New York Assembly Votes to Criminalize Ticket Bots
Have you ever set an alarm, gotten up early, rearranged your schedule so that you could be on-time and ready to go when the moment came for you to buy tickets to a concert or sporting event you've been wanting to go to... only to find out that all of the tickets were gone in an instant?
You're not the only one. In fact, one case saw the use of ticket bots--which people use to acquire a ton of tickets before anyone else can, mostly for the purpose of re-selling them at an incredibly marked-up value--saw someone scoop up over 1,000 tickets to a U2 concert in less than one minute.
But now New York state is taking measures to penalize those that take such advantage, which by the way, is illegal (but until now just had civil and not criminal consequences). According to BroadwayWorld:
The New York State Assembly has sent a release stating that Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblymember Marcos Crespo have announced the passage of legislation that would strengthen civil penalties and create a new criminal penalty for the use of ticket purchasing software, often referred to as "bots."
The article reports the effect that the star of Hamilton had in arguing against bots in an op-ed piece for the New York Times.
So, hey, maybe now you can actually go to shows you want to without having to spend half your paycheck!