FishFace

Tracking via cookies means gathering personal data, the exact thing GDPR regulates. GDPR says that data must not be collected except on one of a few lawful bases, one of which is consent. Article 7 clause 4 of the GDPR says:

When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether [...] the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract.

to me this reads like: "consent does not count if you need to agree in order to access a service" and that they imagined consent as being, "yes, you can have my personal data to serve me personalised ads, because I'd rather have personalised ads than generic ones," which some people (probably not many here!) do think. However, it's only expressed as "account shall be taken" when determining whether consent was "freely given" and the lawful basis does not specify that consent must be "freely given," which is where I imagine these kinds of gaps creep in.

My point is not the best seat but a seat.

So for you, the government should step in to regulate the price of concert tickets for basic seats, but not for the best seats. How many regular seats should be sold at below market value at each venue? All of them? What about when the venue upgrades 90% of their seats to "premium" seats and takes those out of the lottery sale and sells those for market value - is that OK? Are you satisfied if just two seats per performance are lotteried? Per tour?

These are all political decisions now. Some civil servant is being paid to make them as a full-time job, and everyone's taxes are paying for it. Why is that a good use of public money? Shouldn't we instead put that money towards paying a civil servant in the department of health, or the foreign office, or justice? Or towards paying a nurse or police officer? All so that the correct number of people can experience Taylor Swift in a concert instead of on spotify, and watch a football match in a stadium instead of at the pub?

but then explain why you would.

I think I've been clear that there is no line in entertainment where the government should be involved in price regulation. What line do you think I have drawn?

The U.S. is a great example of why. It is cheaper to get 2 tickets to Ireland plus concert tickets and board then to see the same group in L.A., CA. There are every few regulations stopping ticketmaster from scalping the ticket on stubhub, a ticketmaster subsidiary.

How is that different from Ticketmaster selling the ticket for a higher price in the first place?

You didn't reply properly. I explained the alternatives which all seem reasonable to me, which you didn't respond to at all, and I asked you a question which you didn't answer. I'll answer, and explain again, but if you reply in the same dismissive way without answering properly, you're not worth trying to hold a discussion with.

you think it’s good that bots can automatically buy every single ticket, only to resell it at extortionate prices?

I don't think it matters. It's like asking if I think it's good that diamonds are expensive due to supply-side uncompetitiveness; if you can't afford it, you can just not buy it. Nobody needs a diamond. There's no communist utopia where we're handing out diamonds or Taylor Swift tickets to all citizens, right? There's a limited number of tickets, and the people running the show can decide whether to hand them out by selling them for what people are willing to pay, by lottery, or by the current hybrid system: well below market value, but with a lottery to decide who gets to pay the suppressed price.

If the sellers' lottery system is not working, or if they're pretending it's a lottery system when in fact all the tickets go to "resellers", then that's their problem. It's not causing societal harm; the same number of people get to see Taylor Swift either way, and getting to see her isn't important enough for the government to step in and say that Taytay tickets must be delivered by lottery system.

It was never about the bots; you'd be complaining if the sellers sold at market value as well; so it's really about prices.

The government getting involved in enforcing prices is risky business and can introduce very bad unintended consequences. If nothing else, it's just something that the government then has to do, which costs money. So it should be done in situations where the consequences of not doing so are clearly bad. The consequences of the prices of the following getting really high are really bad for society:

• Food
• Water
• Sanitation
• Healthcare
• Heating
• Electricity
• Transport
• Internet

Where does tickets to the biggest music superstars come on this list? Waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down. It is not worth spending taxes on making sure that Taylor Swift's ticket delivery lottery remains a true lottery.

Live Nation's annual profit is under a billion dollars, on a revenue of about 23 billion, which is a profit margin of about 4%. I agree they should have to play by some rules, and having an effective monopoly on ticket sales risks abuse of that monopoly, but it is not currently happening to any great degree, and it has nothing to do with the high cost of tickets. Also their business practices in general, with predatory pricing, should be legal, but again, this has nothing to do with whether, in principle, there needs to be government intervention to enforce artificially cheap ticket prices.

"Making sure there is an unattainable area" is a weird way of putting. It's fine that some experiences (whether to do with art and entertainment or other things) that are out of reach of almost everyone - there always will be. Almost no-one can have the experience of sitting in the best box in the best opera house. Almost no-one can experience going to space. Does the government need to regulate prices of those experiences?

You ask "where is the line" as if you are not drawing one. But you are, you just don't even see it; there are still experiences you think should receive free market prices, you just haven't thought much about them. I'm not drawing a line - I'm saying the government should keep out of enforcing prices in entertainment and can't think of a scenario where it would be necessary.

And I'm saying you can just choose not to buy the tickets at that price. That's the free market in action.

There are lots of cases where the free market is clearly inappropriate. For example, I can't just choose not to have basic utilities like water and heating, so there needs to be an appropriately regulated market to prevent price gouging. But if prices get gouged on tickets for Taylor Swift or whatever, then who cares? So only rich people can go to her concert - big deal, people who can't afford it can:

• go to a cheaper concert by a less popular artist
• buy her album for much less
• stream her album for even less

What are the consequences if we had this model?

But the Steam Machine is also likely to be positioned as a console competitor on some level, just like the Steam Deck - sure the Deck is just a PC in a handheld form factor, but it's designed to be a handheld console.

"Those who care about the freedom PC gaming affords" surely aren't in the market for a pre-built machine whose main attractiveness will be convenience and support, either. I play PC games because it's what I grew up playing, where I'm most comfortable, and it gives me better access to a wide variety of games at good prices than console games do. I can play in higher fidelity than an equivalent-generation console, and I can play games which are poorly suited to controllers (ironically: like Call of Duty. Which I haven't played since Black Ops 4, but I have played other games with restrictive anti-cheat) For me, it's not about some abstract concept of freedom at all. I also use Linux for everything except gaming for concrete reasons.

Saying the Steam Machine sucks because of this is idiotic. But saying it will limit its reach, or is a reason to not buy it, or whatever, is totally legit. My PC plays as broad a gamut of games as possible, and while I'll look into it, I'll take a lot of convincing to potentially have to put up with the Linux desktop issues I put up with routinely on my main (non-gaming) computer. Not being able to play my friends' flavour of the month would be a big red flag.

I'm sorry, are you complaining that prices are kept artificially low?

Because I thought the question was about consumer freedom to buy something instead of the expensive ticket, not seller freedom to make as much money as possible.

Man, you never know the names of most important people in game studios. Like besides carmack and Gabe I don't think I know anyone's. Kind of a shame only to find them out when they die.

I'm sure there's a grey area somewhere, but concert and football tickets are not it. There are many affordable ways to experience art, what we're talking about is tickets to see the most popular entertainers in the country. Tickets to see your local band or Sunday league club play are free or cheap.

Completely?