Agreed, Legos are hard to beat. I'm getting the Lego Creationary Game for my two sons. From the looks of it, it's kind of like charades or pictionary, except instead of acting it out or drawing, they have to build it with legos. I'm assuming what have to build is fairly simple "objects". Looks like a good combination of creativity and family time.

"How is this any different than getting all of your friends and family to hop on Ticketmaster the second tickets become available to increase your chances?" But that's not what they did. If you want to take technology out of it, here's a more accurate example of what they did. Let's say a person stood at the front of the line and through a combination of phony IDs, cleverly disguising his voice, and Mission Impossible-like face masks, he fooled the ticket clerk into believing that he was actually several hundred/thousand different people in order to circumvent the policy of maximum tickets per individual. How do you see the big deal?

You're the only one who used the words "rights". I never stated such at thing. The argument is not around entitlements, but your selective quoting missed that. Let me fill in the missing piece of the entire quote: "In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base." The artists/producers who are more knowledgeable about what price will sustain a certain consumer market set a price. Artificially increasing this price may be a detriment to that industry itself since it may drive consumer demand down for that product -- and I don't mean for just that single concert; that's a very short sighted perspective on business. This is about maintaining an equilibrium in the supply/demand of the industry, not inherent rights.

Rules exist even within capitalism. This is a case of fraud, not capitalism. Capitalism is just the veil that they choose to hide under. It doesn't matter how strongly you assert your pro-criminal arguments, the reality of this will still be there.

Extensive research showed that pictures of kittens turned off potential consumers -- except young females who were too captivated by the pictures of kittens to complete the transaction.

Wait a sec, you're applying the "rules are meant to be broken" defense?

I don't disagree with your points on fraud. The point is that people often mistaken or excuse fraud in the name of capitalism. That same fraudulent argument applies to ticket scalping as well. Ticketmaster (or whomever) set rules in place regarding the sale of tickets. These people FRAUDULENTLY misrepresented themselves by FRAUDULENTLY identifying themselves as individual purchasers. Then they resell these tickets at a FRAUDULENT value that is well and above the MSRP. Just because the market may bear that price doesn't make it legal or ethical. Hence the quote from the article "These defendants made money by combining age-old fraud with new-age computer hacking," the DoJ said in its press release.

Your assumption is that if this is based on capitalism, there must be nothing wrong with it. I'm not exactly sure that's a good assumption. Take the recent credit derivatives debacle that threw our economy into a tailspin. Hey, Goldman Sachs and others created a product, people were willing to buy a product at a certain price. There's a risk element just like there is with any other security. That's capitalism, what's wrong with that? i think history demonstrates that, while based on capitalism, how unhealthy this activity was to our economy. As far as tickets go, let's say these tickets were priced at value that both the promoter and the artist agreed would be fair compensation. Their goal being to make some money for the work they produce while at the same time, setting the price in a range that allows a broad base of fans to enjoy. Scalpers come in, buy up the majority of the tickets and resell them at double the value. Sure, that's capitalism. But that act may have effectively shut out a large fan base that can't afford that new price. What's wrong with that? Well, from a market perspective, nothing (perhaps). It's supply and demand. But from a societal perspective, it starts to put a bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots. Entertainment/Sports/etc. becomes a industry that can be enjoyed only if you have a certain amount of wealth. In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base. It was the act of a third party that may have priced out a potential consumers.