bugmenot

If you don't know what bugmenot is, maybe I shouldn't tell you, but what the hell.
No one reads my blog anyway. So what difference does it make.

The premise of bugmenot is that you shouldn't have to register for anything
free on the internet. Their pet peeve is the new york times but extends to
include any site that provides free information. So, someone
registers at the NYT site, then they share the nick/pass in the bugmenot database.
Then anyone who is looking at a website that requires registration can look it up in bugmenot and
get the shared log/pass until someone (maybe the site owner) finds out and cancels the
account. Of course someone will just put another log/pass in a popular site. Really
popular sites could even brag about how many different bugmenots they've had.
But I digress.

The premise of bugmenot is "information should be, wants to be free,
and you shouldn't have to part with any personal information to get it."

Yah, information is free. There are great big piles of it all over
the internet. Good, bad, spam, academic, bullshit, ads, politically
motivated, true, false, slander, libel, clear, and murky, and just plain drivel. You can wallow
in that all day, never knowing if any of it is correct, up-to-date,
or even makes any sense.

But... suppose someone has organized a bunch of good current information
up in a database, cleaned up the writing, separated the truth from the fiction,
and made it very convenient for you to find whatever you want.

They have provided added value. The NY Times for example, just by being the
NYT, sort of carries an endorsement on anything they publish. Plus we believe
they adhere to some sort of journalistic standards and can basically back up
anything they write. That's why we read it. That's why people have PAID to read it for
decades. So why now should it suddenly be free?

A lot of registration sites don't ask for much more than a moniker & email, and
they have (or should have) a privacy policy promising that they'll never sell it. A lot of
free sites are ad-supported. Free sites need to be able to target their ads to stay in business.
Oh right, the same people who do bugmenot, probably think there shouldn't be any ads
either. So just how do they think that all this good info is gonna be built and updated? By nice people
who just do it to be nice? The web is littered with abandoned sites that started that way. But the nice people got tired of it, or got busy making a living.

Websites that allow posting have a legitimate reason to need people to register,
even if they're free sites. If you don't know why, just try allowing anonymous postings
on a BB. Your BB will soon be flooded with every kind of spam you can imagine.

The really interesting thing about bugmenot is that it's used by internet savvy people
with good high paying jobs. But those folks (I guess) seem to think that people who
provide free info shouldn't be able to make a living. And bugmenot specifically says oh we won't provide passwords for sites that are actually "selling" anything. Soooooo..... Sites that provide anything free are getting screwed, so they are moving bit by bit to selling what they previously gave free including information.

Right BUGMENOT. That's really what you wanted, isn't it!!!