"What do Colorado Rockies fans, music lovers, and parents with young daughters caught up in the Hannah Montana craze have in common? They've all recently endured the frustration of being unable to buy event tickets through online ticketing systems, an experience often accompanied by smashed keyboards and the shouting of expletives.
Organizations that choose to sell tickets online often do so in the interest of fair access, but industry experts say online ticketing systems have weaknesses that are easy to manipulate. By using bots, or software that automates the process of buying tickets online, brokers can buy up mass quantities of tickets and re-list them on auction sites for prices well in excess of face value.
A relatively recent wrinkle is the ability for bots to get around captchas, which commonly take the form of squiggly text strings that Websites use in online ticketing forms to prevent abuse of the system. "
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