Greetings, I happen to be one of the first people to have written code to auto-invite for enchanting.
The very first version of my code was used on my rogue Nagee-Herod around the release of BWL. For the last 2 1/2 years I have run my code with no issues, and have only released it to a handful of other people to prevent it from becoming too much of an annoyance to others.
In all of that time I have been reported numerous times for “botting”. The problem is, I am not in fact botting. Every enchant I have done, every spell I have cast, every trade window I have opened has been me manually clicking. Auto-Invites have existed for 16+ years for starting raids. Addons reading chat for various things have existed for just as long if not longer.
The whole point of my code was to allow me to be lazy. I didn’t like spamming trade chat, and I really really didn’t like having to speed read trade chat. On top of that, enchant spam cant contain all of your enchants … and by trying to fit as much info as you can into one message you create an eye sore that no one really wants to read anyway. Also trade chat has lots of conversations and randomness that has nothing to do with sales … and reading it for multiple hours at a time was painful. So, I wrote myself some code to scan chat and flag messages in chat that matched a specific set of criteria. My code would then highlight the chat, as well as send this person a whisper and an invite.
In all of preBC people of Herod largely enjoyed my presence and the fruits of my labor … because not only did it allow ME to be lazy, but it allowed THEM to be lazy by only having to spam once to get the enchant they needed. On top of this, I did all enchants for FREE with tips being optional. I didnt write the code to get rich, I didnt write the code to dominate the market … I wrote it because velums where not a thing yet and searching for enchanters / enchantees in chat was annoying.
The problems only started when:
a) everyone decided that enchanting should be the primary prof for TBC
b) everyone wanted to turn a profit w/ little to no effort before Velums existed
So, in terms of your first concern of it being “completely unfair” … um, sorry? Its a free market, and thus fair isnt nor has it ever been a thing.
In terms of your second concern “its automation” … not really. As I said before, bliz provides api to do a great many things and only has issues with things that automate spells / combat … of which I am doing neither.
And the third point, which you have yet to even consider … all of this is temporary and completely resolved at the release of Wrath when Velums become a part of the game. If bliz wanted to stop any of this, they would not mess with the api at all … rather they would just add Velums and/or the ability to link a profession spellbook into the game early.
PS - the auto inviter is only one of the pieces of code that I have written … I also wrote https://wago.io/17ZQgjA3y to aid in my enchanting endeavors and share it openly to assist all enchanters.