The Federal Trade Commission and a Maryland-based ticket selling firm are locked in a legal fight that could reshape the ticket resale industry — and determine how far the government can go in policing alleged “bot” activity in the live events market.

At the heart of the dispute is a disagreement of what constitutes the use of bots. Most in the ticketing industry agree that bot usage involves using scripted programs to jump the line during popular ticket sales and automatically buy up tickets, often overwhelming sites like Ticketmaster to keep other buyers out. But lawyers for the government argue that any software that allows a single user to operate multiple Ticketmaster accounts simultaneously could be considered a bot.

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