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Even as legislation and court decisions are increasingly backing off strict penalties for scalpers, the ruling is another blow for events promoters world-wide who are crusading against ticket scalping. A federal court in Australia ruled on Monday that eBay can broker ticket sales for concerts and other events at greater than face value.

Big Day Out's producer Ken West said that brokers were reaping "large profits" at the expense of real fans, in justification for the provision. The ticket would not be honored at the event, creative marked each ticket with a cancellation policy that if the ticket was resold over face value, in an attempt to thwart scalpers. Is the promoter behind Australia's Big Day Out concert series, creative Festival Entertainment, the concert promoter involved in the action.

Though West says it amounts to the same thing, the ruling was not so much in favor of scalping as it was forbidding Creative from arbitrarily canceling tickets. Initiated a suit to block the provision from being enforced. EBay Inc.

It traditionally has been a losing battle even in the face of some creative means to thwart scalpers, and yet. And not at a scalper's mark-up, scalping has always been a challenge for concert promoters and bands to get their tickets into the hands of fans at face value.

Ticket brokers paid the premium and passed the cost along to buyers. Which required fan club members to pay a hefty $100 premium for tickets, the same happened for the Rolling Stones Onstage Tour. Scalpers simply paid the $40 membership fee and bought the tickets anyway, but as U2 found out when they launched their Vertigo Tour. Bands began offering presale tickets to fan club members only, in one scenario.

But individuals can buy tickets at face value and post them later in the day on eBay or other auction sites, now not just companies. No more standing in a queue outside Tower Records or waiting on the telephone for a Ticketmaster operator. The internet has not helped matters much because it has enabled any individual to become a broker with just a click.

Those laws are only subject to enforcement if the buyer and seller reside in the same state, in the case of online resellers like eBay, and even then. The statues are pretty slack, massachusetts and Illinois, and in states where scalping is illegal including Florida. Ticket brokering is not illegal in all states, in United States for instance, while it is easy to condemn scalpers.

Ticketmaster is allowing demand to set the price. Selling tickets at auction allows the seller to get market value for the tickets, quite simply. Ticketmaster defends the practice in the exact same way that eBay does. Which ironically has allowed Ticketmaster to operate like a scalper, has made the switch to auction sales itself, one of the largest hosts for ticket sales, ticketmaster.

But the result is that the best seats for concerts go for twenty-five percent or more above face value at auction. Whereas eBay and other brokers do not, the only real difference is that Ticketmaster pays an equitable portion to promoters and artists, in fact.

Critics that say consumer laws don't go far enough to discourage scalpers now have another reason to be disheartened. Even companies that have existing anti-scalping policies have little recourse beyond getting a legal injunction against the broker to stop the resale of the tickets. There is no viable solution to ticket scalping, as Creative Festival Entertainment found out.