grooveshark is always being sued, it's a running joke. they have dodged everything so far, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. they are operating in the same murky grey area that youtube has done for ages - the songs are user-uploaded, so the DMCA protects them from copyright issues as long as they cooperate with takedown notices. so the copyright owners end up playing an endless game of whack-a-mole.

451 is appropriate, as others in this thread have pointed out. 4xx indicates client is trying to access something that cannot be served to them, for whatever reason.

403 for instance is an access denied message - "this content is here, but you aren't allowed to see it"

5xx indicates server errors. in the case of blocked content, there is no server error. you just aren't allowed to see the content you are requesting, so the comparison to 403 is incredibly appropriate.

ok, if you put your two posts together, you now have a complete valid argument in defense of the 5th.

out of all the comments i have read in this thread, you are the ONLY person who has produced what may be a valid argument. congrats to you sir, you win the prize. everyone else so far has been a bumbling fuckwit or kneejerk reactionist.

how is this a good thing? the person just stole a car, and you are getting your knickers in a bunch because he might get arrested for it? he STOLE A CAR! he SHOULD get arrested for it! your scenario in no way defends the fifth, in fact it is an argument against it!

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

i don't doubt that the internet could survive without any ads. but it would be a very different place than it is today. It would ALSO be a very different place than it was before advertising. the cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.

you seem pretty confident that the outcome would be entirely positive. i am a bit more skeptical of that conclusion, and feel that the end result would be more in the neutral zone, probably tending toward the negative. we could both be right, as a lot of it would be a matter of personal opinion.

to each their own.

my original post said paywalls OR donation buttons. funny that you mention wikipedia, poster child for the donation model. thanks for helping me make my point, i guess?

slashdot got by without advertising when it was much smaller. i promise you that its operating expenses have gotten much higher. could it survive on premium accounts and donations alone? maybe. maybe not. if it were my company, i certainly wouldn't want to roll the dice to see if it survived.

yes, XKCD gets by without ads. congratulations, you have found one of the outliers.

also, congrats on being so leet that you don't see ads on slashdot and don't use gmail. you are also an outlier. and you come off sounding like an elitist asshole. 'man the internet's first albums were the best. now it's mainstream crap.' well, yeah, it is. welcome to the world. just because you were here first doesn't mean you get to dictate how everyone else has to use it. people want free content, and advertising is how they get it, whether YOU like it or not.

you are welcome to restrict your web traffic to sites that don't use ads. the people that were putting stuff out 13 years ago without ads, they are still around. and the ones that aren't? advertising didn't kill them.

oh, those rose-colored glasses you wear.

yes, advertising has its own set of problems. but let's not pretend that it is only harmful. since you want to take a black-and-white view of the world, here are some specific examples.

do you like slashdot? funded by advertising.

do you like penny arcade? funded by advertising. (or basically any other webcomic getting a modest amount of traffic)

how about google? gmail? let me tell you, bandwidth doesn't pay for itself. your awesome free webmail is paid for by... advertising.

i could go on, but hopefully you are starting to grasp the situation a little better now.

sure, some of those things could survive with a paywall or donation model, especially now that they are already established. but the barrier to entry all of a sudden becomes much greater.

amusingly, advertising HELPS a free and open internet, in that it's very easy for anyone to start a site up and have it naturally fund itself. You don't need a big pile of startup cash or a devout following that will make the commitment of subscribing or donating. Without ads, how are you going to pay your hosting costs for anything more than a trivial amount of traffic?

you can make an awesome site, and make it freely available, but you will become a victim of your own success - if your site actually DOES become huge, so will your hosting bill, and you'd better have some plan in place to pay for it.

have you ever BEEN to wikipedia? ever see that donation bar up top with jimmy wales' face on it? what about this page, ever been to it?

you're right, it would be super weird if wikipedia were to have a donation button or something on it~

do you like free content? i do. if all the advertisers go away, expect everything to be paywalled or have donation buttons.

actually they are quite appropriate - the article indicates that she has the mental capacity of a five year old as well. So it's not unreasonable to think that her parents are simply keeping her surroundings the same to match her physical and emotional maturity level.