[ga] Critics say VeriSign still has...a scalper's license

[gavin.stokes@autodesk.com]

Christopher,

You seem to be limiting "consumer protection" to the reduction of counterfeiting risk or ticket-theft risk.  While these are good points, the protection of price is also often viewed as consumer protection.  Take antitrust laws, for example.  I think there are laws against loaning money with excessive interest demands as well.  Last year, record companies were found to have harmed the consumer through collusion and price-fixing (and yet weren't punished).  It seems that these consumer-protection laws are based substantially on economic protection.

That was the analogy here.  I assume fake domain names aren't too common (although I know there's been a lot of hoopla over shady firms charging for .biz or other TLDs already).

Your points about the scalping laws were indeed informative.  I'm not sure about Chicago laws, but I've heard (and joined) a lot of people wondering out loud how these "legal" scalping services get away with it.  This usually comes up in the ticket line, when you see street people being hired by scalpers to stand in line for them.

Regards,
Gavin



-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Ambler [mailto:cambler-dompol@iodesign.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 12:26 AM
To: gavin.stokes@autodesk.com; william@userfriendly.com;
patrick@stealthgeeks.net
Cc: ga@dnso.org
Subject: Re: [ga] Critics say VeriSign still has...a scalper's license


> You know, ticket scalping is illegal.  Why's that?  
> Someone made a strong enough argument to get that law passed 
> in many municipalities, and you can make a similar one here.

Bad analogy. Ticket scalping tends to be illegal in those zones
closest to the stadiums themselves. Here in Seattle, it's illegal
in the city itself (where the stadia are), but not anywhere else.
You ask why, so I'll presume you don't know. The main
reason is consumer protection. Scalpers at the venue tend,
on the whole, to account for the vast majority of counterfeit
and stolen tickets. Making scalping illegal near the venues
cuts down on this problem. I can't see how this equates to
domain names.

If you want legal scalped tickets in the Seattle area, you call
Pacific Northwest Ticket Agency on Mercer Island (as close
as you get to Seattle and not be in Seattle). They're glad to
charge you many times the face value of the ticket for a
guaranteed genuine ticket.

I regularly sell my Sonics and Mariners season tickets through
them when I can't attend a game, and often use them to purchase
tickets to events that I want to attend at the last minute. I'd
never buy from a scalper on the street.

Offtopic, but glad I could clarify this :-)

Christopher
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