The question is: how?

The sentiment (in the US, at least) still seems to be towards less regulation at the moment. Enforcing ethics as well as laws would seem to require even more regulation, unless you have a magic potion that will convince all business directors to self-regulate all at once!

Regulations are only as ethical as the regulator -- just ask Bernie Madoff's victims how well that worked. Indeed, more regulation leads to a false sense of security, and certainly stifles innovation.

Better to have the market, and market players like TechCrunch, sort out this type of low-level malfeasance.

I am definitely not advocating more regulation, only pointing out that laws and ethics are not the same thing. The parent of the above post is the one suggesting to "change that" (implying more regulation) and I am answering that comment.

I agree that this kind of "malfeasance" is not really worth any more attention from regulators.

But then you'd have to have a financial reward system in place that rewards ethical firms.

I don't know how you would do that.

It's called refusing to do business with people who are ethically challenged.

reputation.

If we socially scorn businesspeople who only focus on extracting value without adding any, if programmers who work at those sorts of companies feel ashamed rather than proud, we won't eliminate the behavior, but we can certainly make it more expensive.