By Alfred Branch, Jr.

Van Halen may have figured out a way to put the “diamond” into Diamond David Lee Roth’s nickname.

Following the lead of Beyonce and Lynyrd Skynyrd/Hank Williams, Jr., it appears that the veteran rockers may be scalping dozens of tickets for their upcoming 2008 shows, based on a review of Ticketmaster’sTicketExchange website. The band’s current tour, featuring the return of Roth on vocals with Eddie, Alex and Wolfgang Van Halen, has been one of the top-selling tours all year, according to TicketNews’ weekly ranking of leading concerts.

By Alfred Branch, Jr.

A district court judge in Massachusetts has ruled that a state ticket brokerage violated anti-scalping laws in 2005 when tried to charge $500 for an $85 Boston Red Sox ticket. The decision calls into question a recent attempt by legislators to legalize ticket reselling in the state.

Judge Mark S. Coven ordered Admit One Ticket Agency pay damages of $25 to consumer activist Colman Herman, who actually never purchased a ticket, according to Admit One’s attorneys. According to the judge’s decision, the ticketer essentially cannot pass along what it deemed excessive fees and costs for a ticket onto the customer.

The state’s current law prohibits the resale of event tickets for more than a couple of dollars above face value, but State Rep. Michael Rodrigues has drafted a bill that would eliminate all restrictions on the amount that brokers or individuals can charge to resell a ticket.

Several decades ago, the popular image of the English ticket scalper, or “tout”, described a shady character in a long raincoat and trilby, snaking his way through the hordes of soccer fans outside major stadiums, whispering to people in slang about spare tickets. Touts were believed to be loosely connected to the London underworld, and their contacts ranged from the ground staff, stewards, and players of major soccer clubs, to the guys manning the hot-dog stands, to shady gangster figures with long tentacles somewhere in the private clubs of the city. It was a complex and mysterious world, one which the average customer, or “punter”, didn’t particularly wish to visit.

By the early 1980s, ticket touting had tightly dovetailed to other illicit activities around England, particularly in the northwestern cities of Liverpool and Manchester. The northwest was, and still is, a hotbed of organized crime, and a manufacturing hub not only for event tickets, but also for counterfeit perfume, watches and clothing. Much of the merchandise was imported from abroad, and fake goods came to be known as “Jekyll”, which comes from the term “Jekyll and Hyde”, which rhymes with “snide”, the actual slang word for counterfeit goods.

The crowds pouring into the tennis center blocked their view of the warning signs, and the print on the back of their United States Open tickets was too small for their middle-aged eyes to decipher. So when a man approached them and offered to buy their extra tickets, they did not know that New York State law says that they have to be 1,500 feet away from the site. . .