Heartland

Yesterday they said ""eBay believes it is a fundamental right for someone to be able to sell something that is theirs whether they paid for it or won it in a competition."

Now they have pulled Live8 ticket sales.

I'm not sure where I stand on this - I can see the discomfort caused by individuals profiting out of an event which is ultimately driven by others' misery but on the other hand Saint Bob has clearly, and repeatedly, stated this this not a fund raising event. As the driver for it is all about awareness it's not like potential ebay sellers are taking money away from any good causes so what's the problem? Is there one?

And it's not like all the performers there are going to sell more records in the wake of the event is it? Ah, yes, it is. And they'll make money, their record companies will make more, their shareholders will make more etc etc etc. "Profiteering on the backs of the impoverished" as Geldof puts it.

Would you sell a ticket?

Would you sell a toaster you won at a church fete?

Where's the line?

(I dunno....!)

er, discuss

if they didnt want them they shouldn't have got them.

thus unless they are prepared to give the money from the sale back to the charity, its unethical and down-right s**t. profiteering of the worst form. scum.

end of story as far as i'm concerned.

I mostly agree with you QB, but I'd go even further. Of course it's the fault of the official ticket sellers if this kind of profit isn't made impossible. Glastonbury has shown that it's possible to inhibit this kind of re-sale, and that's good. And I generally despise anybody who buys a ticket for an event and then re-sells it for a higher price. It's just beyond.

To come back to the intial question: yes, I'd sell a toaster I'd won, for less than the retail price I reckon, because I didn't buy it and can't offer a warranty.

To go further: I do understand that an original "Damage Done" single has a ridicoulusly high price, as there are only 1000 copies around. But I hope that the people who bought them at the time, didn't purchase them to sell them on years later for such a high price, thus there is not as much purpose to ripp people off, as when people buy loads of U2 tickets for example intending to sell them on for black market prices. *spit*

But nobody is forcing you to buy them.

We know that Live8 tickets are free. Some people are willing to pay money for them, because of their rarity.

If there is a market, people will sell to it. I'd certainly consider it if I could get £100 for it in return for a single text at £1.50. The person being ripped off is the person daft enough to pay £100.

If you won the toaster, put it on eBay and watched as bids rocketed up to far more than it was ever worth, would you end the auction and refuse to take the money?

If not, why would it be wrong to put the ticket on sale?

On a related note, if you don't want to pay rip-off prices to touts, don't buy from them. If a gig is sold-out, if a recording is rare, don't pay more than you think it's worth. If you think it's worth the black-market price, don't complain about paying it.

Well, I'd imagine that even if eBay hadn't stopped it, all (or most of) the tickets would have had their auctions sabotaged by multi-million pound bids. That's what happened to the one linked to previously.
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Re: Damage Done -- As I understand it, while there may have been 1000 copies pressed there's a damn sight fewer than 1000 around now.

I'm led to believe that, there not being a "sale-or-return" deal with small distributors, common practice for independent record stores was to deliberately scratch unsold records and send them back to the distributors as "returned by buyer - scratched" for a refund. So most of the fabled "pile of copies under Von's bed" would be scratched. It's only the copies that actually sold at the time that are doing the rounds now (plus bootlegs of course.)

Unless Von's slowly releasing the ones that weren't too badly scratched.

a glance across the front pages of the comics as i picked up my left-leaning, centrist, wooly liberal journal of choice this morning revealed that the daily mirror is attempting to entice the great unwashed to purchase its own brand of sensationalist journalism with a chance to win one of two hundered live 8 tickets. i await sir bobby of geldof's condemnation of this blatant profiteering at the expense of poor starving african babies with interest...