[ikeboy]

>This type of attack hurts multiple targets as well: the ecommerce site has real frustrated users who can’t purchase the in demand item. The real users who are losing out on inventory to an attacker who is just there to skim off the largest profit possible. And the unwitting users who are part of the botnet have their resources, such as their home broadband connection, used without their consent or knowledge.

Have you run this by an economist? It's pretty basic economics that "scalping" increases consumer welfare, despite your cursory claim to the contrary.

If the IPs are part of a botnet, that's one thing. But the biggest residential IP network is luminati, which does have consent for their IPs.

[nullstyle]

> It's pretty basic economics that "scalping" increases consumer welfare, despite your cursory claim to the contrary.

Citations needed.

Here's some reading info and links for you to illustrate that you're comments are ignorant of several dimensions of the discussion: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/6576/is-scalpi...

[ikeboy]

All of the comments there either agree with me or are talking about non-economic factors. E.g. the first one explicitly says it's not about economic harm. The second says they're taking producer surplus, which is correct if you interpret that as potential surplus had the producers priced higher. The third one also explicitly points out that it's not being looked at from an economic perspective.