President Barack Obama has signed a law making the use of ticket buying bots illegal nationwide, The White House announced Thursday. You can count your days of waiting online at Ticketmaster only to to see tickets have sold out in mere seconds almost over.
Obama signed the "Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016" (a.k.a. the "BOTS Act”) on Wednesday. As described by the White House Press Secretary, the law “prohibits the circumvention of control measures used by Internet ticket sellers to ensure equitable consumer access to tickets for certain events.” Bots are used to bypass those measures by buying more than the maximum amount of tickets or skipping a waiting queue. Other unsuccessful measures to stop the bots include filling out CAPTCHAs and wasting time confirming you’re not a bot while scalpers have already scored your tickets.
The law will not only make the use of bots illegal, it will also make it illegal to resell tickets bought using a bot, reportedEngadget. A person aware that a ticket was bought using a bot could also be liable for punishment.
Complex cover stars Chance the Rapper and Lin-Manuel Miranda have not only spoken out against ticket scalpers and the use of bots, they’ve taken action.
"The problem will persist until we strengthen the existing law and make this recurrent illegal behavior a felony," Miranda wrote in a piece for the New York Times this summer. The piece ultimately led to the passage of a law making ticket bots illegal in New York.
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