Legalize CHI!

In his post http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-03-25-n43.html Phillipp Lenssen suggested an API for requesting human processing of tasks. Later Amazon launced Mechanical Turk, but that has not been properly realized. Perhaps it is difficult for the reasons pointed out by Chris DiBona in a comment on the Mechanical Turk Officially Closed to Non-US Developers thread by Phillipp.

By the way, I have read somewhere that the generic term is crowd sourcing.

Anyways, the point is that Phillipp suggested CHI, and the question is if something similar has been implemented by someone other than Amazon. I would prefer a CHI-like system where also highly specialized qualifications could by put into play internationally using entities similar to HITs and workers similar to Turkers. This requires a huge amount of people using the system from both the task provider and task completer perspective, otherwise the system wil fail for the reasons pointed out in my previous post.

Naturally all the difficulties of money transfers still apply, but this is a problem that should be dealt withpolitically level, parallel to the development of a system that is implemented for use by the entire world from the start. Implementing CHI world-wide would probably be illegal because any number of tax-laws etc. This instantly makes the problem a juridical one, which is why we need a political initiative that can make such an obviously good idea legal across the globe!

Another possibilty is for Amazon to roll out internationally, and make a bundle of money in the process. Perhaps Amazon has not done so because Amazon earn their money by taking a cut of the wages paid for completing HITs, and if the wages for completing HITs are supressed by the level of wages on the global market, Amazon might make less money per hit. Still I think Amazon would make more money overall, but again I'm a computer scientist not a business analyst.