I'm with you 100%
Your comments are so dead on, i couldnt have said it better. I dont have accounts at facebook, twitter, myspace, or any other soul sucking privacy vacuum.
i dont do opt-in by proxy / stealth / confusion or any other means other than the good old fashion check this (empty) box if you'd like to... I even get frustrated when they give you the option but the box is prechecked like i'm jumping for joy to hand anything over to these people...
I refuse to pay for news, period, end of story, outside of investigative reporting, news reporting isnt original, its just simply writing about and broadcasting the actions of other people, nothing worth payment there, especially considering its almost impossible to find un-bias un-opinionated news, I'm not going to pay some asshole for reporting news thats slanted to fit an agenda, period. Most major news outfits dont know the meaning of honest reporting, i've seen all to many times news agencies make mistakes in their reporting and then refuse to run a correction when they find out they reported false facts because the truth doesnt fit their agenda. despite the fact that their misreporting maybe harming someones life.
An example of big news misreporting, though it wasnt harmful to his life, a good example is Rodney King and the famed Rodney King beatings at the hands of LAPD in 1991, everything to do with that situation is all well and good, but his name ISNT Rodney, its Glenn, Glenn King, talk about stereotyping, sheesh just because hes black all of a sudden he's gotta be Rodney? Seriously... Big news was made aware of this but refused to correct it... With that attitude i fuck em, they dont need my money...
As for the email address thing, i run my own mail server, so i get to have all kinds of fun with email addresses, my favorite one i love to give out to sites that "require" i give them an address is "gofuckyourself@******.com" and i have a catchall box set up so i can customize on the fly with things like fuckyouapple@********.com, i especially like when websites claim they dont sell email addresses so i give them something like hulu_sucks_donkey_balls@*******.com, then a week later i'm getting mad spam from random source unrelated to hulu with emails addressed to hello hulu_sucks_donkey_balls... I love it...