Are There Any Scalpers in the Audience Tonight? Get 'Em Up Against the Wall!

Julian Sanchez | June 15, 2005

Bob Geldoff is incensed that folks are selling tickets to his upcoming Live 8 charity benefit show on eBay. (People won the tickets by entering a raffle via mobile phone text message, at a couple bucks per entry.)

EBay UK has shut down ticket sales (after outraged users started making false bids in ridiculously high amounts to prevent the tickets from moving), after Geldoff turned down eBay's offer to donate their listing fee for the tickets to help fight povery. According to Geldoff, eBay and the ticket sellers are "profiteering on the backs of the impoverished."

Except, as reader Paul Wilbert observes, that's idiotic. The poor get not one cent less as a result of a third party transaction between ticket-holders and prospective buyers. If anything, it's Geldoff who's depriving the poor by turning down eBay's offer—and, more importantly, by raffling off all those tickets instead of reserving some to auction off himself.