On 18 Mar 2013, at 13:43, Matthew Tylee Atkinson wrote:
It is, like anything important, a very grey area. I wonder professionally about what I can say about CAPTCHAs too, as I hate them but they are not necessarily outright and directly discouraged by the standards bodies. For now, I am glad you have been able to reclaim some independence out of this. However I wonder if a non-profit and volunteer-led one could be created for accessibility purposes. I guess that would just make the spam problem worse, though.
After the recent Google claim that they're fighting back against spammers and doing a half-decent job of it, with the resulting near-complete inaccessibility of the Google audio CAPTCHA, this seemed like a good time to reply. :-)
There is the nearly-dead (but free, on a referrer basis, and for Firefox only) CAPTCHA solution service of WebVisum. (If anyone wants a code, let me know and I'll try and get one out of them.) Solona, which was human-based, albeit with "Ordinary" humans as opposed to sweatshop workers, is long dead. I don't see any reason why they couldn't be used for spam, but for now the sign-up process for WebVisum requires a human being to approve initial applicants; I had to tell them about me and my Twitter handle before they would accept my claim, for a second time, the first (indicating only that I wasn't a fucking spammer, using those words, after bleeping) having failed to win them my favourable status as a human being. :-)
Basically, although I agree that the exact extent of CAPTCHA utility is an open question, I also submit that this is merely because, like alternative medicine, its claims are sufficiently provable to justify it as, but perhaps not so great as to actually demonstrate it as, a genuine remedy. My biggest concern remains very much that, like so many things, it's of dubious legality only because the "Status quo" has set a false expectation based on misconceptions, and that it will take yet more exploitation and unpopular action to convince the believers that the people do not in fact largely favour the fiat position. It's also fucking awesome not to solve CAPTCHAs. :-)
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