The worst thing that director can think of happening is a single psychopath using that information to attack people? Maybe my tin foil hat is showing, but isn't it a lot more scary to have detailed demographic lists in the hands of a government or an organization like RIAA? Target has already got their statisticians working on minority report like predictions. What if some bureau discovers that some demographic is much more likely to (insert some society destroying activity) and decides to pre-emptively (search/incarcerate/re-educate) them?

My guess is that this is a problem with an automated system trying to deal with roughly 800 million videos generating so many false positives that the cost of having a human look at every disputed video is cost prohibitive. Until Rumblefish sees a consequence, I doubt they're going to change their process. It's offensive to me that they don't treat other people's copyrighted works as well as they would like their client's work to be treated, but they probably see inserting ads as harmless.

I did send both Rumblefish and YouTube an e-mail expressing my disappointment. YouTube is now removed from my ad blocker exclusion list.

There are alternatives to YouTube : http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/20/5-video-sharing-alternatives-to-youtube/. YouTube/Google may see their advertisers as their customers, but you have to have a worthwhile demographic looking at the ads to make them worth anything.

I started poking around Vimeo and was impressed. No Tosh.0 material, but quite a bit of interesting viewing. Of course the amount of content can't compare with YouTube, so I'm probably still stuck with it when I'm looking for something specific, but when you're looking for something randomly interesting it's worth a visit.

My employer has an electronic communications policy that forbids employee's from participating in the company's social networking sites unless it is their job to do so. We can't "like" their posts, or respond to tweets etc. I work in the financial industry, and the company is very protective of their credibility. We do have an internal social networking site to promote collaboration.

I think any company that tries to "stuff the ballot box" by making employees sign up for accounts is barking up the wrong tree. They'll have an active looking social networking presence, but it won't yield the benefits that having a real community of clients will.

I was reading Delete by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger recently and he has a very simple solution... put expiration dates on all data. I don't know that it's a basic human right to be forgotten, but it's pretty harsh to have a picture of one act of foolishness follow you around for 20 years.

Actors are still artists - a good actor can bring a lot to a performance even if they're just voice acting or mo-capped. Golum had a live actor bringing him to life, as did Sonny in I, Robot. The CGI folks drew heavily on the actor's portrayals. A lot of directors see their relationship with their actors as a collaboration and some tend to choose the same folks over and over because they work well together. From what I've seen in the special features sections of some animated movies, the voice actors are filmed while they're reading and some of that performance gets incorporated into the film. So I think there will be less room for mediocre actors, and the "extra" may become obsolete, but I think there will always be room for the person with a talent for acting or performance.

Well professors should lecture and artists should speak through their art. It's really annoying to get lectured when you're expecting art. People should stand for what they believe in because it's the right thing to do, not because all of the cool kids are doing it or because it helps their image.