Ticketmaster Chases Roboscalpers to SF

For years, Ticketmaster has known about a new breed of online ticket scalpers armed with automated ticket-buying programs. These programs let one person — or, as techies call them, "bots" — do the work of hundreds and give scalpers an edge over regular fans trying to buy tickets on the Internet. Imagine physically waiting in line for a concert to go on sale, but the second the box office opens, thousands of remote-controlled robots swarm the counter, muscle you out, and buy up the best seats.

In 2005, Ticketmaster began investigating the origin of this nefarious 'Net traffic by tracing the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of buyers (a bit like following home the people who buy stuff from a retail store). According to court papers, Ticketmaster found that a small Pittsburgh-based company, RMG Technologies, directly or indirectly owned some 8,000 addresses. Those included one located physically at 360 Spear in S.F., the home of ServePath LLC. (Calls to ServePath get a "number is disconnected" message.)

This past August, Ticketmaster had finally had enough. In the first case of its kind, Ticketmaster sued RMG Technologies, which ran a now-defunct Web site called www.ticketbrokertools.com, for computer fraud and violating copyright laws. According to the lawsuit, the site sells scalper subscriptions for up to 21 different ticket-buying programs for less than $2,000 a month. Among them is Purchasemaster, which, RMG boasts in an ad, "lets you do the work of a dozen people at once. Just enter the event information from the Ticketmaster.com Web site, and the moment the event goes on sale, Purchasemaster goes into action."

On Oct. 30, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted Ticketmaster's request for a preliminary injunction against RMG. The injunction bans the 10-person operation from using, making, or selling scalper bots, based on evidence Ticketmaster submitted.

According to the injunction documents, RMG's clients bought 40 percent of the floor seats and 13 percent of all tickets for specific events. Their bots dominated up to 80 percent of Ticketmaster's traffic at a given time and were responsible for up to six million ticket requests in one day. Just two RMG clients hurled one million requests at Ticketmaster in a day, court documents say.

RMG's president, Cipriano Garibay, issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, and has not returned SF Weekly's phone calls. Lawyers for Ticketmaster say the suit could shut down RMG Technologies permanently.

"Anyone using these programs and any company supplying them should know that we and the entire live entertainment industry will not stand for it," Ticketmaster said in a prepared statement.

In perhaps the final flanking move, Ticketmaster has opened its own resale market. It's a postmodern maxim: If you can't beat them, enable them and take a cut.