Daily Pulse

Bot Case Heats Up

The bot battle wages on in Los Angeles, following a judge’s recent issuance of the findings of fact and conclusions of law in the Ticketmaster vs. RMG Technologies case.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins issued a preliminary injunction against RMG October 16th, and the supporting evidence presented in the subsequent findings gives a little insight into exactly what sort of advantages the so-called scalper software has provided users navigating the TM Web site.

One application, Purchasemaster, was described as being on a "private" portion of the RMG Technologies Web site and, according to court documents, boasted the following:

"Faster than any browser, Purchasemaster lets you do the work of a dozen people at once. You’ll be looking through dozens of tickets while the competition is still clicking the refresh button waiting for the on sale to start. Purchasemaster’s stealth technology lets you hide your IP address, so you never get blocked by Ticketmaster."

Broker and RMG user Chris Kovach said in a declaration that RMG assists clients with consulting services should they encounter any problems, and aids those customers in obtaining new IP addresses to help conceal the sources of their numerous requests.

Kovach said he was often provided with more than 100 RMG "workers" that would automatically search the TM site for tickets according to set parameters and alert him when they were found.

Another RMG client, Gary Charles Bonner, "made almost 13,000 ticket purchases over several years and more than 425,000 ticket requests in a single day," according to the findings.

Collins wrote in her conclusions that it is highly likely that Ticketmaster will succeed in proving that RMG violated TM’s terms of use – thus in breach of contract, encouraged clients to directly infringe upon TM’s copyright and committed irreparable injury.

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