Steve Rubel points to an asinine piece of "performance art" - copyrighted works theft, actually - being committed on a couple of anonymous blogs. The summary - content from the NY Post and from Gawker are being lifted, sans ads. Adrants has the story - here's the thin justification by the bozo behind this:

UPDATE: "a v" responds to email: "This is a piece of performance art meets media. We wanted to see if we can draw viewership away from popular online blogs and news sites by removing the advertising. Would people actually enjoy the site more without the pop up advertising, drag overs, and other obtrusive types of online banner advertising?

Plus most people read the NY POST for the Gossip only so to us it was interesting to note that and really expose the NY POST for the right wing rag that it is. Also we have come to the conclusion that the registration process adopted by the POST was done in an effort to collect emails. We do not endorse spam dealers or peddlers!"

No possible good can come of this sort of thing. The bad actors in the industry will use this sort of thing to justify all manner of intrusive DRM solutions, and will end up looking reasonable because of clowns like these. Thanks guys, but do me a favor - go crawl under a rock and stop spreading damage around.