Please Vote In My Poll

MAANI WROTE:

Indeed, also as stated, if the buyer(s) truly want(s) to go, and is/are willing to pay for a ticket that s/he knows was free, how can any of you justify having anything to say about that?  Have you considered how you would feel if the shoe was on the other foot?  Would you want others telling you what you should or shouldn't do with your money, or calling you names for engaging in this type of transaction?

 

 

Whether the concert is for charity , and the ticket was free or not , whether it is a private-for-profit concert is totally irrelevant. You might have missed my earlier post , Maani, but not only is the ticket scalping a horrendous and vile activity , but the whole distribution system is awry right from the start and mainly because of the scalping of ticket.

Who in his right mind would pay ten times the price of a ticket , if he had a proper chance at obtaining them if the sales were correctly handled and fair? Those people not having tickets have no choice (except the one of not going to the concert) but to pay exhorbitant prices. The fact is that scalping is robbery or extortion and this should be a crime.

This fact alone should suffice to prohibit this behaviour on the site. This site claims to be moral ..... after all.....

Again , I am a bit mystified by a minister's attitude in such a debate.

Hopefully Geldoff will have learned from his "naïveté" since the huge Live Aid Fiasco where my $100.00 went into some vile personage's pocket !!!!!!!!

**cough** Cough**

Whores!

Sorry I meant to write hoarse!

 

 

Well, now that our integrity is gone, what shall we auction off next?

See, I've got this lovely ocean-front property on the sunny south coast of Saskatchewan....

 Prog-bay

Peter wrote: Well, now that our integrity is gone, what shall we auction off next? See, I've got this lovely ocean-front property on the sunny south coast of Saskatchewan....  Prog-bay

 

I've got Maani's TV!!

Goes to the highest bidder!!!!

EBay U.K. has banned the sale of tickets to the London Live 8, a megaconcert to raise awareness of African poverty, following pressure from musician Bob Geldof and an online campaign to sabotage the auctions.

Tickets for the concert were a hot item on eBay until activists wrecked auctions and Geldof blasted ticket sales as profiteering from misery.

Tickets were allocated Monday via an SMS lottery. More than 2 million text messages were entered, at a cost of 1.5 pounds ($2.70) each, to join the lottery for 133,000 tickets.

Some winners immediately listed tickets on eBay, and some sold for more than 2,000 pounds ($3,600).

On Tuesday, outraged eBay members began flooding the ticket auctions with fake bids that drove prices up to 10 million pounds ($18 million). The phony bids made the sale of tickets impossible, as almost every bid was fraudulent.

Some eBay members used their own accounts, possibly jeopardizing their hard-earned eBay ratings.

Others opened new accounts to place fake bids, including one called live8legalteam, prompting speculation that the bidding was organized by Live 8 itself.

EBay also came under fire from organizer Geldof, a musician best known for his 1985 Live Aid African famine-relief benefit concert that raised more than $200 million.

Geldof blasted eBay for allowing people to sell the free tickets.

On Tuesday, eBay banned all ticket sales.

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Snow Dog wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Lets all of us declare these posts "Spam" and hhave some democracy in action here! Please vote here. http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8192&a mp;a mp;a mp;PN=1&TPN=1

I get the feeling you guys are losing interest in this debate!

Prove me wrong and vote in this poll!

Tony:

 

I do not see the correlation between these ticket sales and Jesus throwing the money-changers from the temple, unless you are simply trying to “get my goat.”  (If so, you failed.)  This site is not a temple, and the ticket sellers are not “turning the house of God into a den of thieves,” as Jesus noted.  Nor, as Geldof would have it, are they even “profiteering from misery.”  (Indeed, Geldof knows better than to make such an insupportable, inflammatory, broad-brush statement, however well-intentioned.)

 

As for Ebay, suppose I told you that I believe that they “caved in" on what remains a "free speech" issue?  Are you suggesting that just because Ebay "caved in," we should too?  And even if it were not a "free speech" issue, since when do we follow Ebay's lead?  After all, Ebay is a blatantly "commercial" enterprise, where we are not.  So they are looking at their "bottom line" - i.e., they will "blow with the prevailing wind" because they are afraid of losing customers.  We have no such mandate, compunction or raison d’etre here.

 

As for “moral” principles, I could argue that it is not the function of a website about prog music to have any particular socio-political or moral stance.  However, even if we accept that position, I simply do not believe that the ticket threads are compromising any "principles" the site has, or might be presumed to have.  It may not be something the site is necessarily "happy" to support.  But then, neither is hate speech, pro-drug talk, sex talk, etc.  But we support them because there is a.....principle involved: free speech.

 

With all due respect, I think many people here have allowed their personal views of "morality" to cloud their judgment about free speech.  And in responding to Sean’s comment, this should have particular significance (though not necessarily any special "impact") coming from a minister, to whom "morality" probably means more than it does to most people.  As I have pointed out, this site has stood behind all manner of "immoral" posts and threads.  I fail to see what makes the ticket threads so incredibly different, especially to the point at which it becomes a reason for people to leave, or to make a petit cause celebre out of it.

 

Sean says “Whether the concert is for charity, and the ticket was free or not, whether it is a private-for-profit concert is totally irrelevant…not only is the ticket scalping a horrendous and vile activity, but the whole distribution system is awry right from the start and mainly because of the scalping of ticket.  Who in his right mind would pay ten times the price of a ticket, if he had a proper chance at obtaining them if the sales were correctly handled and fair? Those people not having tickets have no choice (except the one of not going to the concert) but to pay exorbitant prices. The fact is that scalping is robbery or extortion and this should be a crime.”

 

There is a fallacy in this statement.  Suppose a venue has 25,000 seats, and Pink Floyd decides to play 4 shows.  This means that 100,000 people will get to see them.  However, 500,000 people in the area want to see them.  So 400,000 of them are not going to see the shows under any circumstance whatsoever……..unless someone with a ticket decides to sell it.  That is why “someone in their right mind would pay ten times the price of a ticket”: because they really want to go, and this is the only way they are going to be able to do so.  This is called “supply and demand.”  Indeed, imagine (as is often the case) that the seller waited 24 hours – or 48 hours, or more – in line to purchase the ticket.  He may well consider the inflated price reasonable compensation for his time, energy, discomfort, etc.

 

Thus, one person’s “scalper” is another person’s “savior,” and one person’s “crime” is another person’s “unbelievable fortune.”  It all depends how you look at it (or what side of the equation you are on).

 

I think many of you are caught up in the hysteria of the fact that these concerts are being held for the purpose of raising awareness about global (and particularly “Third World”) poverty.  Note that: raise awareness.  Not money.  Sure, money will be raised, and whatever is left after overhead expenses are deducted will be given to various NFPs.  However, that amount will be negligible compared to what might have been raised had the concerts been held for the express purpose of raising money – which they were not.  Their primary purpose - stated by Geldof, Bono and others - is raising awareness.

 

In this regard, how can any of you be so certain as to the motives or intentions of the sellers?  Suppose one or more of the sellers does care about global poverty, and intends to donate the money to charity?  What then?  Do you want to be the one who prevented that charity from receiving that money?

 

But let’s go further.  Suppose the seller cares about global poverty, but the buyer doesn’t give a whit about it: he just wants to see the re-united Pink Floyd.  Who is “moral” then? Or suppose the seller doesn’t give a whit about poverty, but the buyer really does, and wants to go to the concert to express his/her support, and is more than willing to pay the asked price?  Or suppose both the buyer and seller care about poverty, but each of them has a different “plan” for expressing that – the seller by donating the money to charity, and the buyer by attending the concert and, say, holding up a placard with an anti-poverty message?  How on God’s great earth can any of you claim to know which if any of these scenarios might take place with regard to any or all of the sellers?

 

And I am the one being accused of “burying my head in the sand?"  From my perspective, I am the one who is considering more possibilities than any of you are.  Instead, you have all simply “presumed the worst” about every seller, without really knowing it.  And then you expect me (on behalf of the admin group) to simply go along with your presumptions, and delete the threads.

 

Sorry.  I would rather “err on the site of caution,” and allow the threads to remain, than to presume, as most of you do, the nefarious intent of the sellers, and play the “benevolent dictator” you want me to play by deleting the threads out of some misguided, and ultimately unprovable, notion of the “morality” involved.

 

Peace.

I can't really understand Geldof taking shots at eBay, though...there's no confusion as to eBay's purpose and function. They may make it easier for people to do things like this, but they're not responsible for it. I guess even Irish Jews can make scapegoating work in their favor sometimes.