Are the small number of people depending on Mechanical Turk for real money actually capable of doing regular minimum wage labor? We already have broad exceptions to minimum wage laws that allow the marginally employable (seriously disabled, mostly) to work for less than customary sums of money while also collecting disability benefits.
Having someone who's medically unable to work or who is primarily a full-time caretaker have a home job that makes them a supplemental income on the side, even at $.25/hr, doesn't sound like an unethical or abusive system to me.
(also, turkers who are doing transcription a lot probably know how to do 4x pitch corrected fast forward on their audio player and have a good enough ear for voice to pick out the odd words)
Having someone who's medically unable to work or who is primarily a full-time caretaker have a home job that makes them a supplemental income on the side, even at $.25/hr, doesn't sound like an unethical or abusive system to me.
(also, turkers who are doing transcription a lot probably know how to do 4x pitch corrected fast forward on their audio player and have a good enough ear for voice to pick out the odd words)