Can i copy events for free?

[Lewis-Hayward]

I am starting an event advertising business similar to EventBrite.

My question is, if i find an event local to me, can i copy the details and upload it for free (i wont be making money on it as i make money from selling adverts) this would just allow me to start the website with some events.

Do i need their permission or will it be copyrighted information?

Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Appreciate all advice.

 

[STDFR33]

You should get their permission.

 

[fisicx]

Ask permission.

And dont try to compete with eventbrite. Do something different so you aren’t a clone. Maybe just stay local or only list one type of event.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

All printed work is copyrighted regardless of the (c) logo being missing

 

[TODonnell]

I think you could rejig the text by hand. Then it wouldn't violate copyright.

e.g. if 'Outrageou5 Scunner5' are playing at 9pm at the Dog And Nitro on Tuesday Night, who can copyright that fact?

It's just the text that's copyright. Even the band and venue logo's isn't really, if you're promoting their event, for free in this sense:

Who would, realistically, object?

 

[STDFR33]

Who would, realistically, object?

Someone that doesn't want their brand being associated with a particular organisation.

 

[Nord20]

I, for one, would and have objected to someone doing almost exactly this with some of our events. They just copied it from our website, managed to get the details completely wrong, then informed us they'd found an 'interested' customer and demanded a share of ticket price.

You can imagine I wasn't best pleased and would certainly not want to work with someone like that.

The point is - those people who's events you are going to 'lift' are your potential customers, and just taking their information without having the decency to ask permission first is just plain rude, and that's not a great starting point for a business relationship.

Find the events you want to use to kickstart your site, then ask them if you can provide your services to them for free to demonstrate the value to them in the hopes they will agree to pay for your services in the future, once their utility has been proven.

Best of luck!

 

[TODonnell]

I think the OP just wants something to put in his website, as he's just starting out i.e. some filler copy.

If he was continuously scraping someone else's site, unaltered, that would be bad form, and a copyright breach.

... They just copied it from our website, managed to get the details completely wrong, then informed us they'd found an 'interested' customer and demanded a share of ticket price.

That last bit was just cheeky.

I dunno. When I was doing The Music many years ago I'd have been happy if anyone pushed my gigs for me. Promotion is hard work.

I mean, can a listings site legally or morally say "You can't copy this public info about public forthcoming events, even if you change the text entirely?"

Maybe I'm missing something about this listings business in 2018.

Does https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/ get a % of sales, or do they take the entire ticket fee themselves and give the organisers a % of that, or buy a % of the tickets available upfront themselves?

Looks like they get the full whack themselves? https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/writ...s-8-weeks-tickets-44362931723?aff=es2#tickets

 

[Nord20]

Hi TODonnell,

Eventbrite, much like Groupon, sell the tickets on the event organisers behalf (i.e. people buy the tickets direct from eventbrite), then charge a fee to the event organiser.

This neatly sidesteps having to foot the VAT element of the ticket sale - the sale is the organisers and they have to pay 100% of the VAT on it. They then get a bill from eventbrite for a percentage of the value of the ticket sold, and Eventbrite, therefore, only charge VAT on their fee (which the event organisers can then offset against their own VAT liability).

I guess it comes down to knowing where your children are late at night - I'm more than happy to work with partners who specialise in marketing and whose platforms I can see help us sell tickets. What I don't appreciate is people taking it upon themselves to essentially represent us, without ever actually communicating with us at all.

It gives us a problem when we have a potential client, who have found out about us from an unauthorised marketer, who we then have to essentially ditch as we can't communicate with them directly (don't know who they are) and so their first interaction with us is a negative one - by lieu of the fact they can't get the tickets they wanted from the place they found them and we can't point them in the right direction.

There is a certain element of 'muddying the waters' when your event suddenly appears on countless sites over which you have no control and most of whom are not authorised to promote and sell your event.

 

[TODonnell]

Ah, I see. Duff sites generate bothersome queries.

Can't you just develop some boilerplate response (sorry, we are not associated with the marketer ...) and take the sale direct yourself? Even give a % off?

Ah, you'd have to have your own Ecommerce site. I see. And people will screech if they don't get their Special Deal, I guess.

Yes, it would be smart to try and hook up with the promoter first, to save faffing around. I mean, affiliate software must be so well developed by now it should be easy-ish to be a 'pseudo-reseller', legitimately.

 

[Nord20]

Would love to, but we never know who the actual person enquiring is (that's how the platforms make their money - they sandwich themselves between you and your customers).

And we do have an ecommerce site, people can come to us directly to buy tickets. But we then have to compete for Google rankings with all these re-sellers!

Basically, their business model is "pay us a percent of your ticket price to get access to customers who were looking for your event, but found us instead because we made sure we appeared first when someone looked for your event".