Thursday, November 13, 2008

Repugnant transactions in Inauguration tickets

eBay to Ban Resale of Inaugural Tickets

"eBay Inc. is banning the sale of coveted free tickets to the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama after a U.S. senator said she was crafting a bill to make such online sales a federal crime.
Representatives of the online auction site met with the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies this week and came to a mutual decision on the prohibition, said Nichola Sharpe, a spokeswoman for eBay.
“The tickets are free. We felt that it is an official event,” Sharpe said in an interview today. “We think it’s in the best interest of all concerned.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, announced Monday that she was contacting sites, like eBay and Craigslist, to ask them to stop selling the tickets to the Jan. 20 event. She also said she was drafting legislation to criminalize the sales. "

2 comments:

YCL said...

Closer to home, Harvard undergrads are debating the morality of selling/scalping Harvard-Yale tickets! :)

Scott said...

And--annually--Harvard commencement tickets sell at exorbitant prices, despite an official regulation prohibiting such sales. MIT allows the sale and trading of commencement tickets, and the market has historically set a rather low price.