That's some astonishingly bad advice.

*whoosh*. It was a joke.

Noted. No need to shout. Thank you so much for setting me straight. Where can I sign up for your "Overcoming Fear of Clarity: Useful Techniques to Maximize Clarity When Using the English Language in Informal Settings" seminar? It sounds really interesting.

In the context of the post it wasn't an all-inclusive term, but referred to 2 parties in an imaginary conversation, myself and Google. Often a prelude to talking things over and working something out.

Not YouTube's problem, is it? Viewers find videos like they find anything else, by looking for them in the places where the videos are. My grocery store doesn't tell me where I can find related groceries not in the store. I go to several stores in the area and learn what each has that distinguishes them from the other. I go to the store that has the best produce/meat/seafood/organic/whatever when I want that thing. I don't consider Stop-n-Shop evil because I have to shop at other places depending on what I want.

So what do you make money from if I become a Google Fiber customer? That's what I'm concerned about. If it's just the fair-market cost of the service I'm paying for, then that's fine. If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.

Not quite true. I'd shop at a dozen different mom-and-pop stores if it gave me the opportunity to purchase what I wanted at a price acceptable to me. As a bonus I get to know some new people. Amazon isn't preferable because they same me time and gas money but because they are universally less expensive than mom-and-pop and almost always have what I was looking for. Mom and pop need an Amazon-like entity more than I do, because they can't match what Amazon can do at scale.

I may be somewhat intelligent, but I'm biased so not the best judge. Thanks for noticing though. My family, friends and community members might assert otherwise, but I try my best. My greatest triumph was my teenaged daughter who recently declared that "You're pretty smart, dad". If you have or have had teenaged children, you'll know that such an unsolicited statement is as rare as winning the lottery and shockingly gratifying. And fleeting because you're destined to be a clueless dumbass a few minutes later. :-)

I question your premise that the existence of something that couples users to YouTube equates to a blanket condemnation of the service as evil and exploitative. The above-mentioned daughter has a YouTube account to which she posts videos, so you could declare she was "coupled" to the service, but she's not forced to use it and she can post the same videos anywhere else she wants without worrying about exclusivity restrictions. Anyone at all can view videos posted to YouTube without restriction or being coupled to YouTube. I don't deny that the ease of posting videos and the fact that the potential audience is unlimited and unrestricted might bring back repeat users regardless of the quality of the service (whatever that means), but you haven't made a case for why that is bad. Sounds like a desirable feature to me. And those features are available without the element of coercion that so many other services seem to deem obligatory.

So please elaborate what it is you want me to see, because I'm not seeing the evil you apparently think is the defining attribute of the service. YouTube brings back repeat users because of the quality of the service. There seems to be little else of a coercive nature that "forces" users to use the service, either as content providers or enjoyers of content. YouTube is as "take it or leave it" as the internet itself. View the videos or don't. Where is the evil?

Greetings Bob9113.

Please forgive me if I disregard all your academic arguments about economic philosophy that are based on one term I used ("free market") because that was the most concise term I could think of using the english language. There is no dogmatic and irrational belief in lassaiz faire at work here.

I'm not sure what features YouTube has that couple users to it, because I've never had a YouTube account, yet I can go to YouTube and watch absolutely anything (with the exception of a few vexing restrictions when using a mobile device). I'm not forced to use YouTube for anything, and plenty of videos I watch are provided by services other than YouTube. Lots of stuff is on YouTube, but I don't feel particularly coupled to it. In fact, I'd classify YouTube as the most uncoupled service on the internet because I am not forced to be a YouTube user in any way, yet I can watch any YouTube video I wish on just about any device I own.

More importantly, I can choose to NOT watch YouTube videos, and there is plenty of interesting information out there that does not use YouTube.

I'm not seeing the closed market you are describing, at least with respect to YouTube. I DO see a closed market with other services that require me to use that service exclusively to see something, but YouTube has been pretty egalitarian in my experience.

So what is your point exactly, and what service do you use that is more free than YouTube?

Nonsense.

Google spends time, effort and resource to create the infrastructure for a music streaming service that requires daily, constant effort to maintain, and so gets to define the terms.

Musicians spend a few hours/days/weeks/months/years creating songs, then look for ways to milk that brief period of productivity for a lifetime (and for their descendants or estates as well, because copyright).

What musicians don't do: create their own music streaming service built on their own terms and funded by them, asking for the fees they sincerly believe they deserve. And then test it in the free marketplace and discover what the true value of their work actually is. And adjust their model until they have come up with a viable and sustainable business. That's what musicians don't do.

Yet when someone else does all the work for them but actually wants to get something for THEIR effort that actually reflects the cost and effort involved, it's evil and exploitative.

Strong arming? Threat? De-listing? Bullshit. Use the music service someone else created for you, find another that suits you better, or create your own. That should be how things work in a free market.

I can't blame those who are actually doing the hard work for refusing to cater to the exaggerated sense of entitlement that pervades the culture of 'creatives'. For every artist that is sitting on their duff crying out about the unfairness of these services, there are probably a hundred hard working people that get up every single day to collect their tiny paycheck in order to make that service viable so the artists can reap the rich benefits they think they are due.

Indeed. You could probably find plenty of volunteers right on this site. In fact, I'll go first and point out that Linus never uses ALL CAPS to repeatedly berate someone. He wields his derision as a surgeon wields a scalpel, using proper english and punctuation and rarely if ever repeats himself.

Stupid git. :-)

More importantly, does the fact that you declined the privacy policy mean that the services function without gathering your personal information or is it gathered regardless of your preference? In a way, the behavior of LG is more honest, since they have to spend money and resources to make the 'smart' services work. If you're not paying a subscription, you're paying with your valuable private information. I suspect that information is too valuable for other vendors like Samsung to ignore despite the pesky fact that you declined to accept the privacy policy. That's a revenue stream they just can't ignore, since there seems to be little consequence if they do, unless some government or lawyer decides to make something of it.

"Mmm, bacon ..."

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki......

Shockingly, maybe decent people inside BT that are of the opinion that child pr0n is vile and shouldn't exist thought that filtering might be a way to keep vile people from accessing this material easily. Even for-profit companies engage in activities not directly related to profit, whether contributing to charities (eg. sponsoring events, matching employee contributions etc), supporting the local communitiy and so forth. Companies are made up of people, and many of those people want to do good in the world. I'm not sure filtering is the most effective way to combat child abuse, but I can understand why people might want to give it a try. At the very least they make it harder for people to use their facilities (the network, in this case) to contribute to something they find wrong.

Your statement if altered slightly to reflect the perspective of the NSA and the US government might actually provide insight into the reason behind the outlash against Edward Snowden. One would presume such tampering isn't done wholesale because doing so on an industrial scale is not feasible. Yet. And because ubiquitous tampering would be detected by security researchers so the majority of devices on the market should remain untampered with. Tampering is most effective when done in a targeted manner depending on who will own the routers in question. Maintaining a baseline level of trust that is actually justified is very important, otherwise this technique wouldn't work. Mr. Snowden's revelations have destroyed all trust, thus undermining the ability of the NSA to ride on the back of that trust to engage in targeted spying.

This is why it baffles me that people can so readily point to entities like Startpage and Duck Duck Go as trustworthy just because they say so. Their claims may indeed be accurate for the vast majority of those using their services, but it's easy to imagine that particular searches can be scrutinized on demand if there is an interest. In other words, they can't be trusted based on their claims alone, even if they themselves believe them to be true.

It seems to me the only rational approach is to assume that nothing can be trusted and and act accordingly. Assume that whatever you are doing online is being observed by someone or anyone and don't communicate about genuinely private things, because they will no longer be private.