Quote :

" Organisers say they are taking measures to guard against fake tickets. "In order to ensure safety, prevent fraud and eliminate profit-oriented resale of tickets, state-of-the-art anti-counterfeit technologies will be adopted," said Rong Jun, head of ticketing. "

kind of ironic isn't it?

4/17/2007 9:50:18 PM

ironic? no, not really. hypocritical? maybe
They are protecting one of their own assets. The country and government stand to lose a lot of direct revenue from counterfeit olympic tickets.
They're not losing revenue, except I suppose sales tax or whatever they have, from street vendors selling fake dvds and music.

4/17/2007 10:00:54 PM

^

4/17/2007 10:31:28 PM

that guys rong

4/17/2007 11:36:43 PM

o rry?

4/17/2007 11:53:28 PM

The Chinese view the Olympics as their Debutante Ball, their declaration that they're now a first-class global player. Therefore, anything potentially embarrassing that would cause them to lose face in front of the international press is being aggressively cracked down upon. Large numbers of fraudulent tickets being sold to foreigners, marring the games, falls into that category. I agree though, it is hypocritical. It would be poetic though that the massive counterfeit machine that they've ignored for so long could come back to bite them in the ass.

Of course, when you're a dictatorship reminding their citizens not to embarrass them by selling fake tickets, you could simply extract a forced, public confession of several high profile counterfeiters, place a 7.62x39mm rounds into the back of their heads, bayonet them in case the round didn't do its job, and then charge the cost of the bullets to their families to get the point across as well...

[Edited on April 18, 2007 at 3:29 AM. Reason : .]

4/18/2007 3:28:46 AM

that counterfeit machine you speak of has never been ignored in China, it's more likely that it's 100% state funded.

4/18/2007 6:06:07 AM

the world cup this year was the worst as far as ticketing security. Many tickets went to waste because no one could buy them easily. We got our tickets just barely and tickets to other games were next to impossible.

4/18/2007 4:06:31 PM