This last caveat leads to an interesting economic question. As noted above, retail prices for CAPTCHA-
solving vary over a wide range, from about $1 per thousand to $20 per thousand. This price spread, and
the fact that it’s technically feasible to route a CAPTCHA through the system more than once, suggests a
major arbitrage opportunity. We can set up a high-price CAPTCHA service and farm out all the actual work to
low-price competitors. In a free economy—and what economy could be freer of regulation than a criminal
one?—that situation is not supposed to endure.
