The Wacky Letter Version of an Arms Race?

Does anybody else find this to be as irritating as I do?  At websites like Ticketmaster and other online ticket sellers, you are required to perform a "word verification" procedure with "words" written in such wacky "letters" that it makes the "word" virtually unreadable, like in the examples above.  It sometimes takes three or four attempts for me to type a "word" correctly, and even then it seems like I am mostly just guessing, as if there might actually be multiple acceptable "words." 

There's actually a more technical term for trying to read unreadable wacky letters, it's called CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) which is "a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person."

The "wacky word" verification known as CAPTCHA is therefore an attempt to stop ticket purchases using "ticket bot software" and verify that it's an actual person buying the ticket.  However, ticket software companies like TicketBots (available here for $990) claim their products have a "CAPTCHA bypass" feature to somehow get around the word verification requirement.  

So it must be like a "wacky letter" version of an "arms race," where Ticketmaster and other online ticket sellers try to stay one step ahead of the "CAPTCHA bypass" features of the bot software by making the letters wackier and wackier to the point that they are now mostly  unreadable?  And if the "CAPTCHA bypass" features of the bot software actually work, it appears that the bot software is winning the "wacky letter race."     

Comments welcome.