Online auction site eBay has announced it will allow people to sell tickets to Al Gore's Live Earth concerts, but with the proviso that sellers donate 20% of any sale to charity. Presumably it would be more in the spirit of the event to force sellers to go without electricity for 48 hours, though I suppose the seller might want to have their PC on to monitor the bids, so that might not work.
As previously reported, 203,000 people pre-registered for tickets to the London leg of the global warming awareness fest, of which 30,000 have been randomly selected - and will be able to buy a pair of tickets for £55 each. Given those stats, demand is clearly high for the event, which is set to include worthy warblings from James Blunt, Keane and Genesis, which, of course, means that tickets will inevitably end up for sale at prices considerably higher than the £55 face value price on eBay. In fact within an hour of the lucky registrants finding out that they had got access to the tickets yesterday, some tickets were already on sale on the auction site for up to £300 each.
Commenting on the decision to allow the resale of Live Earth tickets on their site, but with the proviso 20% of the money goes to a climate change organisation, most likely the Stop Climate Chaos body involved in the Live Earth project, an eBay spokesman said yesterday: "Although the charity will have benefited from the original sale of the ticket, we think it makes sense to use our charity fundraising programme to ensure that good causes benefit from the resale of any spare tickets on the site. As a result, users who decide to resell their tickets will be required to donate at least 20% of the final sale price to good causes through our charity fundraising platform".
Commenting on that decision, Live Earth UK's Marianne Troup told reporters: "This is an independent decision by eBay and we are not involved with it. While we acknowledge the charity donation we are not comfortable with people making money from what is a social issue".
As previously reported, eBay banned the resale of Live 8 tickets back in 2005 after lots of ranting by Bob Geldof, and banned the resale of tickets for the Diana Wembley bash this summer as soon as tickets were on the market. Which presumably means that while it's wrong to profit from poverty and dead former royals, it is OK to profit from rising sea levels, widespread flooding, increased droughts, the mass displacement of peoples in climatically sensitive parts of the world, and the ultimate causation of a new ice age that will wipe out the human race. Which is good to know.