Daily Archives: September 7, 2014

HB 5108 Fights Crony Capitalism, Protects Personal Property Rights

You bought it...you own it!

Tickets

It doesn’t matter the industry impacted or how long a law has been on the books. Any law that restricts our personal property rights in favor of crony capitalism should be abolished. That’s why lawmakers need to take action on House Bill 5108.

Right now, if you try to re-sell your sports or entertainment ticket above face value, you are a criminal under Michigan law. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to unload a couple of tickets from your season ticket package or whether you can no longer go to that concert and only want to sell your tickets for face value plus “convenience fees.”

That is, unless you use a specially-designated “vendor” given a monopoly by the team or venue over all ticket resales. Companies like StubHub and Ticketmaster are milking honest fans by tacking on additional fees just for the “right” to resell a ticket that you already own and are turning around and paying a kickback to the venue for their state-protected monopoly.

House Bill 5108 will end this ridiculous law and open the secondary ticket market up to be more fair and free – everybody will have the same rights and nobody is forced to break the law or pay additional fees just to resell their own property.

The House passed the bill in the spring. And given the Republican supermajority in the Senate you would think this bill would be a slam dunk, right? Apparently not because the bill has been stuck in committee for months.

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