@#5:

"This is exactly why you don't need to use government force to protect net neutrality. Market forces can spread information for better-informed consumers."

Yeah, a competitive ISP market is great for consumers! Too bad most consumers don't live in one. Both me and my parents are stuck in Comcast-land. Not only does our Internet go out several times a day, they choke off BitTorrent usage and even the TV signal is glitchy. Comcast has the worst customer service record of ANY company in ANY industry, and yet they're still in business. Why? Monopoly/duopoly of two evils + huge barriers to entry in this particular industry.

Hopefully I'll get to tell Comcast to screw off next year--the building I'm in is probably going to bite the bullet and pay to get Verizon FiOS installed soon. But Verizon isn't within 500 miles of my parents. There's just no viable alternative (other than going offline entirely--ha!). In most parts of the country that aren't Silicon Valley, internet service is not a natural free market. It's a natural monopoly. In which case, no, the market isn't going to solve consumers' problems (net neutrality being just one of them). Regulation, however, might.

I like that Google's doing this, but there's only a few markets where people can respond to proven non-neutrality by voting with their dollars. Nevertheless, the data should make for a nice case in front of the FCC.

I read the free .pdf and soon realized that this was the book I wish I'd had when I was in high school. So I plonked down the money for a meatspace copy and gave it to my high school-age sister for her birthday. Hopefully I can turn her into as much a raging civil libertarian as I am! Mwahahaha...

I like how it's being framed that they're "only" making 80-90% of their manned sales. That *still* means they make more than they'd make if they paid someone to sit there and watch.

All this means is that humans aren't perfect. No shit. Fortunately, even in a capitalist system humans don't have to be perfect for merchants to get paid. And, given that virtually all businesses *are* manned even though it appears they would make more money if they weren't, humans are more perfect than most people think they are.

While I would prefer a Justice Lessig or Attorney General Lessig, if a Congress seat is the opportunity of the moment I'm more than in favor of it.

If Lessig can walk the anti-corruption walk that he talks about (or will be talking about in the coming years), it's all the better for shaming less-scrupulous politicians.