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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2025 - 2026
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 12, 2024 01:57 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Michele Brooks and Sen. Tracy Pennycuick |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Strengthening the Law Prohibiting the Use of Bots to Purchase Tickets |
| A practice that has been all too common and continues to hurt our consumers, despite state and federal measures to prohibit the practice, is the use of “bots” to purchase bulk tickets to an event, and reselling the tickets at a price well exceeding the amount the ticket would have cost the average consumer. To previously combat this, House Bill 464 of the 2009-2010 legislative session, now Act 23 of 2010, prohibited the use of ticket purchasing software that circumvents security measures or access control systems on ticket selling websites, and makes a violation of this a misdemeanor offense. The Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016 (commonly referred to as the BOTS Act) was also signed into federal law in December 2016 in order to thwart attempts by individuals and organizations to automate the process of purchasing tickets in mass using bots. The BOTS Act outlawed the resale of tickets purchased using bot technology and set a fine of $16,000 for violations of the act, which is enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. We will be reintroducing SB 1048 of the 2023-2024 legislative session, previously cosponsored by Senators Brewster, Culver, Dillon, Dush and Kane, to align the state law with the stronger federal law, and will also allow a ticket selling platform to bring civil action for damages caused by the use of such software. Thank you for your consideration of this important measure. |
Memo Updated: December 12, 2024 01:58 PM