Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I do rise today to support the Better On-line Ticket Sales Act, H.R. 5104, or as you have heard it called today, the BOTS Act. It is bipartisan legislation. Mr. Tonko of New York has done a tremendous job working on this with me. Together, we have worked with the Senators to make certain that we have legislation that can be signed into law that will address a problem that so many of our constituents face. Now, we know it is not going to be something that does everything everyone would want, but we do know this is the first step in working with the FTC making certain that we address these bots. The problem is this: we have some individuals or groups that deploy hacking software--it is called bots. Short for robots, of course--that launch thousands of simultaneous requests for tickets on a ticket site. Now, I am certain many of us have tried to buy a ticket as soon as they go on sale, just as Ms. Schakowsky was talking about the performance of Hamilton. We see this a lot with concerts that are coming into Nashville. You go on. You log on. You want to buy that ticket for that sporting event or for that concert, and the bots overwhelm the site and cherry-pick the very best tickets. Then what do you find? You don't have the ability to purchase a ticket. This has become so frustrating to consumers because they do plan to go on and they do plan to buy that ticket. The site just slows to a crawl, and then when they get through, the tickets are sold out.…”