merely created a program that could read captchas, thus saving them precious seconds when purchasing tickets, then I agree, there’s no crime here.
From the more detailed information available (e.g. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/wiseguys-indicted/ , it also links to the text of the indictment ), they did not actually do what is commonly know as “hacking” in the narrow sense. They created software that they ran on their own (rented) computers, and used various methods to defeat the measures that the original sellers had setup to detect automated buying. They also interviewed people that worked for the sellers to find out details about the security measures, and paid people to write the software. To put this even into simpler terms, their computers pretended to be human and the sellers weren’t able to recognise this. This way they were able to buy an proportionally larger amount of the tickets and resell them at profit. They merely automated what human beings do too. The only problem I see from libertarian point of view is that they used fake buyer identities, which in some cases might be a contract violation. But I can see no theft or unauthorised use of computer systems. All the tickets were paid for, and they didn’t obtain anything that wasn’t legitimatelly offered for sale already.
As Walter Block explains in Defending the Undefendable, there is nothing wrong with ticket scalping per se. It’s the sellers’ own fault for setting the ticket prices below the market level. If they don’t like that the tickets distribution turned out to be different than they envisioned (“unfair”), or that someone else saw and exploited an untapped market opportunity, well, tough luck. You can’t put the worms back in the can.
“As Walter Block explains in Defending the Undefendable, there is nothing wrong with ticket scalping per se. It’s the sellers’ own fault for setting the ticket prices below the market level. If they don’t like that the tickets distribution turned out to be different than they envisioned (“unfair”), or that someone else saw and exploited an untapped market opportunity, well, tough luck. You can’t put the worms back in the can.”
Scalping might not be a crime per se, but conditional sales are valid and if the conditions are explicit enough, the seller can keep sovereignty over the tickets. And the simple “no reselling” is not the only condition that comes with the ticket. Not yelling “fire” in the theater is another one. Or not coming to the show naked, might be another.
In this case, since the accused, knowingly went to trouble to mimic many different individuals to obtain the tickets, they knew the conditions.
Of course the punishment for this crime shouldn’t be time in jail, but rather compensation in money terms.
Sports promoters seem to setting up their own operations “where fans can buy and sell tickets”. I suspect that these web sites may be a disguise for what may effectively be their own scalping operation. For example a team sells all of its home game seats for about the same face-value price no matter which team is visiting – whether it’s the bottom-dwellers from Podunk or a squad of future hall-of-famers from Metropolis. I assume they do this for PR reasons, not wanting to look greedy or mercenary to their loyal fans. But they know that many people are cashing in by buying up the tickets for hot games at face value and then scalping them online. So they make a site for “fair” trading of tickets. But in reality they move the tickets for hot games themselves, without really trying to offer the tickets to true fans, except in a slow and highly limited way with checks against automated buying. After letting a small number of face-value tickets trickle out in this way, they then sell the remainder themselves on the “fans selling to fans” web site, for scalper prices. Such a lucrative racket naturally requires muscles to protect it, which is where the goons with badges would step in.
This is pure speculation, based on some comments I heard a few years ago by Papa Joe Chevalier on his radio show about something that one of the local Chicago teams was doing.
Someone calls himself “Papa Joe Chevalier”? Who’d deliberately name himself after that evil SOB? (i.e., “Papa Doc” Duvalier)
Never get between a politico and his bread-and-circuses.
there is no crime here whatsoever.
if you trust CAPTCHA to identify unique human beings, then you get what you asked for. CAPTCHA is free technology, WYSIWYG.
they relied on the odds being low, that someone would defeat their feeble attempt. it is all well and good that some people make the choice to just rely on a CAPTCHA instead of, say, a telephone interview, but the losses incurred by this choices are theirs alone.
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