You're on ISP A. You want to download from some random site. Random site is on a server hosted by ISP B.

Your buddy is on ISP B. He wants to download from another site. Said site is hosted on ISP A.

See how that works? ISP A is pulling data from ISP B, and ISP B is pulling data from ISP A. Therefore, rather than cut each other identical cheques, they swap data.

Now, you want to pull data from Netflix. Netflix does not want to pull data from your ISP. Therefore, Netflix cannot pay for data with data; they need to pay with cash.

No, that would be stupid, and it's unfortunate that you feel the need to resort to ridiculous hyperbole.

I'm saying that Netflix, like everybody else, needs to pay for wanting to access a given ISP's network. Seeing as how they can't pay with in-kind transit, like, say, other ISPs that both give *and take* traffic, they need to pay with cash.

It's 2015. Why does transferring money in the US take more than a minute and a few cents?

Because in America, you can open a bank like you can open any other business, so there's thousands of them.

The car in front of you has ABS and you do not (or just vastly superior braking.

If you don't have ABS, or you have sub-average braking, you'd best be driving to reflect that. So no.

and what might be the case with the Google car) The car in front of you acts in such a way that it signals that it will keep going, then stops.

Or you could just watch the video linked in the submission, which shows the situation, and clearly shows the human driver as at fault.

Where was it supposed to go? It had a vehicle in front, in front and left, and a sidewalk to the right.

Cars with ABS brakes, automatic traction control, built-in skid recovery and what not, are already navigating the snow and ice better than the humans driving them can.

Happy customers are paying to move traffic across their ISP's network.

ISPs agree to swap traffic in kind.

Netflix has nothing to swap in kind, so they need to pay.

An old Lee-Enfield 303 with a wooden stock isn't so easy for the school shooter to conceal on his way to committing the crime.

Because it's impossible to remove either part of the wooden stock, making it a 'sporterized' model, or most of the wooden stock, making it harder to aim, but more concealable.

And it's sure as fuck impossible to replace the stock, or even chop most of it off, drill some holes for large dowels in one end, some holes in the other end, conceal them, and mate them together when you're ready to shoot.

If this were two counties, the term used would be 'imbalance of trade.' Countries have gone to war over this.

Peering is two ISPs bartering bandwidth, rather than writing each other cheques for similar amounts each month. What is Netflix offering to barter with? They want to dump tons of data onto the ISP; what does the ISP get in return?

Interestingly, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has this explicitly laid out:

6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

Whereas the US Constitution doesn't. Historical US Jurisprudence on the subject is, as with most other US Jurisprudence, tricky. Teh Wikis.

You're assigning an awful lot of rationality and logic to human beings, who often are not rational or logical.

Plenty of religious folks in the past have expressed the idea of 'God will know His own.' Hell, that was part of the justification of the Inquisition; if an innocent was tortured and killed, well, God will reward them in Heaven.

And attempting to engineer another regime change in Iraq probably won't do any better than the American-engineered regime change that turned Iraq from a fairly normal democracy into a theocratic anti-Western state.

Could you cite cases in which a man was convicted of rape in a "he said - she said" situation, without other factors (I'm perfectly willing to believe that the word of a white woman would be believed in a jury trial in some communities)? I'm not saying that false rape accusations aren't damaging, but I'm having trouble believing that the accusation alone would lead to a conviction.

Duke Lacrosse team comes to mind.

My original xbox had a power line recall. They shipped out a new one with something like a GFCI built into it.

Hooper: Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!
Banky Edwards: What's a Nubian?
Hooper: Shut the fuck up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the fuckin' universe; gets a whole clan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?
Banky Edwards: Intergalactic civil war?
Hooper: Gentrification! They gon' drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!
Banky Edwards: Well, isn't that true?
[Hooper pulls out his gun, shoots Banky]

I once told a Toronto Star phone salesman that I didn't need a subscription, as I was illiterate. He then argued with me that I couldn't be.