I disagree. Parents should be able to raise their kids as they see fit, provided they aren't abusing them. Why is it any business of the state if I want to shield my kids from a lifestyle that I may not approve of?
You can. Just not in *PUBLIC* school. Want to shelter them from things that you find offensive then home school them. Don't complain if they have a hard time fitting into society later.
I disagree with the "Parents should be able to raise their kids as they see fit." The big problem here is the "their". They are not your property. They are supposed to independent human beings but they can't manage that initially and wouldn't know where to begin so you as parent get to take care of them and raise them. This does not mean mold them to be exactly the same as you. Don't push your beliefs or biases on them. Teach them to think critically on their own and they can decide what they believe.
Never had a problem with it.
Seems like there are plenty of ways to make money from last.fm users without charging them directly.
- a craigslist/ebay style setup to buy/sell/trade music/show tickets/whatever - take a cut from the ads/transaction fee - there are forums but these are token and there isn't a Buy/Sell section anywhere AFAIK.
- use music recommendations to sell people music directly rather than linking to amazon/itunes whatever. Particularly for smaller bands that can't get recording contracts - work to hook them up with gigs and sell merchandise through the site and take a cut - essentially cut out the record labels as middle men and still provide a service that makes it easy to find smaller bands.
- they have recommendations for events in the local area but I never see them handle ticket sales at all - well why the heck not - local shows are much smaller scale than giant stadium shows and they could get a larger turnout and
Of course setting up this kind of infrastructure costs money, particularly to do it globally, but use your user base to add events in the region and use them to review and categorize bands and just make it easy for bands to offer goods through the site. Charging users directly is a good way to lose them because there are plenty of free alternatives and we've all gotten used to not paying for radio. Music fans are among the most passionate - give them services they can actually use and take a reasonable cut and they'll probably embrace it in droves.
They just do not get social networking at all.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.