Macros make buying tickets a little too fast for many

People line up to enter the "Beautiful Mint Life 2020 Festival," a large outdoor music festival held at Olympic Park, Seoul, on Friday. [YONHAP]

As social distancing measures have been lifted, more people are visiting concert halls and sports venues, but it is becoming more difficult to get tickets.

One big reason: professional scalpers and the software that many use. Many buy tickets through so-called macro programs and resell them at high prices. They are called "premium" tickets when sold online.

Many people buy premium tickets at outrageous prices because there's no other way. When tickets go on sale online, you have to be fast -- and the scalpers are faster thanks to their software.

Macros are automatic programs that repeatedly input specific commands.

For the buying of tickets, information such as the date and time of a performance to the seat and payment method is automatically processed from multiple Internet addresses (IPs) at once, dramatically reducing input time.

Kim Jun-hyeok, 30, a graduate student living in Ansan, Gyeonggi, was surprised when he recently tried to book a concert for his parents.

“Since the tickets were supposed to start selling at 8 p.m., I ate dinner early and waited at a PC-bang,” Kim said. "But the ticket site didn't open until until 50 minutes later. After failing to get a ticket, I went to second-hand trading sites, and the tickets were being sold for 300,000 won when the original price was 130,000.”

Do-yeon Lee, a 28-year-old office worker, is a dedicated fan of the Lotte Giants baseball team. She decided to go to a baseball game with a friend after hearing that sports events had reopened with the lifting of social distancing measures. She tried to book online and wanted good seats, even if they were a bit expensive. But tickets were all sold out.

She visited a second-hand trading site, and was surprised to see a lot tickets than she expected.

“Not only was one seller selling tickets for adjacent seats, but they had a history of selling a lot of tickets before, so I thought it must be a macro program,” Lee said.

Legally, there's nothing wrong with using macro programs. When problems arise, the police are forced to get creative. If someone purchases a large amount of tickets with a macro program, they might be charged with obstruction of business. If your macro program causes a server to fail, you might be charged with obstruction of business "through computer failure."

“Even if we sue someone over charges that they interfered with sales by using a macro program, they defend themselves by saying the demand was there,” said a performance industry insider.

Ticket sellers can try to block macro programs themselves, but even this is risky. “If a company tries to directly tackle macro programs, there may be retaliation such as a large canceling of tickets, so we are all very careful,” said another performance industry insider.

Macro programs are becoming more powerful because computer programming is being learned by more people and the legal system is not keeping up.

“Even ordinary people who did not major in computer programming can make a macro program within two to three weeks,” said Mr. Shin, 30, a program developer. “All developers know that it is difficult to punish the act itself of making a macro program.”

Shin himself has received an offer from a corporate sales team to create a golf course reservation program. “It takes about a week to write a macro program, and they pay you about 500,000 won to 1,000,000 for it. So turning down such an offer isn’t easy.”

Since the laws are not clear, justice is muddy in the macro game. One programmer charged with producing and distributing macro programs in 2018 was sentenced to a year in prison for violating the Information and Communications Network Act. He appealed in October 2019 and was acquitted.

Macro-related bills are pending in the National Assembly. “Macro programs have caused enormous damage by obstructing consumers’ purchases,” said Rep. Lee Byung-hoon of the Democratic Party, who proposed an amendment to the Performance Act and the National Sports Promotion Act that would restrict the use of macro programs to purchase tickets for performances and sports events.

“The purpose of the bill is to publicize the standards for macro programs that cannot be punished under the current system,” said Kim Jin-sung, a secretary in Lee’s office.

Analysts say clearer thinking about macros is needed. Is the problem the use of a macro itself? Booking too many tickets with macro programs? Or the selling of tickets purchased through macros at a higher price?

“There are pure functions for macros, such as uses in programming, so recklessly regulating macro programs can cause unwanted side effects,” said Lim, Jong-in, a professor of cybersecurity at the Grade School of Information Security at Korea University.

“If punishment rules are individually detailed, other macro programs that circumvent them may appear. Since macro issues are closely related to information technology, it is necessary to refer to cases in the U.S. and enact legislation through international consultations.”

BY WON DONG-WOOK [kjdnational@joongang.co.kr]