"After I recommended that the major publishers drop mandatory DRM from their ebook products, I realized that my essay had elided a bunch of steps in my thinking, and needed to reconsider some points. Then I realized that it's not a simple, straightforward argument to make. Consequently, I ended up writing another essay, although I've tried to summarize my conclusions below. "

> The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for. […]

> These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. […]

> I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm.

"The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It’s understanding who to listen to and why."

> There is an expectation that everything should be free, and that at the same time, companies should respect our privacy and keep The Brands™ away from our personal information. It’s not a realistic expectation – something’s gotta give if no one is willing to pay for anything. But most people don’t think about it long enough to realize that.

Also,

> I fear we’ve painted ourselves into this free corner, and the only way out is to sell our identities to The Brands™.

from The Buttry Diary http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com

Charging for services works. Charging for content, less-so.

from the page:"Two senior Google employees recently acknowledged that the company's products do not protect user privacy.. because the company's business model depends upon the monetizaton of user data, the company keeps as much data as possible about the activities of its users. These detailed records are not just useful to Google's engineers and advertising teams, but are also a juicy target for law enforcement agencies... these persons [journalists, bloggers, activists and other groups that are routinely the target of surveillance by governments around the world] will need to investigate the (non-Google)... Google could encrypt user data in storage with a key not known to the company... Google's ad supported business model simply does not permit the company to protect user data in this way. The end result is that law enforcement agencies can, and regularly do request user data from the company -- requests that would lead to nothing if the company put user security and privacy first.