How can anyone agree with the author? You can agree with the principle, but not with the facts. These gamers are using the system available to them to its greatest utility. What they are doing IS unethical, possibly even dishonest (due to a lack of full disclosure), but it is NOT "stealing." You cannot steal when something does not yet have an owner.

Consider the following excellent article from the Warcraft Hunter's Union, which offers this: "A loot system – indeed any system – should be designed to encourage the behavior you want."

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/10/abusing-guild-systems/

The current loot system is promoting the behavior described. To prevent this type of unethical behavior would require no less than a change to the loot system(s) of the game. Consider, the following would resolve this (though both require a master loot system):

1 - A feature allowing a master looter to soulbind items to roll winners.
2 - Force players to trade through the loot master. For example, instead of, "You may trade this item with players that were eligible to loot this item for the next (time remaining)" change it to, "This item may be returned to the loot master for the next (time remaining)."

I'm sure there are other possible solutions, but the two aforementioned spring to mind most readily. Someone last week also mentioned requiring winners to use a cheap enchant to bind the item, but this relies on an appropriate response from the recipient, rather than the distributor, which does not prevent abuse from occurring (grab item, log out, change names, change servers, whatever - people are nuts).

Regardless, this is why it is so very important to roll really, really hard.