Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...

In Canada here they do the same thing so it would really be nice to have this posted. Like a pricing spreadsheet, making sure it lists the price of each elected (and non-elected) publish official, and the legal processes.

Just for reference...

You forget that the search for extra terrestrial life is backed by one scientific basis.. Humans

We are here, we exist, we are proof that life is possible and so the search for it elsewhere in this universe has us as a template. The more we understand how we work and what circumstances allow for us to live helps us in the search for extra terrestrial life.

The belief in God or whether (s)he created us is not relevant... unless you believe that (s)he created us and only us, but it is still irrelevant in terms of scientific process as there is no testable proof (yet).

Two separate arguments

There are infinite ways to create 'barriers to entry' that do not involve government as all they are are 'issues' created by an already established player to hinder existing and/or new players in the market. Type of product (network infrastructure, mining/resource harvesting), trade secrets (do patents and/or copyrights apply to 'free markets?), etc.. Free Market as an ideal is a goal that will never be fully realized as much as 'Total Control' cannot be realized. We have to live in the grey area between all extremes and as such we need to way the pro's and con's and be ever vigilant as a voting populace to the always evolving ways of certain groups of people to try to corrupt and control for their own benefits vs the people's benefits.

Saying the DMCA takedown process is broken is certainly true. This was known by those against the system from the start, but was inevitably only going to rear its head when those that are not major content providers (aka. those with money) started to game the system... This is all a distraction though as the argument that preceeds this whole DMCA thing is the business models that depend on artificial scarcity of digital goods, the idea that people need to pay for every little idea (sound clip, article, presentation, graphic, video) that moves around the internet. This is an outdated thought and I am not sure what will evolve out of our new age of digitizing everything, but I certainly hope we do not hinder progress (well much beyond what we have done already) due to our inability to conceive of new business models and ways of reshaping our society to embrace the advantages of digital content.

Your analogies do not really work and though I do agree with your last point of "the people who develop it see dollar signs", but that type of over pricing or 'premium' pricing for a new service/type of product should only last until competitors get moving and the so-called 'free market' brings the price down to a balance of cost vs desired profit, where the profit takes the most hit the more competition there is. The problem here is that digital books are not new and the cost to produce them has (mostly) totally different dependencies than a paper book. This means the cost factor of 'cost + profit' is not comparable to a paper book and instead what we see here is there is no real reflection of what the real cost is on an ebook because the people setting the prices no longer have too much of a cost. Sure there is still all the work that needs to be done to prepare a book and get it in its final format, but after that -> Replication, Advertising, Distribution, when in reference to ebooks is very low cost, advertising taking up the most if its done aggressively, but even then, when only considering electronic advertising over the internet, its not too much. The middle man that used to take care of the physical replication, distribution, and advertisement surrounding a polished product are finding their business models continually eroded by the continually increasing ability of information to get to anyone anywhere for very little to no cost at all. This leads to new electronic media not being subject to the 'free market' because the first and largest players are usually these old companies that want to maintain price points that not only help to justify their existence, but allow them to stay so large of a company... otherwise they would have to cut profits and realize they need 1/10th the staff to satisfy electronic products and the barrier to entry for distributing those products is also significantly lower than what it was for the physical versions of the equivalent product. Bottom line is emedia prices do not reflect real cost and competition, whether you attribute this to monopolies, price fixing, corporations buying out government, you get the same result and its all for the same reasons... They want to get their $$ and get out before the fall, so they will hold up the walls of their money making houses as long as possible.