Suit targets firm blamed for scarcity of tickets for Hannah Montana

The online ticket buyer helped scalpers and hurt fans, the lawsuit contends.

By JOE MANDAK

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

PITTSBURGH — A New Jersey man is pursuing a class-action lawsuit against a western Pennsylvania firm that helps ticket brokers get around limits Ticketmaster sets for individuals who buy sports and entertainment tickets online.

The firm, RMG Technologies, helps brokers buy large blocks of seats that are later resold to the public well above face value.

RMG was widely criticized in the fall after parents across the country complained about the lack of availability of tickets for concerts by the popular teenage Disney Channel star Hannah Montana.

After the tickets remaining under Ticketmaster’s control quickly sold out, many concertgoers paid well above face value for their seats.

The lawsuit, filed in Pittsburgh federal court Thursday by plastic surgeon Boaz Lissauer, of Englewood, N.J., also targets several ticket brokers, some unnamed.

Lissauer contends brokers aided by RMG buy up to 80 percent of tickets available online to some Ticketmaster events, unfairly driving up the price to individual consumers who are all but forced to buy them from brokers.

Lissauer said he couldn’t get tickets to the upcoming concert by The Police at Madison Square Garden in New York City through Ticketmaster. Instead, he bought tickets through a ticket broker, paying $195 each for seats with a face value of $63.

RMG’s phone is answered electronically by a message that says the caller has reached “Ticket Broker Tools.” The company’s president, Cipriano Garibay, and his California attorney, Jay Coggan, did not immediately return calls to comment Friday.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Friday that Garibay said his company is doing nothing wrong and disputed Lissauer’s contention that RMG uses special software to help brokers inundate Ticketmaster with orders.

Garibay told the newspaper that he uses at least a dozen people around the world to manually navigate the security barriers Ticketmaster has in place.

At issue is a device known as a captcha — a series of odd-sized or misshapen letters and sometimes numbers. Online ticket buyers must type the characters to get to the Web page that lets them order tickets, generally no more than 4 or 8 at once.

Captchas are intended to ensure that buyers are people because automated devices can’t usually read them.

“We go through Ticketmaster’s front door like everyone else does. We play by their rules,” Garibay told the newspaper. “We offer a service that operates much more quickly than Ticketmaster thought was possible.”

West Hollywood, Calif.-based Ticketmaster has argued successfully in federal court that RMG — whatever technique it uses — is violating Ticketmaster’s legal rights to control how quickly tickets can be accessed.

Ticketmaster convinced a federal court in October to bar RMG from buying or helping brokers buy tickets from Ticketmaster’s Web site for the purpose of reselling them.

RMG has appealed the injunction to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and counterclaimed that Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly.

Lissauser’s suit seeks class action status, to include anyone shut out of buying tickets through Ticketmaster because of RMG’s actions.