Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers and an award-winning singer yesterday called for increased penalties for ticket scalping, saying the practice has hurt sales and the rights of concert-goers.
Hoklo signer Weng Li-you (翁立友), who is to give a concert at the Taipei Arena on Sept. 2, said scalping had affected his fans.
A Web site allegedly operated by scalpers is asking for NT$20,000 (US$656) for a ticket to Weng’s concert that has a face value of NT$5,800, Weng said.
“Some fans save up their money for the first concert of their lives, but end up being cheated into buying from scalpers,” Weng said.
The Hoklo pop market is shrinking and measures have to be taken to ensure that tickets are available at the correct prices, he said.
“Taiwanese have long been silent [about the practice], but I feel I should stand up against [scalping],” he said.
Scalpers have also reportedly profited from reselling tickets to see British band Coldplay, and Mando-pop stars Jay Chou (周杰倫) and A-mei (張惠妹).
DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said the party would propose amendments to increase fines for reselling tickets from a maximum of NT$18,000 to a maximum of NT$1 million.
Scalpers would be fined five to 30 times the cost of the ticket being illegally sold in accordance with penalties for people convicted of scalping train tickets, Wu said.
Tech-savvy scalpers have moved from lining up to buy tickets to obtaining them in bulk online using malware to disrupt ticketing systems, which harms consumers’ rights, DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) said.
The US has its Better Online Ticket Sales Act to target such cybercrime and Taiwan should have a similar law in place, Hsu said.
The live-music industry has an annual value of NT$5 billion and the government should complete the regulatory system to ensure the development of cultural industries, he said.
The use of malware to buy tickets would be subject to criminal punishment, the Ministry of Culture said, adding that it is drafting a law to stem scalping.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater