I didn't know there was a law against scalping tickets. No national law that I know of. But apparently there is a 1997 Quezon City ordinance (No. 493) that criminalizes scalping. After a "buy-bust" operation, 6 persons including an Araneta Coliseum security guard, were arrested by the NBI for selling tickets to the forthcoming Ateneo-La Salle UAAP championship game. From ABS-CBN News:
NBI agents acted as poser-buyers wherein they pretended to buy patron tickets for the La Salle vs. FEU and Ateneo vs. UE games. A certain "Bong" offered the patron tickets originally priced at P250 for P4,000.T
The agent pretended to agree on the said amount and the exchange was set at the LRT Katipunan Station. Recovered were two patron tickets.
After his arrest, a follow-up operation was conducted leading to Bong's source. A certain "Taba" was again arrested for selling another agent Upper Box tickets originally priced at P150 for P700. xxx
Upper Box A tickets priced at P150 were sold for P1,000 while Upper Box B tickets priced at P95 for P500. General Admission tickets priced at P55 were sold for P300.
Free market hawks would probably frown over the notion that scalping is a crime, since the act exhibits the creativity and productivity unleashed by the law of supply and demand and the desire for profit. New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg has defended scalpers, saying "I think the most important thing is they make the tickets available fairly to anyone who gets in line. And then if you buy a ticket and you want to resell it, you know, what's wrong with that." Former New York governor Elliot Spitzer has also observed: "Ticket scalping laws historically have not worked. I think permitting a free market to work its magic there is the smart approach." The libertarian Cato Institute published a paper titled "The Folly of Anti-Scalping Laws" that criticized penal laws against the practice and recommended legalized scalping at the event site. Still, contrary to these arguments is the claim that scalping artificially and excessively inflates market prices.
This is not scalping in the strictest sense, but I remember the protagonist in Krzysztof Kieslowski's White engaging in a money-making scheme that was sort of like scalping (involving land), which earned him a fortune, which he then expended in a scheme to seek vengeance on his wife. Kieslowski's favorite screenwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz who also wrote the Three Colors Trilogy and Dekalog, was also a trial lawyer, and I have noticed the special delights set forth by those films for lawyers.
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