After the somewhat 'heated' exchange of views at the ILMC earlier in the month, Mark Marot, Chairman elect of the Resale Rights Society, said in a keynote MusicTank speech that if the live music industry ignores ticket resale sites they were at risk of doing what the record industry did with downloads - ie taking pricing control out of the hands of the people who actually make the music to new players like Apple's iTunes.

After the somewhat 'heated' exchange of views at the ILMC earlier in the month, Mark Marot, Chairman elect of the Resale Rights Society, said in a keynote MusicTank speech that if the live music industry ignores ticket resale sites they were at risk of doing what the record industry did with downloads - ie taking pricing control out of the hands of the people who actually make the music to new players like Apple's iTunes.

But the boss of secondary ticketing website Viagogo, Eric Baker, called Marot's comparison flawed, observing: "The reason why live music is prospering is that you can't pirate a live event; you're either there or you're not. The tickets have already been paid for; so the primary people, the artists, have already been paid. Therefore, the analogy is misguided."

CMU Daily reports that Baker maintains that because artists and promoters receive their pay from the face value price of the ticket, it is unfair for those people to then expect an additional cut from any mark up earned by a seller on his website (and this view was supported by a member of the audience who noted that whereas when a track was illegally download the record label and publisher (or artist and songwriter) got absolutely nothing, where tickets were sold by a seconday ticketing site, on eBay or by a tout, the artist/promoter had already got the value they set on the ticket - and that the issue of fraud / counterfeit tickets was quite separate. The MP, John Whittingdale, chair of the DCMS Committee, gave an urbane and polished performance pointing out that the issue extended to sporting events a well as festivals and concerts and that only football and the 2012 Olympics would be protected by law.

Whilst most of the UK's live industry have given up on the UK Government ever ever banning ticket re-sales in law, a statement was read out from the National Arenas Association saying that they still oppose the resale websites, arguing that they provide a front for serial ticket touts who are "steeped in fraud" and linked to "organised crime". But Carl Leighton-Pope of talent agency Leighton-Pope Organisation said he thought the live sector needed to find a way to work with rather than try to quash the ticket resale sector, telling the MusicTank audience: "Now that secondary ticketing is here we have to embrace it. Nobody is going to be able to do anything about it, especially if the public wants it".