No Ebay for Live 8
Internet auction site eBay last night banned greedy touts from selling Live 8 tickets on line after a furious backlash. Hundreds of people flooded eBay with fake ticket offers to confuse buyers and sabotage what Live 8 organiser Sir Bob Geldof branded “sick profiteering”.
“Selling Live 8 tickets, which are free, is sick – just profiteering… It is completely against the interests of the poor.”
Sir Bob went on: “It was a sort of example of corporate arrogance that it thought it could operate outside the morality of its audience. I am glad it has stopped and well done for taking them down, but it was despicable and they should have thought about it before they did this. They miscalculated this country very badly and, magnificently, the country won.”
More than two million people texted the ticket line for 150,000 tickets for the July 2 concert in London’s Hyde Park.
It will be Britain’s biggest-ever concert and will include Pink Floyd, Sir Paul McCartney, Madonna, Coldplay, Robbie Williams and Sir Elton John. Geldof threatened court action after eBay initially refused to ban the touts’ adverts.
At first, a spokesman said: “The reselling of charity concert tickets is not illegal. “We are allowing the tickets because we live in a free market where people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell. A ticket to the Live 8 concert is no different from a prize won in a raffle run by another charity and what the winner chooses to do with it is up to them.”
But eBay backed down after Government minister James Purnell wrote to them asking them to halt the adverts.
Source: The Mirror