A local lawmaker has taken a stand to make sure fans get concert tickets at a fair price.
Because of sold out shows, fans may have had to turn to a scalper for tickets, but a bill to crack down on deceptive ticket scalpers has gained some attention in our nation’s capital.
Scalpers use bots to buy huge numbers of tickets to popular events the moment they go on sale, and then they're able to sell them at drastically inflated prices to others. Blackburn said that unfairly prices fans of live entertainment out of the market because those tickets can get so expensive.
Blackburn's bill would make using one of those bots or any computer hacking software to cut in front of the virtual ticket line an “unfair and deceptive practice.”
That would give the Federal Trade Commission the right to go after ticket scalpers and others who use bots, and it would give all those people who the bots jump in front of online the opportunity to sue them.
This week, Representative Blackburn spoke about her bill to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in a hearing.
“This is important to many of my constituents in Tennessee who are concert performers and entertainers,” Blackburn said. “What this will do simply is to disallow the use of some of this hacking software that we see the scalpers use.”
Representative Blackburn's legislation was part of a larger set of bills aimed at reforming the Federal Trade Commission.
