Unlike government, not one of the firms in the coalition has the power to force you to hand information over to them. If you don't want Google or Microsoft or AT&T to have your information, don't use their services. Also, if a firm fails to adequately protect your data and you suffer harm as a result, depending on the terms of service you may be able to sue the firm. But if government wrongfully seizes your data, you generally cannot sue (absent acts of blatant bad faith.) And government has no financial incentive to safeguard your data, while companies like Google have a LOT to lose if their privacy reputation is damaged due to a data breach or other unscrupulous practice.

Easy. Get a 30" Desktop LCD like the Dell 3007wfp and run it at exactly 1/2 its native vertical and horizontal resolutions (1280x800). You essentially get the same quality as if it were the native resolution (well, one to one mapping at least) and none of that crazy TV stuff. The best part is that if somebody with, well, "normal" eyes wants to use the monitor in its full 2560x1600 glory, they can simply switch the resolution.

What's so bad about the emergence of "free crap?" Gmail, Google Earth, Bing, Hulu, Google Docs are all pretty solid services considering the price tag...

It'd work for about a few seconds, or until the cops could perform a simple dictionary brute force attack.

Wi-Max really can't operate without exclusively-licensed, and there's simply not enough of it to go around. The FCC has been dragging its feet on the AWS3 band, for instance, which is prime ground for a Wi-Max network. Breaking the DSL/Cable duopolies can happen only if the command-and-control spectrum allocation process is abandoned. Tim Wu made this point in the New York Times a few months ago, but it seems that nobody at the FCC has listened to him.

The tax breaks and other incentives given to the telcos by Congress in the 90s for network build-out never actually mandated the construction of residential high-speed fiber networks. (Read the 1996 Telecom Act if you don't believe me).

The telephone companies were never legally bound to deploy 50mbps symmetric FTTH. What actually happened was that some telco execs testified to Congress that incentives would hasten FTTH deployment. There were some extremely bold predictions made--predictions that turned out to be wildly optimistic--but if you look at the legislative history of the 200 billion, there is simply no basis for jailing anybody.

What about Wi-Max? Or LTE? Or unlicensed Wi-Fi? Alternatives to cable and telco ISPs don't have to involve digging up the ground. They can use the airwaves. But since the FCC maintains rigid control over all but a few relatively small chunks of the spectrum, there are too few frequencies available for entrepreneurs to use. And the artificially high price of the spectrum that is available is held largely by major incumbents. Increase the quantity of spectrum available to firms, and new entrants would actually have a shot at getting their hands on enough spectrum to build a competitive WISP.

The bill doesn't define the term "open access"--it leaves that up to federal regulators. This means that if the FCC or NTIA decides to define open access as application-neutral network management, then ISPs wouldn't be allowed to give time-sensitive applications priority over non-time-sensitive ones.

I live in a pretty typical suburban area and I can choose from the following residential ISPs:

Comcast (up to 16/2)
Verizon DSL (Up to 6/1)
Covad DSL (up to 10/1)
Wireless 2.4Ghz (up to 3/1.5)
Wi-Max (up to 3/3)
Satellite (up to 3/384)

So while I don't have any perfect substitutes to cable broadband, it's hardly accurate to say that I'm stuck with cable if they do anything to seriously anger me.

Metered service makes sense, but only if there's a significant minimum charge. If an ISP charges, say, $1 GB, that wouldn't make sense because most users would end up paying $5 to $10 a month even though the ISP's cost to simply maintain the physical plant and support system for a minimal usage customer is at least $15 or $20 a month.