UK politicians call for "making the resale of goods purchased using an automated bot an illegal activity"

[Guyver1]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Bad idea.

I get that people are currently very riled up about scalpers but seriously, why should it be illegal to buy something with a bot? Besides, how is this going to be enforced?

Seems like just a political party trying to jerk off some dumb people by going "see we care about you" when in reality it won't lead anywhere.

 

Before you start cheering for someone because they said "scalpers bad" and you hate scalpers, stop and think for a second... You're being played like a fiddle.

ok, lets go back to pre-digital, pre internet, when you had to physically queue outside a physical building to buy anything.
You are standing in a massive line outside a record shop for your absolutely favourite bands new album which is coming out at midnight.

You've camped outside the store for 5 days to get a great place in the line.

you are 10th out of a line of 500 people that goes around the block.

the store only has 350 copies.

 

400 people behind you in the queue walk up to the 9 people in front of you and give them 150% of the cost of the album to buy them a copy along with their own copy and they'll wait outside the store while that person goes in and buys multiple copies leaving you s**t outta luck and empty handed as the store had no max purchase rule so the 9 people in front of you bought all 350 copies.

 

now imagine a super market doing that with food, or a drug store with medicine.

 

just on moral, ethical and common decency principals its wrong, the law typically reflects the society it presides over.

 

 

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, Racxie said:

Well if it does go further than the very early initial discussion stage then it's likely they'd consider that later. There are provisions in place for event tickets already, so they might look at adopting a similar approach.

 

Also I'm not 100% sure but I believe it's possible for the sellers to detect bots, so the responsibility could fall on them to put things in place.

I don't see how this would be enforced, bots can easily get past a capcha.

And leaving the responsibility on a retail seller to put bot detection in place isn't a good thing because that cost would simply get passed onto the consumer. A queue system is the only way regular consumers would have a chance, but that also takes money and effort to have in place to verify bots aren't buying up everything.

[cj09beira]

4 hours ago, Racxie said:

It would need to be carefully worded to ensure you're not going to penalised for wanting to sell an old card a year down the line. The idea is to prevent situations like we currently have where people are buying cards purely to sell them online at an incredibly inflated price to the point where it's impossible to buy one for RRP/MSRP.

we all know it will be vaguely worded, and will end up affecting much more than what is/was intended 

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

we all know it will be vaguely worded, and will end up affecting much more than what is/was intended 

Thats some hardcore future predicting there. It could totally happen.  And if care isn’t taken it very well might.  It would be a worst case scenario though.  “It will be the worst it could possibly be” is a fairly cynical but not necessarily less accurate than any other system.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Bombastinator

[YellowJersey]

Curious to know how one would go about enforcing such a law (hate to be a debbie downer, but I work in law and there's a huge difference between enacting a law and enforcing it). It's a good idea, provided it can be effectively implemented.

Glad to see the UK doing something useful. When I first saw the chopped off headline, "UK politicians call for..." I thought, "Oh god, how do they plan to destroy the internet this time?". So it was a pleasant surprise, for once.

[AlTech]

This is a horrifically bad idea and I can only hope that they’re going to be inundated by other things and that they’re going to forget about this or not go through the with it.

 

It’s already bad enough that event tickets can’t be resold at serious markup.

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, 3 Lions said:

Oh god, I wonder how they'll mess this one up... 

 

You can't trust the UK government to do anything these days. 

 

To be fair it's been parliament hats been about as useful as a chocolate fireguard lately, ever since the brexit referendum they've been doing everything they can to get in the way of whichever prime minister is in office and his cabinet. To a very large degree thats what they're their for of course. But too often they've been doing it over things that their constitutionts are actually for. 

[severdnerv]

When i read this article on PCGAMER's website i was given a little hope. 

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk-parliament-reseller-bots/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR2qGb3AC63HlIPSkjZn-ad8HIgSmfZ6vWBIb6r57UfF_Wcs1Aj6VnFfNug

As a Scot myself i have been disappointed in the non existence of any of Nvidia's 30 series GPU's. 

But after reading this and hearing it was put forward by our own SNP gave me a little hope that something could be 

done about it over here. 

It is a Crude and malicious business practice that is gaining more n more traction as the months go by.

Again if it fails to go through i still don't see ANY Gpus staying on shelfs for most of next year and that goes for consoles as well.


 

[Mark Kaine]

I hope EU comes up with similar regulations... and faster than usual too, not in 20+ years............

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, Emily123 said:

How do they propose to determine if something was bought by a bot and even enforce this?

this is a good question, but I'm sure it's not that hard actually, with the right algos it should be rather trivial. 

 

Also another solution would be : Store pick up only!

 

 

there are also even more drastic measures possible - though I can almost guarantee nobody would like them, not even the loudest "anti botters" because my anonymity privacy concerns!!! 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

ok, lets go back to pre-digital, pre internet, when you had to physically queue outside a physical building to buy anything.
You are standing in a massive line outside a record shop for your absolutely favourite bands new album which is coming out at midnight.

You've camped outside the store for 5 days to get a great place in the line.

Obvious conclusion: the album is too cheap.

 

3 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

400 people behind you in the queue walk up to the 9 people in front of you and give them 150% of the cost of the album to buy them a copy along with their own copy

Their own copy? If we are being realistic, they were there just to sell their queue place. And if you are the 10th, most likely you were there to sell the place too.

 

3 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

now imagine a super market doing that with food, or a drug store with medicine.

Basically, "now imagine the situation is nothing like the actual one.".

 

3 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

the law typically reflects the society it presides over.

...and the law already covers price gauging of medicine, food, or any essential items. I agree with you: there is a reason why the existing laws, that cover insulin or food, don't over consoles and GPUs. 

[Bombastinator]

The issue with anything like this is solving one problem generally creates others.  The trick is to make sure the new problems created are smaller than the one solved.  This makes things more and more difficult the smaller the problem being solved is.  The argument mostly seems to be about how big a given problem is.  

Edited December 16, 2020 by Bombastinator

[GDRRiley]

so if in my attempt to get a GPU I use a bot then resell it after 2 years I'd be committing a crime?

if your going to make it illegal to resell stuff like this go all out. Stop tickets to events being sold like this

ether way its a dumb attempt at a law that will be nearly impossible to enforce.

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

But how do they determine who are bots, and how would they force retailers to stop bots?

so I'm not a programmer (probably why I think the solution is rather simple in theory) 

but they usually use vpns or other tools to spoof their ip addresses, right? 

 

Ok so how do some services block vpns?  the answer to that is part one of the solution. 

 

other tools to spoof ip addresses? well idk but I think with help of isps etc this should also be possible to detect...? 

 

Anything I forgot?  so simply disallow / block vpns and similar (for online transactions like buying things) would be a big part of the anti bot algorithm, of course also things like being unusually fast / sending lots of requests in succession / typical bot things = *blocked*

 

 

Also last part of your question...?  they would force them by making it illegal of course! Duh.

 

 

tldr: so while I'm not sure how 'easy' that really is I believe it's also not that hard or impossible as many seem to want to paint it... might be initially a big effort but once established should be able to stop most bot / scalping shenanigans... 

 

 

 

Also don't forget scalpers need to sell somewhere too, in the end that's how'd you get them!!! 

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

so I'm not a programmer (probably why I think the solution is rather simple in theory) 

but they usually use vpns or other tools to spoof their ip addresses, right? 

 

Ok so how do some services block vpns?  the answer to that is part one of the solution. 

 

other tools to spoof ip addresses? well idk but I think with help of isps etc this should also be possible to detect...? 

 

Anything I forgot?  so simply disallow / block vpns and similar (for online transactions like buying things) would be a big part of the anti bot algorithm, of course also things like being unusually fast / sending lots of requests in succession / typical bot things = *blocked*

 

 

Also last part of your question...?  they would force them by making it illegal of course! Duh.

 

 

tldr: so while I'm not sure how 'easy' that really is I believe it's also not that hard or impossible as many seem to want to paint it... might be initially a big effort but once established should be able to stop most bot / scalping shenanigans... 

 

 

 

Also don't forget scalpers need to sell somewhere too, in the end that's how'd you get them!!! 

They also need to sell at a large markup, and they can’t hold inventory very long.  Making this one into something where the cure is significantly less bad than the disease may take some deep thought.

[Mark Kaine]

yeah I also think it would maybe simply be enough to make it illegal - so for certain things (even 'luxury') just make scalping illegal... would also make buyers think twice, maybe!

 

But yeah a combination with some anti bot measures would be preferable imo (but then governments aren't usually exactly good with these things.......)

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

ok, lets go back to pre-digital, pre internet, when you had to physically queue outside a physical building to buy anything.
You are standing in a massive line outside a record shop for your absolutely favourite bands new album which is coming out at midnight.

You've camped outside the store for 5 days to get a great place in the line.

you are 10th out of a line of 500 people that goes around the block.

the store only has 350 copies.

 

400 people behind you in the queue walk up to the 9 people in front of you and give them 150% of the cost of the album to buy them a copy along with their own copy and they'll wait outside the store while that person goes in and buys multiple copies leaving you s**t outta luck and empty handed as the store had no max purchase rule so the 9 people in front of you bought all 350 copies.

So the store should set a maximum purchase number. Problem solved! No government imposed laws necessary.

What's next, we are going to make camping outside a store hours before something releases illegal too because some butthurt kid is mad they can't do it too and the product might sell out before they get one?

 

 

7 hours ago, Guyver1 said:

now imagine a super market doing that with food, or a drug store with medicine.

That changes the entire thing, and that is already illegal.

You can't just go "this thing is happening to a toy I really want, if you don't think it is horrible then just imagine if people were dying, then it would be horrible right?".

Right now it's legal to stuff your face full of peanuts. You don't think that should be illegal? Then just imagine the peanuts as heroin! Now you think it should be illegal, right? You can't be for people stuffing their face full of heroin, right?

 

See how absurd it becomes when you go from "we're talking about a toy" to "imagine if it happened to medicine, food or other essential items".

You having to settle for a PS4 instead of a PS5 for a month or two is not the end of the world, and certainly not on the same scale as someone not getting access to food or medicine. If you think it is then I think you should seriously take a hard look at your life.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The issue with anything like this is solving one problem generally creates others.  The trick is to make sure the new problems created are smaller than the one solved.  This makes things more and more difficult the smaller the problem being solved is.  The argument mostly seems to be about how big a given problem is.  

I agree completely agree.

But I also think that "I am not able to get a PS5 or a 30 series GPU so I have to make due with my PS4 or 20 series graphics card" is such a minor issue that basically any solution proposed will cause bigger problems, so that's why I am against this.

[yolosnail]

This is absolutely ridiculous, and not to get political but you can instantly tell which parties this came from!

 

So is this also going to outlaw the automated systems that stores use to order goods from suppliers as well?

 

And if they're saying "gaming consoles and computer components should be available to all customers at no more than the Manufacturer’s Recommended Retail Price", isn't that just price fixing?

 

If I want to buy all the graphics cards, I should be able to.

If I want to use a bot to buy them, I should be able to. 

If I want to then sell them at an egregious mark up, I should be able to

 

If Nvidia doesn't want me to buy all the graphics cards, they should stop me, not the government. 

If Nvidia doesn't want to me use a bot to buy them, they shouldn't let me.

If Nvidia doesn't want me to sell them at an egregious mark up, then that's none of their bloody business, I bought them, they're mine and I can do whatever the F I like with them.

 

As people keep saying, stop buying from the bloody scalpers, if people are buying, they're going to keep selling. You don't need all your rays traced that much!

[suicidalfranco]

12 hours ago, Sauron said:

Let me explain this in simple terms: if there are 10 apples and 15 people want an apple, but I buy 9 of them before anyone else gets to because I used a bot, then 8 people will be needlessly left without an apple or will be forced to pay an inflated price and buy one from me. If I hadn't done that then more people would have been able to get the apple they wanted.

Am i supposed to see something's wrong in that analogy?

[Sauron]

8 hours ago, poochyena said:

Spray painting someone's house financially harms the home owner since repairs will have to be made or the home owner's property value is decreased.

...how is preventing that "essential"?

8 hours ago, poochyena said:

Having to wait an extra week or two to buy a console doesn't result in physical or financial harm.

Uhh yes it does result in financial harm if you end up buying it at an inflated price. Of course you're not forced to buy it, but neither is the homeowner forced to rent or sell their house. It's just something they might like to do and the scalper's behavior made it artificially harder for them for no other reason than personal greed.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Am i supposed to see something's wrong in that analogy?

I was explaining how scalpers reduce product availability - in itself it was a morally neutral explanation.

 

Of course I do think scalping is a shitty thing to do but that's beside the point.

[Bombastinator]

22 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So the store should set a maximum purchase number. Problem solved! No government imposed laws necessary.

What's next, we are going to make camping outside a store hours before something releases illegal too because some butthurt kid is mad they can't do it too and the product might sell out before they get one?

 

 

That changes the entire thing, and that is already illegal.

You can't just go "this thing is happening to a toy I really want, if you don't think it is horrible then just imagine if people were dying, then it would be horrible right?".

Right now it's legal to stuff your face full of peanuts. You don't think that should be illegal? Then just imagine the peanuts as heroin! Now you think it should be illegal, right? You can't be for people stuffing their face full of heroin, right?

 

See how absurd it becomes when you go from "we're talking about a toy" to "imagine if it happened to medicine, food or other essential items".

You having to settle for a PS4 instead of a PS5 for a month or two is not the end of the world, and certainly not on the same scale as someone not getting access to food or medicine. If you think it is then I think you should seriously take a hard look at your life.

 

 

 

I agree completely agree.

But I also think that "I am not able to get a PS5 or a 30 series GPU so I have to make due with my PS4 or 20 series graphics card" is such a minor issue that basically any solution proposed will cause bigger problems, so that's why I am against this.

Could be.  As stated it seems very possible.  Doesn’t mean it can’t be done though.  This kind of stuff needs tons of research and very careful balancing to get right

[RejZoR]

Scalping is a bigger problem on economic level and it's unfortunately fueled by dumb people who buy these scalped products at ridiculous prices. I mean, scalping is inflating prices of goods to absurd levels. What's next, bread and milk being bought in bulk by everyone and you'll have to pay 3x price on ebay to get it? Today it's graphic cards, tomorrow it'l be that. I mean, just look at idiots hoarding freaking toilet paper. My exaggeration isn't too far off.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, RejZoR said:

Scalping is a bigger problem on economic level and it's unfortunately fueled by dumb people who buy these scalped products at ridiculous prices. I mean, scalping is inflating prices of goods to absurd levels. What's next, bread and milk being bought in bulk by everyone and you'll have to pay 3x price on ebay to get it? Today it's graphic cards, tomorrow it'l be that. I mean, just look at idiots hoarding freaking toilet paper. My exaggeration isn't too far off.

Also not untrue.  The big question seems to be what are the unintended consequences of such a move, and can they be mitigated?  How much automated “just in time” buying do companies do? Would such a law affect that? If so, how do you differentiate scalpers from, say, a grocery store?  The definition of wholesale vs retail seems to be a thing here.  One option I can see for the EU would be to use VAT. 

[AlTech]

52 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

This is absolutely ridiculous,

Thank you!

52 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

 

So is this also going to outlaw the automated systems that stores use to order goods from suppliers as well?

 

And if they're saying "gaming consoles and computer components should be available to all customers at no more than the Manufacturer’s Recommended Retail Price", isn't that just price fixing?

 

If I want to buy all the graphics cards, I should be able to.

If I want to use a bot to buy them, I should be able to. 

If I want to then sell them at an egregious mark up, I should be able to

 

If Nvidia doesn't want me to buy all the graphics cards, they should stop me, not the government. 

If Nvidia doesn't want to me use a bot to buy them, they shouldn't let me.

If Nvidia doesn't want me to sell them at an egregious mark up, then that's none of their bloody business, I bought them, they're mine and I can do whatever the F I like with them.

 

As people keep saying, stop buying from the bloody scalpers, if people are buying, they're going to keep selling. You don't need all your rays traced that much!

I completely agree with this and it's just so painful thinking about the outcomes this would cause if it was passed.

 

The road this leads to is honestly just a nightmare dystopia that I hope nobody would want to live in.