September 25, 2001

9:53 AM

Did you subscribe to the Industry Standard? Expect to start seeing AOL CDs in the mail, thanks to them buying up the subscriber lists at the Standard's firesale yesterday.
posted by mathowie (11 comments total)

You can also expect to get hit up to subscribe to Business 2.0, which was also recently bought by AOL and is one of the last Net biz mags still around.
posted by jjg at 10:50 AM on September 25, 2001

wait... is there anyone out there who isn't already seeing AOL CDs in the mail?
posted by tolkhan at 11:14 AM on September 25, 2001

may I just ask that someone pass legislation making those databases of personal information private? not up for sale whether the company is dead or alive?

I know they make money off of it, but I don't care, I'm tired of every law going in favor of business over the consumer.

I have no problem with people who wish to opt in to having their information passed around and profited by, but personally, I think that *I* should profit if I choose to share my information, not the highest bidder.

that is all.

:P
posted by rebeccablood at 11:23 AM on September 25, 2001

I laughed when I read about the sale. AOL/Time Warner jus t paid for my info from Industry Standard only to find that 1) I am already on their AOL cd mailing lists, 2) I am already on their ECompany Now mailings lists (that they got when they acquired that) and 3) I am already on their Business 2.0 emailing list.

Ah, redundancy, that's why businesses are so efficient. They pay for what they already have.
posted by matte at 11:47 AM on September 25, 2001

may I just ask that someone pass legislation making those databases of personal information private? not up for sale whether the company is dead or alive?

You mean like European data protection laws? ;)

I actually got the legal notices for the auction (thankfully, the Standard didn't owe me anything) and they make quite intriguing reading, with their apportionment of a small percentage of the proceeds to John Battelle and Jonathan Weber. And it was sort of amusing that the cheerleader for the digital economy had to pay top whack to post a couple of pages across the Atlantic.
posted by holgate at 12:53 PM on September 25, 2001

> is there anyone out there who isn't already seeing AOL
> CDs in the mail?

...and when they start mailing their promo out on rewritable media I'll start opening them again.
posted by jfuller at 1:16 PM on September 25, 2001

You mean like European data protection laws? ;)

YES.
posted by rebeccablood at 1:39 PM on September 25, 2001

Bah, anyone reading the Industry Standard is probably on DSL or cable. If they want easy victims they should prey on the people who buy magazines from those annoying sweepstakes mailings. Those people are real suckers, and probably not too savvy with the ol' computer.
posted by fleener at 4:21 PM on September 25, 2001

It's not so bad... One man's junk is another man's treasure.

I disagree with Fleener, though. We don't need any further expansion of AOL.
posted by Down10 at 4:45 PM on September 25, 2001

I like the AOL discs in the DVD keep cases. I happened to be at Circuit City when they were cleaning up their AOL kiosk, and they were switching 5.0 to 6.0 discs. I asked what they were going to do with them, they said pitch em. I asked em if I could have them. They gave me a funny look, and said, "um... sure... ok". After I had them in a box, the guy said, "why do you want all those AOL discs anyways?" Because I'm going to throw the discs out and use the cases.
posted by benjh at 9:02 PM on September 25, 2001

Somehow I've been receiving Fast Company and Business 2.0 as free subscriptions. (Must have gotten my name from some other list...?) I imagine when the year is up they'll try to hit me up for renewal, and I'm not interested. Now my concern is when they fold, that they'll be including my name in their salable database. I didn't even subscribe to these rags, for chrissakes!
posted by Fofer at 12:33 PM on September 27, 2001