Ticketmaster wins court order vs. mass purchases

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Amid an uproar over the huge demand for seats to pop idol Hannah Montana's tour, a U.S. federal judge on Monday barred the use of automated software to make mass ticket purchases from the leading box-office service Ticketmaster.

U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins issued a preliminary injunction against Pittsburgh-based software maker RMG Technologies, whose computer programs, Ticketmaster says, have enabled scalpers to gain rapid, repeated access to its online retail system.

The court order stems from a lawsuit brought against RMG by Ticketmaster, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, in April, before tickets for the 54-date Hannah Montana concert tour went on sale.

But abuse of the popular ticket retailing system by brokers and resellers has grown "more and more brazen" since then, said Joe Freeman, a lawyer for Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster says RMG software enables digital scalpers to breach its Internet box-office system and electronically cut in line ahead of regular human customers to scoop up large numbers of tickets that can then be resold at highly inflated prices.

"They're cheating consumers out of a fair shot at these tickets, and we're not going to stand for it anymore," Freeman said.

The practice has come under investigation by the attorneys general of at least three states -- Missouri, Arkansas and Pennsylvania -- who are looking into whether ticket resellers are violating state consumer protection laws.

State authorities were reacting in large part to a public outcry over crushing demand for seats to the upcoming Hannah Montana tour -- and soaring markups of those seats as they showed up for sale in the secondary ticket market on Web sites like Ticketliquidator.com, StubHub.com and Gotickets.com.