Ticketmaster

The lawsuit contends that RMG helps brokers buy up to 80 percent of tickets available online to some Ticketmaster events, driving up the price to individual consumers who are forced to buy them from brokers at well above face value.

Ticketmaster uses a security device known as a captcha – a word or series of odd-sized or misshapen letters displayed on its Web site. Ticket buyers must type the letters to order tickets, generally no more than 4 or 8 at once. Captchas are designed to make it difficult for automated computer programs to read the random letters.

RMG uses a dozen people in India and Nepal who manually type in the captcha characters in real time 18 hours a day for his clients.
“We’re going through the front door like everybody else,” Cipriano Garibay, the president of RMG, says. “We offer a service that operates much more efficiently than Ticketmaster thought was possible.”

Ticketmaster got a federal court injunction in October against RMG, barring the firm from buying or helping brokers buy tickets from Ticketmaster’s Web site for the purpose of reselling them. RMG is appealing that decision and has filed a counterclaim alleging Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly.