Brett raises a good point as well

Brett agrees with my most recent dissertation on Rotisserie ethics, but adds another wrinkle I should have thought of:

I...will likely propose a rule that says that players who were released at, say, 9pm or later on the day of our free agent pickups (the program runs at midnight) are ineligible to be picked up until next week.

Brett is talking about his own league, where he is Commissioner. His league uses a weekly FAAB process, but permits released players to appear in the free agent pool right away. For example, in both A.L. leagues I'm in, if I want to activate John Smith off of the DL I have to wait until the beginning of the next transaction period. As a result, the player I released wouldn't be available until the following week. In Brett's league, that DLed player can be activated immediately...so the player who is cut for that player also shows up as a free agent immediately.

In theory, this does allow for the kind of trades that Anonymous proposed. It is somewhat more difficult in practice, since you would need to have:

1) 10-11 other owners who aren't on-line or paying close attention to the free agent pool right up against the deadline
OR
2) Two owners with the most FAAB (since these owners could essentially control the process regardless of when the players were released).

But it could happen, particularly under scenario #2 as outlined above.

I do think in leagues that allow players to be dropped right away should have some sort of mechanism like Brett mentions. I would probably go even further than Brett and set a 24-hour window on these types of moves. Any player dropped less than 24 hours before the end of the transaction reporting period cannot be FAABed that week....or something along these lines.