And the bands.
Having worked in the industry for over a decade, the secret motto is "This would be a great business if wasn't for the bands".
The view is generally that they are prima-donnas that dislike selling their product and think they're artists.
Now they've updated it to be both the bands and consumers you have to wonder whether they've realised what they're admitting... that they're just an intermediary.
I'm extremely concerned by Phorm.
Effectively it gives the ISP the ability to remove the adverts that fund 60% of our costs and replace them with adverts for which they would receive the entire revenue stream.
My site is funded by adverts (60%) merchandise (30%) and donations (10%).
I'm fairly sure that the community would step up and purchase more stuff and donate more, but I don't think it's realistic that this could be sustained, whereas the advertising revenue is reasonably constant.
I believe that if Phorm becomes ubiquitous that I would have to question seriously how to find the website, and would probably have to remove all adverts and to seek to have the costs covered exclusively through other means. As I'm unsure of the feasibility of this, I would have to say that in my case the loss of that revenue would threaten my ability to continue running the site, especially under the risk of redundancy in the near/mid future.
I've already implemented the Phorm opt-out cookies, and written to my local MP (who couldn't care less from the generic response I got), so it's great to see the EU step up where the UK seems to have failed.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford