This slashdot comment from pete-classic is spot-on.

There is a more fundamental problem with advertising.
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When the users of a service pay for the service, they are the customers, and the service is the product. When advertisers pay for a service, they are the customers, and the users are the product. The service itself is relegated to a loss-leader; bait to attract users so they can be sold to the advertisers.
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This is one of the primary reasons why TV is such a wasteland, while the DVD landscape is so rich.

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every time I try to tell my myspace/friendster friends why I don’t trust the service, most don’t understand. So there it is!
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P.S.: I collect bright slashdot comments for quite a while, first by memepalm, then del.icio.us and now by twitter. it’s all about double filtering, heh?

from slashdot:
Developing an overblown DRM system: Millions of dollars.
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Hiring consultants to tell you it’ll really, really work this time after firing all the ones who informed you copy protection is a cryptographic impossibility: Thousands of dollars.
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Paying lawyers to send cease-and-desist letters to thousands of websites after the key leaks: $500/hour.
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Watching yet another DRM scheme go up in flames shortly after its release: Priceless.
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also, check the formerly-known-as Secret Number as Photoshop art, from wired. stupid overpiced suits, just die already.

nothing from the date of the creation of the Mouse will ever enter the public domain.

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slashdot, always.
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more witty, 5 stars, slashdot arguments on my del.icio.us page.

BoberFett at slashdot is right on:
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I’d be more sympathetic with copyright holders if they weren’t such hypocrites. Much of modern copyright issues can be traced to the Disney corporation. Extensions on copyright are directly linked to the expiration of copyright on Mickey Mouse.
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Disney has made billions upon billions of dollars using the “intellectual property” of long dead authors. Do you really think Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, or any of other stories that built the Disney empire were dreamed up by Disney themselves? That didn’t stop them from using the material. Where was their concern for the “protection” of ideas back then?
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Walt Disney is every bit as dead as Hans Christian Anderson, yet if I tried to sell a story about Mickey Mouse I’d have about one week before I found myself assaulted by Disney’s legal department. Why is one protected and not the other?

wish_bot at slashdot:
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Did you think for a moment about your use of the word ‘consumers’? We’re talking about people uploading (possibly) their OWN CONTENT to YouTube, and we call them ‘consumers’? In almost every post these days, when we’re talking about a collective group of persons, the word ‘consumers’ is used.
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There used to be some better words - ‘people‘, ‘citizens’, ‘females under 25′, etc.
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All that this indiscriminate use of the word ‘consumers’ does is reinforce the notion that your sole purpose in life is to consume.
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Stop it with the ‘consumers’ bullshit. Be people again. Give some respect to all these other individuals in the world by calling them ‘people’ too.

The implications [of DRM are] not by being unable to copy a meaningless tune, but by the ability to rewrite history at will. DRM does not only prevent copies. It allows you to retroactively void information, provided you have power over the keys to that information. If an information is no longer to be viewable, it can be erased.

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some comment on slashdot

• How to wrap diagonally
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• Evil Disney
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• /. opinion: disney hipocrisy
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• tableless Video Tutorial - 3 Colunas
  (tags: video tutorial CSS)
• Send large files quickly and easily without clogging up your email
  (tags: tool files lifehacks)
• The Psychology of Cyberspace
  (tags: research reference cool culture)
• Apple - Support - Discussions - Automator
  (tags: automator community reference)