>> For some people, mostly executives and other business oriented disciplines, this is a fair deal as it is what the free market bears; they do not and will not care about long-term health of the industry, the other side of the stick, or the designer on the line. It just doesn’t click for them, and that’s understandable somewhat because they’ve never been in a similar situation before.
I think you have all your work ahead of you to show that using 99designs and similar sites has any real effect on the "long term health of the industry." Similarly, I don't see how it represents a lack of care for the designer on the line, seeing as to how numerous designers happily use the site themselves.
You say that your problem is not the amount of money, but with the concept of spec work -- "doing work for nothing." And to that I reply that I totally agree. Doing work for nothing is a problem. But you're blaming the wrong person. You should blame the people who choose to do that work, not the people who offer to buy it. Designers are perfectly capable of saying, "No, I don't like doing work that will possibly be for nothing, therefore I won't participate in 99designs." Nobody is holding a gun to any designers' heads and forcing them to apply this questionable business model to their work.
You could argue that it's still unethical on the part of the client, because they're taking advantage of ignorant designers who are unaware that they are entering into an (arguably) bad deal. But that line of reasoning doesn't hold water, because 99designs makes it very clear what the arrangement is. Nobody here is unaware of the risks of doing competitive spec work.
You could also argue that the problem isn't with the designers who participate in spec work, but with how their decision affects the market for desginers who don't want to do that. But if a large number of designers can be persuaded into doing spec work, then some combination of the following facts are true: (a) there are too many designers, (b) there are too few people requesting high quality design. In either case, it means simply designers may not be worth as much as you think they are, in the numbers you think they should be. I hardly think you can call someone's morals into question for not choosing to donate extra money to designers.
Considering the amount of times this turned in the replies to my comment, I probably have made a mistake that made it sound like I am questioning 99designs’ legality. I am not. They are perfectly legal. Designers knowing what they’re getting is what makes them legal—no one is forcing anyone to do anything they do not want to partake in. I should probably edit my comment, but after so many replies, it would break the train of thought so I am leaving it as it is.
What I do is also far enough from the design discussed here to allow me to take this problem as largely an academic one, for disclosure’s sake. I do not work in the market serviced here.
However, I do have a problem with the moral aspect of using spec work—it’s not about free will, that would be a problem of legality, not morality, because our western society decided that free will is an important enough thing to protect that we have laws matching our moralities on that subject. What, then, makes us have laws on minimum wage? There are jobs that can be serviced for lower-minimum wage, there are employers that would gladly offer lower-than-minimum wage, and there surely are people that would take them in a heartbeat. We do have that laws in part because it’s just plain immoral to ask people to work for free or nearly-free even when they know what they’re getting, much to the capitalist’s chagrin, and in part because it would create a race to the bottom on all parts of the society. Designers being offered spec work is just a way smaller-scale version of this. That said, the issue of minimum wage is an open ended question which I am utterly unqualified to comment further on.
>> We do have that laws in part because it’s just plain immoral to ask people to work for free or nearly-free even when they know what they’re getting, much to the capitalist’s chagrin, and in part because it would create a race to the bottom on all parts of the society.
Well, I didn't mean to question the point of minimum wage. For typical salaried jobs, I completely understand and somewhat agree with the notion that it's unethical to pay below a certain amount.
However, I think that freelancing, entrepreneurship, etc, are a different realm. These are not people who've been interviewed, hired, and retained by a company. Instead, they are people who possess (and/or are developing) a set of skills that they hope to exploit on their own via a business model of their choosing. In my opinion, these differences are significant enough to warrant an entirely different set of moral considerations.
Take myself, for example. Today I'm some combination of a web developer, designer, and sysadmin, but I got my start doing pure web design. I was terrible at first. I doubt I could have landed a serious job at a decent company. But I enjoyed doing contract work where I could, and I enjoyed entering design contests as well. If nothing else, they were a chance to work on my skills and creative processes to see how they compared with others. And, best-case scenario, I could make some money while feeling good about winning. It felt like the furthest thing away from being taken advantage of.
I think minimum hourly wage restrictions are bad. Such restrictions hurt low-skilled workers the most, by denying them a change of getting gradual improvement in experience while doing low-paying jobs.
I think you have all your work ahead of you to show that using 99designs and similar sites has any real effect on the "long term health of the industry." Similarly, I don't see how it represents a lack of care for the designer on the line, seeing as to how numerous designers happily use the site themselves.
You say that your problem is not the amount of money, but with the concept of spec work -- "doing work for nothing." And to that I reply that I totally agree. Doing work for nothing is a problem. But you're blaming the wrong person. You should blame the people who choose to do that work, not the people who offer to buy it. Designers are perfectly capable of saying, "No, I don't like doing work that will possibly be for nothing, therefore I won't participate in 99designs." Nobody is holding a gun to any designers' heads and forcing them to apply this questionable business model to their work.
You could argue that it's still unethical on the part of the client, because they're taking advantage of ignorant designers who are unaware that they are entering into an (arguably) bad deal. But that line of reasoning doesn't hold water, because 99designs makes it very clear what the arrangement is. Nobody here is unaware of the risks of doing competitive spec work.
You could also argue that the problem isn't with the designers who participate in spec work, but with how their decision affects the market for desginers who don't want to do that. But if a large number of designers can be persuaded into doing spec work, then some combination of the following facts are true: (a) there are too many designers, (b) there are too few people requesting high quality design. In either case, it means simply designers may not be worth as much as you think they are, in the numbers you think they should be. I hardly think you can call someone's morals into question for not choosing to donate extra money to designers.