Congress Passes Anti-Ticket Bot Bill

Ticket bots, computer programs that enable ticket brokers to bulk purchase concert and event tickets, have upended ticketing and raised average costs for millions of fans. Now, in a rare example of the U.S. legislative branch accomplishing something, Congress has passed a bill that outlaws ticket bots.

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The U.S. Congress has passed legislation that would outlaw bots, or computer programs designed to allow ticket speculators to purchase event tickets in bulk.According to the New York Times, the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act, with bipartisan support, matching their colleagues in the Senate who passed the same measure the week before. The bill now heads to the White House for the President's signature before becoming law.

"unfair and deceptive"

The BOTS Act of 2016 would define the use of automated ticket purchasing software as an "unfair and deceptive practice" under the Federal Trade Commission Act and allows the FTC to pursue those cases.The bill would also prohibit the sale of or offers to sell an event ticket in interstate commerce obtained through the circumvention of systems designed to limit purchases.However, not everyone in the music industry is sanguine that the legislation will have the desired effect.“There is only one way to stop the scalping industry, and that’s to make it illegal,” concert promoter Seth Hurwitz told the New York Times. “Anything else is just Whac-a-Mole, and grandstanding by politicians.”via Celebrity Access