Good Grief

[Steve Bildermann]

Brirish ticket seller (tout) held for 14 days - still in Jail
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=2&id=219769

[cstaylor]

Best quote:

A handful of English tourists in town for the England-Denmark game on Saturday, who had come to the court to show their support, said they were shocked.
"This can't be right," said Jo Holt, who owns a pub in England. "Japan is just beautiful except for this. This wouldn't happen in England. I don't think it would happen anywhere else

Welcome to a country about a stone's throw from the barbarity of China's legal system. Why isn't Amnesty International all over this?

[cstaylor]

AI is all over this

[kamome]

Christ, maybe I should crawl into a hole and never again show my face in public in Japan. Don't ever want to be mistaken for a criminal. That's just scary.

[Steve Bildermann]

There is another view of ticket "re-selling"

http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Hull/hull3.html

[kamome]

Well, maybe there are some good things about scalping, but the article neglects to mention one reason to prevent it: it allows certain individuals to horde publicly available tickets and then resell them at artificially high prices. Of course, that could be remedied by putting a cap on sales per individual, but I am sure scalpers know ways around that limitation. And in Japan, the mob seems to be into the ticket-scalping business, so you could say that legalizing scalping would give protection to the wrong kind of people. I'd rather pay a tax to the government than help the Yakuza make a profit.

It would probably make more sense to argue that ticket delivery to the public itself is flawed, and that there should be a regulated system in place to ensure public fairness (in terms of availability) and prices that accurately reflect the market.

[kamome]

I would rank Ticketmaster right up there with NTT, Satan, and Enron on the list of worst things to happen to mankind.

[Mr. BIG]

TicketMaster, Satan and Enron!?--HaHaHa!!

I work for Japan National Tourist Organization in Chicago, and a few weeks ago a lady came in the office with 10 World Cup tickets that she wanted to give away....she contacted FIFA thinking maybe they would take the tickets and give them to someone else, but they just dicked her around for three weeks.....

Anyways, because of all the IDs required and security issues over the World Cup tix, this lady had to waste 10 tickets to a first-round game....I'm sure somebody else would've gladly accepted them.....

[kamome]

TicketMaster, Satan and Enron!?--HaHaHa!!

Don't forget NTT! I think AOL and Microsoft definitely rank up there as well.

this lady had to waste 10 tickets to a first-round game

Damn it, all you had to do was advertise them on fuckedgaijin.com. I know there would be takers (including myself). She wouldn't have an extra ticket to the Final in Yokohama would she? I badly want to sit in the Brazil cheering section.

[Mr. BIG]

Yeah, if the situation ever comes up again I'll be sure to give the heads up.....I think a big issue was the ID thing, though. I could swear that the woman said even if she found someone they might have trouble getting in.....it was a while ago, though. Plus, how the hell could FIFA keep the names of everybody getting into the WC games??