I think this is a brilliant move. Use up people's time, and give them an activity that benefits both your company and themselves. I see a big oportunity here for startups too!
The term for this is price discrimination. Once you start looking for it, it's hard to stop: especially in luxury products like wine, jets, and investment banking (millions of dollars for "Why, yes, that is a sensible acquisition!" is clearly a luxury product), the entire game is to find people willing to pay ten times as much for the same goods, and figuring out how to make them pay it.
How is this different? :)
Maybe this is different for me because I think of flash and flex as fun and not a job-related technology.