[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Charbax

There are ways to measure popularity on the Internet which are pretty much infallible. They are in fact much more precise than whatever audience measurements Radio, TV, Newspapers, Libraries and Museums have been using for decades. In fact, computer and Internet based statistics can be 10s of thousands of times more precise and more representative of the real actual audiences.

"Tens of thousands?" Got any real statistics to back that up, or did you pull that number out of thin air?

Again, spambots don't work. There are other things on the Internet than just anonymous web hits and anonymous posts. The Internet can perfectly enable registration of users, even the verification of the real identity of users through very advanced "Human tests"

Yes... for those people willing to register for services.

And all internet popularity contests show is what's popular online... it cannot show what people are reading or watching offline. And a number of people are paranoid about online registrations, especially government ones (sometimes with good reason), and would not be willing to jump through whatever digital hoops are required to rate various artists.

and pretty secure identity verification systems using credit cards or real postal adresses or other real ID verification processes.

It's nice to see someone who trusts all government agencies with their personal data.

For example Google has their algorithms that lets them know with 99.999999% certainty that Gmail users are real and unique real people.

And it works--for those who want to use Gmail. My tax dollars don't support Gmail. Taking money from *everyone* to support a small group, no matter how worthy a group, will get plenty of complaints from people who aren't online (about 40% of the US population).

And which would be completely ridiculous to suggest that cheaters would go through such efforts to spam and try to cheat the system.

There's not much reason to create spambot gmail accounts. There IS a reason to create spambot "taxpaying voter" accounts, who get a voice in allocating tax dollars.

It makes really no sense to insist that all Internet systems are spamable and gamable.

Of course they're not. However, the more reward for gaming it, the more motivation to find a way to do so. Getting to decide which artists get tax subsidies is a substantial reward, much larger than is available for having a few hundred throwaway gmail accounts.

At the very least, someone will have the bright idea of collecting names & addresses of people not connected online, and creating their "votes." How do you propose this will be prevented?