RE: UKNM: Linking to sites

[Melanie BEECH]

>But in the US, ticketmaster.com lost a court case trying to prevent

>tickets.com "deep-linking" into the ticketmaster site:

>http://news.cnet.com/news//0-1005-200-1597146.html


Yes, but, IMHO the real reason Ticketmaster got hacked off enough to take

tickets.com to court was because TM's success is based upon the maintenance

of a quasi-monopolistic situation:  there are few ticketing systems

available on the market and TM make their money from selling software

licenses to venues and ticket agents alike, as well as charging a

transaction fee on any bookings made through TM's call centre.


TM's strength reposes upon the fact that its system is closed (like the

majority of other systems on the market) as there are currently no open

standards within the industry.  A TM venue is tied as tight as it possibly

can be, so that only TM and the venue can sell the venue's tickets online.

This in turn forces the punters to use the TM site, as it is sole ticketing

supplier for a significant number of venues, which helps TM to maintain

their market leading position.  Deep linking removes some of that

competitive advantage, although it should be noted that TM will still have

got the transaction fee, so they weren't exactly losing money.


Until very recently, venues using TM's ticketing system were told that there

was no way to integrate their ticketing system to their site, and that to

sell tickets online they should link direct to TM's site - although

deep-linking to avoid competitors' events appearing on the page was not

permitted.  What's more, by doing that, TM still got the transaction fee.  A

number of venues had no choice but to get around the problem by setting up

their own ordering system on their site and transferring the order logs to

their call centre for manual treatment, as charging their customers 4 quid

or so per ticket for an internet transaction seemed to go against the

principle that the technological advance of the internet logically reduces

processing costs.  TM are now working with another company to sell on an

internet interface to their client venues so they can finally integrate

their web sites with their ticketing software, without passing via the TM

site.


Deep linking into the TM site effectively allowed tickets.com to access the

ticketing system without a software license and threatened the exclusivity

negotiated with the venues, undermining TM's market position.  But since

competition is far from illegal, copyright infringement was the only

feasible means of attack to prevent tickets.com continuing their deep

linking.


</my 2 penn'orth>


Melanie


M�lanie BEECH

Chef de Projet


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