Nobody is suggesting we abolish analytics as a practice, but it's misrepresenting the issues to suggest that content providers will die a sad death if they lose out on whatever benefits those querystring params provide.
Content providers already have feedburner for rss metrics (also, now by google) not to mention google analytics (nee urchintracker) and good ol' fashioned server access logs (which you can analyze with urchin proper (or mint, or what have you)).
I can see from a gut-reaction standpoint how you could write what you did, but aside from gawker (who notoriously uses analytics, c.f.[1]), how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends? The problems you describe are problematic for certain types of tabloid publishers (drudge report, ny post, etc.), but they are hardly addressed by a handful of querystring parameters.
> how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends?
Nowadays it's built into Adwords, so the answer is anybody that sets up conversion tracking in his Adwords account.
More details: Google provides a tool called conversion optimizer[1]: it's enough to put a tracking code on one of your objective pages (the purchase page, the signup page etc) and Adwords will use machine learning to see the analytics for ads that convert well to your objective (what keywords did they use in Google, what locations are they coming from etc). This way, you can stop paying money for keywords with 20 clicks and 0 conversions, and instead you can raise your ad bids on those keywords performing well (i.e. 5 clicks and 3 conversions). The publisher is happy (more conversions, less clicks, less money), Google is happy (better targetting means less impressions used means more impressions remaining in the inventory to be sold to others for additional income), the customers are happy (publishers with lower customer acquisition costs can pour more money into the actual content/product).
Content providers already have feedburner for rss metrics (also, now by google) not to mention google analytics (nee urchintracker) and good ol' fashioned server access logs (which you can analyze with urchin proper (or mint, or what have you)).
I can see from a gut-reaction standpoint how you could write what you did, but aside from gawker (who notoriously uses analytics, c.f.[1]), how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends? The problems you describe are problematic for certain types of tabloid publishers (drudge report, ny post, etc.), but they are hardly addressed by a handful of querystring parameters.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_...