Orin Kerr writes of a young lawyer who is sending mass emails to friends to download his new article so that his ssrn count will impress law review editors this month.  (Orin gallantly redacts the author's name, but commenters, including Kate Litvak, call for shining a little sunlight on this gamer.) 

First of all, I'm too backward to be a gamer.  I'm still living by advice from Eugene Volokh that's 18 months old not to post on ssrn until I have an offer from a law review.  Never did it occur to me to post first, send out later. 

Second, I'm now also worried about the ssrn slippery slope.  As the commenters point out, the most unethical thing to do would be to create a software program to download your article.  The second most unethical thing to do seems to be to spam your friends and beg/offer prizes for downloading.  What about posting your own link on your blog, mentioning nothing about submission season, but hoping, hoping, hoping?  What about sending your link to all your blogger friends/blogger acquaintances/blogger heros, asking for a link (again, not mentioning ulterior motive)?  Obviously, there's a gap between Orin's acquaintance who openly begs for downloads (not reads, just downloads) to game the system and the other mixed-motive strategies, but where do we draw the line?

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