Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Stop Bots From Ruining Holiday Shopping (cnet.com) 153
Democrats have proposed the "Stopping Grinch Bots Act" to make it illegal to use bots to shop online and also outlaw reselling items purchased by bots. "Lawmakers label them 'Grinch' bots because, during the holiday season, resellers use them to buy inventory of highly coveted toys that can be resold at highly inflated prices," reports CNET. "Often times, these bots are so quick that they can purchase entire stocks of items before people can even add them to their carts." From the report: Sens. Tom Udall, Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer along with Rep. Paul Tonko made the announcement on Black Friday. While the proposed legislation is focused around the holiday season and toys, the Grinch Bots act would apply to all retailers online. Toys aren't the only items that resellers online send swarms of bots to. Security researchers noted that bots designed to buy rare sneakers are a persistent issue, as developers will create AI to buy shoes from companies like Nike and Adidas as quickly as possible. The proposed bill leaves it open for security researchers to use bots on retailer websites to find vulnerabilities. "Middle class folks save up -- a little here, a little there -- working to afford the hottest gifts of the season for their kids but ever-changing technology and its challenges are making that very difficult. It's time we help restore an even playing field by blocking the bots," said Schumer, a Democrat from New York, in a statement.
You had me at (Score:2)
"Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Stop Bots"
then had to go and spoil it with the rest of the summary title.
Re: (Score:2)
"Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Stop Bots"
"Bots Introduce Bill To Stop Lawmakers"
We'll have that soon . . . or maybe we have it already . . .
What about Wall Street? (Score:2)
So these lawmakers are concerned about bots stealing toys from children at Christmas. But exactly the same principle applies to trading algorithms used to buy and sell stocks. The trading bots arbitrage the market faster than any human can react and skim their profits off the buy/sell cycle. It's an easy fix. Just randomize the execution time from a trade anywhere within a one minute block of time. That would level the playing field for humans and let them buy lots of toys for their kids.
Re: (Score:1)
Or just add a captcha.
IOT protest march (Score:3)
Corporations, robots, and pets are legally people! We all have rights!
-R2D2
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect enforcement would be up to the FTC, who do know how to prosecute stuff like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Non-US groups are pretty hard to stop when it comes to digital goods, or tickets. For physical goods, CBP has a pretty good track record at stopping them.
Re: (Score:2)
Not so much if they're selling to the US. The feds are pretty good at being able to lock down funds.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry about. Here is the probability of this proposal being voted into law: 0%.
Re: (Score:3)
FBI more likely as this will likely have to do with tracking shipping orders and money. You can easily track merchandise itself since the shoes and whatnot has to go to a physical address. And this kind of a load would have to go somewhere with commercial warehousing, which is also paid for, as volumes would be fairly large.
With that many traces, catching the initial wave of people doing this would be easy, and added costs of having to obfuscate so many layers of your operations while still risking all your
Re: (Score:3)
Why should our tax dollars be spent on this?
If vendors don't want to sell to bots, they can use CAPTCHAs, detect systematic mouse movement, limit quantities per order, limit quantities to the same shipping address, require each cabbage patch doll to be ordered along with $75 of other products, feed the items into inventory one-by-one with a randomized poisson distribution, or ... just charge the market price.
If they don't do these things, then why should the taxpayers subsidize their broken business model?
Re: (Score:2)
If vendors don't want to sell to bots, they can use CAPTCHAs
And get sued by advocacy organizations for the blind and hard of sight.
Re: (Score:2)
I have read numerous complaints about how reCAPTCHA's audio version is unintelligible for even humans. I tried it myself once, and I remember finding the version active at that time difficult to understand myself. In addition, because Google hosts reCAPTCHA as a third-party script as opposed to distributing it as a script for installation on a server controlled by the website operator, it turns centralized tracking by Google into a condition for access.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it harms citizens by distorting free market.
Re: (Score:1)
The difference between libetarian argument and libertarded one is that former understands and takes into account the fact that reality in perfect and that state does need to manage markets to allow them to function and avoid the natural end point of free market - full monopolization and termination of free market.
You're making the latter argument right now.
Re: (Score:1)
Unlike you, I'm not trying to split hairs over definitions in order to craft an utterly retarded libertardian argument. I actually mean free markets in common parlance.
Re: (Score:2)
"I would point to this other distortion of the market, and suggest that it is evidence of not distorting the market".
Well played. -10/10.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because it's negatively affecting a lot of people?
As a conservative, I'm going to side with the folks across the aisle on this one. I know the businesses won't like it so much because they'll probably sell less due to decreased competition for the goods, but there do need to be some reasonable limits.
Re: (Score:2)
What subsidy? If you pass a law and do next to nothing to enforce the law, the net consequence is that the people running the officially illegal Grinch Bot networks have to keep all their internal communications far from the public eye (lest they self-incriminate), and neither can they brag about their prowess publicly (lest they self-incriminate with a bullhorn).
At almost no public cost, shadowy activities ar
certified tilt porn (Score:2)
Anyone who thinks my post was over the top, wade through the following document very carefully:
Are you ready to stop living the 40-40-40 Plan and Start Living your Dreams? [weebly.com]
Note that the image of the black guy (by implication, the author) is facing away from the center of the page. This is symbolic of turning is back on dull orthodoxy.
Not also the visual appeal to bright lights, big city and
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't the companies just make their own internal bots that buy out their own inventories and then resale them as independent scalpers?
This is Ticketmaster's entire business model. They have other sites they completely own, but run as if they were independent. They give those sites (like TicketsNow) the bulk of the tickets to scalp. If for whatever reason they don't sell out, they shuttle some back to Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster emails people alerting them of a new wave of tickets becoming available on a certain date, and they repeat the process.
Re: (Score:2)
Springsteen should be the one hating it and adding shows until the scalpers are broke...it's been done before.
Nothing wrong with acts charging what the market will bear. But market cornerers should _always_ be screwed over. Best when producers do it.
Re: (Score:2)
WTF? Moron!
If someone buys up all your work, thinking they can extort monopoly prices from your customers, they need a painful lesson on the definition of 'monopoly'. That's capitalism dipshit.
It would help if you knew what a 'market maker' was. Ticketmaster isn't, they don't sell options on springsteen tickets.
Re: (Score:2)
So you post a detailed definition of market maker, that Ticketmaster isn't?
kill ticket bots!!! (Score:2)
kill ticket bots!!!
How is this any different from HFT (Score:3, Insightful)
Liquidity!
Re:How is this any different from HFT (Score:4, Insightful)
Or is the government proposing that middle class consumers are entitled to protections when buying toys and shoes, but are NOT allowed the same protections if they want to buy financial assets?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Will this bill outlaw HFT?
Some types of HFT are illegal some are not. Some types of HFT are bad for the markets some are good. If someone prices something too low, what is wrong with someone buying it and selling it for closer to the correct price?
Or is the government proposing
The Government (TM) isn't proposing anything. Some lawmakers are. And they're doing it for publicity. This isn't going to become law.
Re: (Score:2)
Chuck Schumer likes HFTers, and doesn't like scalpers. He thinks issues like this will win him elections because he thinks the average US family makes low six figures and issues like this are what bothers them.
What are they going to do? (Score:2)
Arrest the bots? Terminate them?
Re: (Score:3)
Derezz them?
End of line.
Nobody promised life was fair. (Score:1)
Yeah, it sucks. The best revenge is don't buy it; leave the scumbags sitting on inventory they can't move.
If you can get it at MSRP, great.
Not that anyone is going to listen to my advice.
I'm not a Republitard, but this is just Dems grandstanding, trying to show that they're doing something for the little guy.
Re: Nobody promised life was fair. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Yea, let's just make a law. That'll make it illegal and stop it from happening.
Re: (Score:1)
until laws automatically expire unless a debate followed by a vote reinstate a month before expiration, with some exception for a core penal code covering the obvious, a small set of laws against firstbdegree murder and the like.
Until that political utopia exist, a minimalist approach to law making should be the way to go.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, lets just do nothing ever!
That's a terrible attitude. Instead, let's do something so we can say we did. Oh, wait - not doing something specific isn't the same as doing nothing ever. Never mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you need things so badly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm a vegan and I don't even own a TV!
Like you, I've achieved higher consciousness through meditation and preaching the word to my brothers on the street.
Keep on keepin' on, brother
Re: (Score:2)
Uh... no. That's not how it works at all.
Unless by "eventually" you mean it in the same sense that eventually our sun will run out fuel, or that even the universe itself will not be around forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. Consumerism is a disease.
My 15 YO son gave me the 'if you love me' line for a pair of shoes that sold out in few hours (only to be scalped online the next day).
I didn't buy them and he is still alive!
If scalpers are making a profit, then the sellers need to raise their prices!
This is swimming ... (Score:2)
... against the current.
Capitalism does not have a soul and legislation is not a religion.
And the reference to middle class is vacuous.
Re: (Score:2)
And the reference to middle class is vacuous.
But it buys votes.
Re: (Score:2)
It's no longer effective to buy votes. There's a new business model in town.
Political affiliation, like religion, is tribalism and ads are ineffective. PACs are learning this the hard way. The Koch brothers sure learned it.
No, that diesn't work but donating money directly to sitting politicians sure does.
Buying the votes of the citizenry is obsolete. Better to buy the votes that count.
Re: (Score:1)
Still gotta buy citizens' votes, not that it's difficult or anything, as the 94.3% (2016 presidential results) shows. It's just a reminder that it comes down to the voters, and the propaganda and old cliches work to this day. It is indeed strictly business, always has been.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong election to argue from.
The presidency is largely a head of state position, important as a voice of America expressing condolences to the mass shooting du jour.
Most presidents have actually gotten credit (or discredit) for what the generic administration (Congress) did or did not do.
Example: ACA voted into existence by Congress during the Obama(care) administration.
No, the influences are Congresspersons, state legislatures, state governors ... entities that write law.
That's where money can turn a trick
Re: (Score:1)
Citizens don't accept money for votes, do they?
Kind of. They expect tax cuts and other types of handouts. They even take promises, and again after they are broken when they reelect their favorite crook.
And all the elections show the same more or less 95% vote for the incumbency of the GOP/DNC, in congress and the presidency.
Until the voters take the initiative to vote them out, the ant mill will run indefinitely. Time to stop passing the blame
Re: (Score:2)
While your post is informative, it bypasses and ignores the point.
I'm talking about taking money.
You're talking about making promises.
Promises don't buy office furniture.
Re: (Score:1)
"Taking money" has many forms. People vote for politicians that take money. That's not the politicians' fault. If we want effective legislation, we have to vote for effective legislators. I mean, let's cut to the chase here, deal with the fundamentals. We are it, as Homer says, both the cause and the solution to all our problems.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the politician's fault. It's the people's fault, I agree (ignoring electoral college vs popular vote).
People do not vote for politicians who take money. That's nonsense. People vote for politicians who make the voters money.
And, politicians have two currencies:
1.) The vote. They will do anything or do nothing or sit on the fence, whatever it takes to get them elected. Politicians have rejected money because accepting would put their survival in jeopardy.
2.) AFTER a politician is in office, the curr
This shouldn't be illegal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising toys that will be out-of-fashion in a month, cost $250, and cost $2.50 to make in China to kids should be illegal. Actually, many European countries and Canadian provinces actually DO prohibit ads targeted at children under 12.
Don't want to be taken advantage of by the secondary market? Don't buy your kids the latest faddy junk; teach then some discipline. Plenty of fun toys that aren't the latest lemming frenzy.
Re: (Score:1)
This is as tone-deaf as "don't want to be taken advantage of by FB, don't have an account." Because people don't live in a vacuum, kids are cruel, and making them pariahs cause they don't have (socially required thing) so you feel better is a shitty option.
Re: (Score:3)
If you let your kids have all the new shiny, they will turn into adults with a need for new shiny.
Best they get over it ASAP.
Socially required? No such thing. You don't want them hanging with the morons anyhow.
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense, people grow into restraint. A ten year old just doesn't have it yet. Far better to wait until your kids can be taught how/when to use conspicuous consumption. The first half of OP's statement, it should be illegal to advertise to kids, is spot on.
Re:This shouldn't be illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ten year olds _don't_ get everything they want. The ones that do, turn into incredibly shitty, useless, adults.
Ten is not too young to make them decide which thing they want more, than make them save up their pennies to buy it.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree in general with what you're saying, but this conversation isn't about teaching kids to make choices and live within their means. This is about the hot "it" toy for Christmas being advertised to them for months, and then their parents being unable to get it except on the scalper's resale market.
Re: (Score:2)
Best thing for the kids. Toughen them up, get them ready for the rest of life's suffering.
The ones unprepared for life will be those with parents dumb enough to spend the scalpers price on some useless toy. The rest will see just how unfun that toy turns out to be when the spoiled ones try to lord it over them.
In the end, they will have the most fun stuffing the overpriced toy with fireworks and blowing it up anyhow. Best it isn't their overpriced toy they are blowing up, rather dumbshit from down the
Re: (Score:3)
That same logic could be used to insist on buying kids brand-name fashions. Sorry, no - my kids get their choice of sneakers from Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Target, etc. Wrong lesson, getting them whatever is hot. Give 'em a fidget spinner this year just to show them how fucking worthless "hot" is.
Re: (Score:2)
My brother just gave my kids fidgets spinners last week and they were thrilled.
Not sure what that says, but it happened.
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent. That's good gift timing - the spirit of Festivus is strong in your family.
Re: (Score:2)
Optimistically, they've got a use for cheap skateboard bearings? The alternative is they're 'special'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There *IS NO* socially required thing. Don't let your kid get brainwashed into thinking there is. Side benefit? You wind up with an adult child with whom you can carry on an intelligent relationship instead of dealing with incessant moaning complaints.
Re: (Score:2)
Word of the day: Arbitrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of going after the bots that solve shortages, why aren't the lawmakers going after sellers who cause them by selling below market equilibrium?
Oh I know. It's because this is feel-good legislation designed to help those congressmen get re-elected by people who don't understand supply & demand (i.e. most people).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. The problem is publicity-seeking stores selling limited amounts of trendy merchandise far below market rates. The far easier solution, if one were needed, would be to stop that practice.
There's actually already a solution to this (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is the final buyers hate it. They don't see it when resellers have marked up a price (or not passed on a discount they received) - they just assume that's the normal price. So instead all they do is complain endlessly about how rebates are evil and they hate having to spend 5 minutes to make $10 (which works out to the equivalent of $120/hr), and why can't they just cut the price instead? Well if they did that, some reseller would buy up all the stock and you wouldn't have been able to buy the item in the first place.
Yes there were problems with rebates being denied. But the manufacturers hate that as much as the people submitting the rebates. The manufacturers would contract with a rebate processing company to handle the rebates, and pay them a lump sum sufficient to pay for the rebates plus some. Anything left over after the rebates were paid off, the rebate company got to keep. So some of them set about denying as many rebates as possible. Since it's the manufacturer which takes the reputation hit from this, not the rebate processing company, the manufacturers don't like it. Most of them have begun using the better rebate processors. I haven't had one denied in 5 years.
Re:Word of the day: Arbitrage (Score:4)
Tired and stupid argument.
Free ENOUGH markets exist, get over it. Repeating that nonsense isn't going to make it true.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I see, it's better that nobody get water! Like in Venezuela!
But seriously, I wouldn't worry. $99 gallons of water will attract other greedy sellers and then they will start undercutting each other until the prices are so low that it's no longer worthwhile to make another trip.
Meanwhile, if a poor person can't afford a $99 gallon of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think retailers who advertise discounts or product specials should have enough products available to meet the expected demand or to provide a substitute product of comparable value at the advertised price.
In other words, I want laws against false advertising.
"the hottest gifts of the season" (Score:3)
Are we talking about the cravings of the mindless masses? The latest marketing manipulation? The fashionable fad fantastic?
Those who are so easily swayed are fodder for the market. They are the devolved. Let them quickly go into debt and fade from this earth. Let them leave the gene pool. Bah humbug, xmas shoppers!
Ebay will be happy (Score:2)
Sales (Score:1)
Apply to Ticket Sales (Score:2)
Just make sure the legislation applies to event ticket sales. That's one area where bots are a huge problem. (It could easily be solved by real anti-scalping measures, but the venues and promoters like the instant sell-outs, so there's no push from the money side to fix it.)
Re: (Score:3)
If the event organizers cared at all, they also completely solve the problem with a simple auction.
Let's say there's 5000 seats. Everyone put in the highest bid they're willing to pay, then the top 5000 bids get tickets at the lowest accepted bid price. If someone is willing to pay $500 for it, then they just bid $500. Maybe they'll only end up paying $50, but they can have certainty that they will not only get the ticket, but also at the best possible price.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. And that's just one of the solutions.
My favorite is to start sales way in advance at a ridiculous price and lower the price every day. For events where you select specific seats, those who pay more get better seats. It also eliminates tracking bids, and is simple for everyone to understand, while maximizing profit for the event. The downside is that it discourages early sales, so much of the money won't come in right away, and it might drive average ticket prices down.
Hot Items or Limited Sales? (Score:2)
Is this more of an issue for hot items that are in limited supply or for items with sufficient supply, but limited "door buster" type sales? The latter is pretty close to false advertising--naming a price that will only be honored for a very limited supply. I would love to see those restricted on the sales side.
Hah....Good luck. (Score:1)
How about we put a stop to high frequency algorithmic trading in the stock market too whilst we're at it? ... no? ... makes you too much money, you say? ... the common man be damned, you say?
Money = Speech (Score:2)
Stop paying the piper (Score:2)
The problem is not the bots, the problem is people who pay the increased prices.
Ticketmaster has been a problem forever and suddenly the government wants to worry about toys.
It's up to companies to put up better technological barriers to scalping. Ticketmaster is in bed with the scalpers so that will never happen.
But customers can refuse to buy just released products at jacked up prices.
2 of the most inept career politicians (Score:2)
Lawmakers will receive millions of comments (Score:2)
An Anti-Scalper Bill? (Score:2)
And tickets? (Score:2)
Will this also cover purchasing event tickets? Please?
And define 'bot' to include the seller's own processes to withhold tickets form the market, in secret, to later scalp them for further profit?