First on the Times’ list is our old friend the secondary market.

U2’s show on Sept 24 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., was an “instantaneous sellout” through Ticketmaster on Monday morning, according to the promoter, Live Nation. Just as quickly, however, thousands of listings flooded any-price-goes sites like TicketsNow.com, at Ticketmaster subsidisary where fans and brokers flip tickets, often a prices far above face value. One seller was asking $10,000 for a $253 seat near the stage.

Sounds familiar, right? (By the way, there’s a special place in Hell for the guy asking $10,000 for a U2 ticket. And another one for the idiot who buys it.)

Next, the Times points to something we haven’t really talked much about before – the quiet, under-the-radar demise of anti-scalping legislation.

Two years after the repeal of New York State’s decades-old anti-scalping laws, the ticket marketplace has become a fiercely competitive game in which major corporations compete over resale prices with the fan next door, scalpers have a Washington lobbyist and thousands of tickets disappear in a fraction of a second.

“The public just feels that they’re not getting a fair shot, and in some cases they may not be,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the concert industry trade magazine.

You said it boss!

After lobbying by ticket brokers to decriminalize reselling in the Craigslist era, many states in addition to New York have lifted restrictions on scalping, and large corporations have embraced what is called the secondary market for tickets, like eBay, which owns StubHub. New York’s scalping laws were softened in 2005 and have been suspended since 2007, allowing tickets for most large events to be resold at any price.

There’s that pesky de-regulation thing again. Is there anything it hasn’t made easier to get away with over the past decade (shady banking, lack of proper food and drug inspection, polluting)?

Okay, pay attention to this next part, especially if you live in New York state. There might be something you can do. (Although it’s probably a long shot.)

Connecticut and Minnesota also revised their laws in 2007 to permit reselling, and in June, the New York Legislature will have to formalize its repeal or the old restrictions will return. The lobbying in Albany has already begun.

Got that? If the New York Legislature doesn’t vote to make the anti-scalping laws go away permanently, it’ll once again be illegal to sell a ticket for more than face value in that state.

The story goes on to discuss how online sales, the consolidation of concert promoters into a few large companies, the increasing need for artists to depend on touring for income and their frustration at not being able to capture a piece of the money being raked in by the secondary market have also added to the problem.

Of course, as the boss points out to The Times, not every artist is missing out on the resale action.

Some performers scalp their own tickets, Mr. Bongiovanni said, although few will admit to it publicly for fear of appearing to fleece their fans.

“There are artists who hold back tickets from sale and deliver them to the secondary market,” he said. “They are sold directly to the brokers because artists can make more money that way.”

So much for the industry’s “dirty little secret.”

Read the entire New York Times story here.

(Special note: A couple of weeks ago, a reader asked me to investigate “charity” fees being tacked on to tickets by Live Nation. Your request didn’t go unheeded. I’ve been tracking down info on that mysterious fee and expect to have some answers for you very soon.)