For the next few weeks, Barack Obama is still the President of the United States, which means we might still get a few more new laws that are not absolute bullshit. Case in point: Yesterday, as Endgadget reports, the President signed the Better Online Ticket Sales act into law. The BOTS act -- see what they did there? -- makes it illegal to use automated software to buy up tickets to events. Those bots are a huge part of the reason you can't get good seats to big, popular shows without dumping huge amounts of money on the secondary ticket market.
Under the new law, people will only be able to use those bots to buy a specified number of tickets, and they will not be allowed to sell any tickets bought with a bot. Anyone who knows how the tickets were purchased is liable for the offense; it's not just limited to the person who used the bot to buy the tickets. And state governments will have the power to sue to get restitution for their affected residents.
