Everyone knows it's against the "rules." The fundamental issue people have is that the rules are designed to protect vested interests and large players, not the overall market.
Right. The issue is that on net the "vested interests" who do not (at least overtly) break the rules are much better capitalized and have better technology than guys (relatively speaking) on the margin like this poor fellow. This means that if it was not against the rules, the vested interest would have an open field with the technique too add a tremendous amount of technical and analytical firepower, and easily drive out guys spoofing with off the shelf programs or even simply fast reflexes.
Absolutely which is probably why a lot of the frustration comes from a: protecting the big entities, but also b: removing these rules will end implicitly lead to an end of spoofing via stalemate. It's not even a hard thing to detect as spoofing relies on shocking the order book and exploiting algo's inefficiencies in dealing with this. Once the algos are forced to deal with it spoofing goes away as its no longer profitable and and hence we no longer need the rule.
Anti-spoofing regulations not only fail to safeguard the integrity of the market; they exacerbate the very market instability that lawmakers sought to remedy by enacting the prohibitions in the first place. If front-running is allowed to exist, spoofing is its best remedy.
That's justice folks. An ES spoofer facing 350 years and multiple big banks who had a hand in one of the biggest financial crisis getting bailed out with zero criminal charges.