I am the last guy to call upon government to stick it's nose in private business, but something must be done about this.  As a long time fan of live music, i can tell you first hand that online ticketing services are extremely broken and that i wouldn't be surprised to find out that places like Ticketmaster allow scalpers to "cut in" on online sales(i hate to sound like that conspiracy theorist guy). Taken as an example from my favorite band, Phish, who just announced their fall tour.    Now Phish is by no means a Mainstream band, but they continually show up on "top grossing tour bands" lists year after year when they tour. They have a dedicated fan base that will travel hours upon hours to see them play, and i am one of them.  Just in 09-10 i drove a total of 16 hours to see them ( 6 hours to their reunion show in march, 6 hours to philly last fall, and 5 hours this past summer to see them in Hershey PA), and i was ready to drive 7 hours this october.... 
 
People who follow me on Giantbomb probably noticed my status messages about trying to get tickets for their Halloween weekend  Shows in Atlantic City. Allow me to weave you a tale of tragedy and despair. 
 

First i would like to relate something that has been dubbed the "over 15 minute wait shuffle".  What happens is this,  your tickets go on sale at 10, you click the button to confirm your order, fill out your  captcha, and you load  up the "waiting in line" page.  This is exactly what happened to me, i was "in line" by 10:00:30, i was told my wait would be 15 minutes, i started praying...it told me my wait was down to 10 minutes, down to 7, then magically, my wait is back up to 15. Now yes, the times are approximations,and there is no way to truly know how many people hit their order button at precisely the right time, but it still smells fishy to me. Also, its happened to so many people, its hard to imagine that its just being "too slow". I have heard at least 100 stories online of people that had the exact same problem, "its like ticketmaster just decided i wasnt cool enough to get tickets".   My friend had 3 computers going trying to get the same tickets, and i had 2 going, none of us got any tickets. I've heard stories of full rooms of 20 or more people trying to get tickets, and not a single one scoring. What are the chances?  You can say its extremely unlucky but  i personally think something foul is afoot.  Actually i kinda lied, my friend got through on his one computer twice, only to have the site tell him his order failed and to try again. 
 
 2ndly, 3 minutes after the tickets for the weekend  went on sale, they were already up on places like stubhub with price ranges from 300-2000 dollars for a 70 dollar ticket. By my quick tally, there are 478 tickets available on stubhub(not counting other ticket resale site, tickets on ebay, etc)  for the Halloween show, a small portion when you consider the venue holds about 14,000, but still enough that it makes you think "how the fuck do they pull this off?".  If you take that number and multiply it by the 3 day weekend,  thats 1,434 tickets that went to people who have no intent of going to any show the whole weekend, and never did.   Is it that hard to imagine a reality where TM turns a blind eye to scalper-bots and computer farms, and captcha-cheating code, because they dont care where the tickets go, as long as they get service fees? Hell, maybe they are even recieving a kickback from places like stub-hub who thrive on scalpers ability to score seats(since sites like stub hub  add a fee on top, making buyers pay more, and taking a cut from whatever profits each seller makes).
 
Now you might be saying,  "well, its supply and demand, isnt it? if people wouldn't pay those exorbitant prices for the tickets, the scalpers never would try", or maybe you are even thinking "ahh, capitalism at its finest, buy low, sell high",  Well sir, if you think either of those things, you are an asshole.  Allow me to explain my theory, a Ticket to an event is not a "Good" per-say, its a service.  
 
 A ticket is like a contract between the buyer and the event organizer/promoter, a contract that allows you to enter the venue, the purchase of a ticket is your and the organizers signatures. You cant resell a service or a contract, I cant erase my name off the dotted line of a job contract and give it to my friend. Or resell my job to someone else, well, i could, but i ensure you, my employer would never give me another contract.  In plain english, a scalper doesn't have the right to grant me access to a show he's not an organizer of. As an easier example, say i am at a nightclub, and the owner for some unbeknown reason invites me into the VIP room.   I can't turn to my friend and say,  
 
"hey bro, i dont feel like going into the VIP room, but if you pay me 100 dollars i'll let you in".  I simply don't have the right to grant my friend access into the VIP room.  
 
Also , people who say "its capitalism at its finest" are just plain jerks, scalpers make nothing of value, they simply use strong-arm mob tactics, and sneaky programming to create their own demand for tickets that otherwise all the demand would be taken care of by the original sale of the tickets.   If scalpers didnt eat up 400 tickets(probably more) to each show, there would be little to no 2nd market demand for tickets, because most everyone that wanted tickets could get them.  If i was a doctor, i couldn't  get away with walking around town breaking peoples kneecaps with a tire-iron then offering to cast up their leg for 1000 dollars.
 
"But what could you do, scalpers have always existed", this is where it gets tricky, but as a start, places like Ticketmaster could start actually giving a shit, and investigating. If someone is buying 5 orders of 3 tickets on the same credit or debit card, isn't that a little suspicious?  Think about this, the most you could order for one night of the halloween show was 2 tickets per order, but somehow, some people on Stubhub are offering 8 tickets, how does that work? Simply put, if someone is ordering 4 orders of 2 tickets on one card, those orders should be invalid. It's what phish does in their lottery pre-orders, you can't put more than one order in on one card if you do, your order priority is put low, or your orders are straight up canceled, why cant TM do the same? Oh, because no matter how much they talk about how "Scalping is bad" and "We try to stop it" they don't care at all, as long as they continue to rape whoever is buying the tickets with 7-13 dollar services charges, they are making their money.  If the federal government made scalping illegal, sites like stubhub could be shut down, and people couldn't charge a 300-500 percent increase on face value on ebay.  Im not saying you shouldn't be able to fairly resell your tickets to friends or other fans if you cant go for some reason, but there is no way that there should be commercial enterprises based around the principle of holding down music fans and fucking them in the ass.