When you currently open up ebay.co.uk, and look for ticket prices for the Live 8 Event in London, you will notice that for all tickets offered, the highest bid is GBP 10,000,000 (in words: ten million pounds!!!). Check it out here:

[cgi.ebay.co.uk]

It looks as if the organizers in an intelligent move would prevent scalpers from selling their tickets, by bidding a ridiculously high amount which - of course - will not be payable! Therefore, the auction will not be valid, and the tickets cannot be sold.

If you allow a personal comment from my part: I find it a GREAT idea!!! Maybe also other organizers/bands should think about applying this idea. What are your thoughts on this?

Anything that works ...Let's do it!F*ck them

I'm sure these moneys will go to fight the poverty that Live 8 is suppose to bring awareness to...

the lights on but nobody's home

E-bay have now announced that they are banning all re-sale of Live8 tickets

Geldof actually made a statement today encouraging people to either bid ridiculously high amounts or even hack the site if they had to.

Excellent,

Anything to thwart the endeavours of scalpers is to be applauded

Love the idea! Let's do it the same way for Stones-tickets on EBAY! Theatre shows, in particular. My first bid will be 2,3 billion... Any higher?

Had to laugh, lets bring the system down!!

But daft as it seems isnt it legaly binding if you make a bid?

Or do you just get kicked off the site?

It is not really legally binding you just get bad feedback and then get kicked off the site under your particular username. I know some people who employed this method to screw up touts selling UK FA Cup Final tickets on eBay in May. Anything to discourage the money grabbing bastards who try to sell Stones tickets at inflatable prices is a good thing.

Andy

Agreed!

tapers have been vigilantly doing this for some time now when their sources end up on ebay repackaged as a bootleg...

you can also report these auctions to ebay (many tapers do this, as well), and ebay will shut down the auction because it is illegal, and against their user policy (SELLING of unauthorized recordings is illegal)...

with these live8 tix, geldolf went to ebay to explain that these are not for resale, the proceeds are for charity, etc...

that is why the auctions get voided, and the only ramification for astronomical bidding is bad feedback...

however...

in many circumstances, it is NOT illegal to resell stones tix on ebay, nor are the original proceeds earmarked for charity, nor is there any other reason that the auction would void ebay's user policy, or existing governing laws. in fact, it is perfectly legal to sell concert tix on ebay at a price that the market will bear. and i believe you are liable for the bid amount if you are the winning bidder, just as you are liable at an auction house like christy's (you cant walk in there, bid on a painting, and then say, "shennanigans" - they would sue you)... and if i were selling something legally on ebay, and somebody bid an outrageous amount on my item, and then tried to weasel out of it by saying that they were trying to stop my auction based on a personal ethic, that has NO legal precedent, i would likely sue them for the bid amount + associated costs...

"scalping" refers to selling tix for greater than face value AT the venue - this IS illegal. but selling tix on ebay, and getting a price that the market can bear is, in most circumstances, legal. and by participating in such auctions, you become legally liable for the bid amount should you win...

i am not advocating those that are selling tickets, or anything else, on ebay, but that is the way it works.

i dont know about the world cup tix mentioned above, but that likely falls under another country's laws, as i think the event in question was held somewhere other than the us... but i would be very careful messing with the auctions of us tix, being sold by us citizens, in a way that violates no existing laws, and complies fully with ebay's user policy/agreement - you just might be exposing yourself to an absurd amount of liability, and you would not have a legal leg to stand on...

and make no mistake, in this litigious age in the us, people get sued for lesser amounts ALL THE TIME.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-06-15 15:17 by macdaddy.

Well put my friend and i should imagine its worse in the usa than england.

The other side of the coin is that i did buy tickets for the stones concert at the rescheduled concert for twickenham as i was on holiday for the first concert and only paid around £20 over the odds for tickets and because i left it so late i had to meet the guy at a tube station and he kindly gave us a lift into twickenham so due to mick's throat and e-bay i was satisfied.

Macdaddy makes some very interesting points about tix sales and eBay etc in the US. I would imagine that over here in the UK it would be almost unheard of for someone to take successful legal action against a bidder who refused to honour their winning bid. I am no expert on contract law but I doubt very much if it would ever get to court - most likely outcome would be a ban from eBbay and that is very easy to circumvent.

A sad fact that many people snap up tickets for popular events with the sole intention of selling them on for a large profit

Andy