Re:Penny Auctions: They're Gambling
by randallsquared on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:49AM
(#626887)
This type of internet-scamming is going to be increasingly common, and programmers really need an ethical duty not to participate.
It's not clear to me that it's unethical to build a tool that someone could use to harm themselves.
Further, you've just described how this will go on anyway ("censorship as damage" and all that).
Each of these were ways to game the existing regulatory system. Take dollars, contort them in a way that appears new, and loudly declare you aren't subject to any existing regulations. The regulators won't catch up for several years, and by then you've taken whole generations of investors to the cleaners.
Swoopo isn't an auction, it's a raffle. When your school sells 500 $1 raffle tickets for a $100 prize, the raffle buyers understand that the school is going to profit $400 and the kids are going to get to go to band camp, and the government which regulates games of chance has given it a pass (typically, raffles may have to apply for a permit from a government agency, and only bonafide religious, charitable, or education groups are allowed to do it without the heavy regulations applied to casinos and the like).
Swoopo just decided to call themselves a legal auction rather than an illegal raffle, and they're waiting until the regulators catch up with them. Then they'll slightly alter how the scam works, loudly declare this new system is perfectly legal and isn't subject to any existing regulation, and start all over again.
This type of internet-scamming is going to be increasingly common, and programmers really need an ethical duty not to participate. It's like a 3-card monte, or free throw shooting game where the basket is oblong rather than round, but, hey, over the internet.... call it Carnival Scams 2.0. The populace has NO IMMUNITY against this sort of thing so it's going to go through them like swine flu.