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Last.fm User Data Was Sent To RIAA By CBS
suraj.sun sends in an update from TechCrunch on a story that generated a lot of controversy a few months back, "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?" "Now we've located another source for the story, someone who's very close to Last.fm. And it turns out Last.fm was telling the truth, sorta... Last.fm didn't hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. Here's what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for 'internal use only.' It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA. We believe CBS lied to us when they denied sending the data to the RIAA, and that they subsequently asked us to attribute the quote to Last.fm to make the statement defensible. Last.fm's denials were strictly speaking correct, but they ignored the underlying truth of the situation, that their parent company supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users."
Craigslist charges listing fees for real estate ads and job offer ads in major metropolitan centers. I'm pretty sure they are raking in a huge amount of cash.
Sounds like somebody just got laid off. To me the "rational thing" is to minimize transaction costs between buyers and sellers in the marketplace in terms of both money and time. Newspaper classifieds cost more money and take longer to print. For example, someone I know recently sold a trailer on craigslist. They got a response within 2 days of posting the ad and sold it to the same responder within a week for their asking price. Posting the ad was free. Running a classified ad would have cost money and possibly taken weeks to reach potential sellers.
This has nothign to do with a megalomaniac need to control. It's just good business sense. The internet is way better for classified ads than your little cart-and-buggy newspaper industry. So get off of your luddite soapbox.
Journalists still have value to society; mostly because they're willing to do investigative journalism to root out the corruption in industry and government, and war journalism where they risk their lives to document events that most people wouldn't see otherwise. But running a monopolistic print classified ad business that burdens buyers and sellers with high transaction costs isn't valuable to society, and it doesn't take a first-rate journalist, just a printing press and some book keepers, and maybe some hired goons to beat up people who dare to try this newfangled "internet" business instead of paying the traditional tolls and fees to wealthy capitalists who happen to own printing presses.