jayeff

I don't get the implied logic that if something cannot be wiped out, that somehow implies legitimacy and/or that fighting it is a waste of time. Should we fire our police forces and send every lobbyist home?

It is impossible to prevent people attempting to prey on others and many victims wouldn't react if you jabbed them with a cattle prod. The point of attempting to make people care, can only be to reduce the impact and reach of the vultures. Above all, to prevent their practises being seen as legitimate and thus becoming even more commonplace.

Right now in this industry it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that too many have earned too much money, too easily. How else do you explain apparently smart people not caring about things which undermine or threaten to undermine their businesses? Perhaps some use the excuse that they are not specifically targeted by the current crop of "tricks", but is it really so hard to grasp the concept that their good fortune is unlikely to hold tomorrow and next week, next year?

The fact that technology makes something possible and the law may not have caught up, does not make everything legitimate. There will always be a fine line between acceptable competition and - to all practical intents and purposes - theft of business, but without that line, everyone is vulnerable and ultimately the only beneficiaries are the people running the scams. The greatest damage is not even caused by the scams themselves, but because of the amount of effort we have to divert into protecting ourselves, instead of being able to stay focused on our real business.