Crowdsourcing & Human Computation

If Google were a nonprofit organization motivated to serve the common good, I would not have a problem with them using games that takes advantage of individual vanity, pride or some other unfulfilled  psychological need to exploit labor out of the unsuspecting. There is no doubt that Google provides a public service to people across the globe, but one must keep in mind that Google primary goal is not to provide millions with email accounts, messaging services, etch but to make a profit. It is great that Google found a way to make what would ordinarily be boring and weary tasks fun and exciting but they are still tasks. There are those who labor at these tasks for over 20 unpaid hours per week. If one discovered a way to make flipping burgers fun and exciting and opened up a restaurant, would one be justified in pocketing all the profit simply because the workers enjoy flipping burgers? The federal and state labor departments would not think so. We are in a period of time where laws have not caught up with technology. Crowdsourcing might one day find its way into the lexicon of America Jurisprudence   

Although Google is stealing labor, technology is still being advanced. Exploiting these workers will make searching the web for information more efficient and effective. The field of artificial intelligence might even be advanced. Still, these achievements could still occur without the exploitation. Crowdsourcing can be good and allow mans’ to revel in altruistic pursues. Working for a nonprofit organization playing a similar game as ESP is not exploit if the profit of ones' labor was used to fund cancer, aids, etch research.