If they were open, it would be a lot better (considering all the training is done by volunteers, too)
If they want to make a profit from me, they should pay me, or they can license correct CAPTCHA results from me under GPL.
A healthy system needs some kind of motivation. In economies, that is profits/money. What's wrong with that? (I know I am being simplistic here but...)
When doing a captcha, I don't really get anything. It's something I have to do because the website I'm using has the problem that they can't find a better way to identify bots. So I do a captcha, fine. But, if there's benefits for whatever company offers them, i.e. I'm doing work for them without getting anything in return, or without everybody getting anything in return (the GPL option), then I'm again not so happy.
Simple.
I buy a thing, I get something – in that moment the contract is over.
VW doesn’t come to me every 3 days with "You bought a car, to continue using it, take this and drive to Hanover and deliver it there".
When I bought my computer, or its parts, I bought them, I put them together, and that’s it. The manufacturer has never asked me to do work for them, or pay for them again.
I use ARCH Linux and Firefox – projects done by volunteers, and they profit by having a better product for themselves and others.
Google profits from ads, and from selling data. That’s a tradeoff, and a reason for me to try to use as few Google products as possible.
But when government organizations use ReCaptcha, and I have to work without pay for Google, then I have no choice, and it is not something I agree with.
This ended, and all trace of public good was erased (Check archive.org if you dont believe me) when Google execs mandated that only things that made money can be supported.
I just had a chat with our book guy today about OCR corrections using captchas, one of our volunteers suggested it. We expect to scan 500,000-700,000 books this year.