Wrong dept. More like, "From the who-needs-online-freedom-when-we-have-Sen.-Lieberman dept." or the "these-are-not-the-censorship-droids-you're-looking-for dept."

Apparently it's now illegal to do things online with which Sen. Droopy Dog disagrees, but never you mind that. Our immigrations department has become a rogue IP cop, declaring themselves judge, jury, and online executioner to dozens of websites, but don't worry about that. Our Senate Judiciary Committee just unanimously voted to give the same process a slightly more legal sheen, disregarding an open letter from virtually every major figure in the history of the internet, and it's going to be tucked into an appropriations bill under the cover of night before the end of the year, but set that aside. The same committee and their House brethren are practically forcing ISPs to implement filtering, on penalty of repeal of the DMCA safe harbors, but look elsewhere.

Instead, let's talk about how little respect OTHER COUNTRIES have for press freedom. After all, none of those other countries are the freest, fairest, most just-est countries in history! That title is all ours, baby!

The implicit assumption here is that, as long as Big Brother doesn't see the content of the messages, there's nothing to worry about. Of course that's total bullocks. The AOL search data scandal of 2006 shows that one's search history alone can reveal far, far more about a person than an unwarranted government search should be able to see. Amp that up to a list of every site visit, plus everyone I email, call, or text, and this represents the government demanding the right to dig very deep into Brits' communication.

I hope Britons go ballistic in opposition to this proposal.

I love how this gets moderated as "Insightful" rather than "Funny."

I agree with jellomizer; most users won't hit their caps in a given period in the near term. We just switched from T-Mobile to VZ (I've gone from zero to 4 bars in parts of my building at work), but we seriously considered AT&T--which was off the table until they switched to cheaper but limited data. Price matters. My wife would be fine on 200 MB/mo, and with a little restraint I would be, too. I'd be comfortable with the 2 GB cap as much as 3-5 years out.

I think most consumers can rest assured that they won't outgrow these caps over the course of a 2-year contract, but this trend highlights the broader problem that spectrum is scarce and getting tighter. (I'm not an engineer, but my understanding is that AT&T can't possibly build enough towers under current constraints to fully service lower Manhattan on a Saturday night.) What happens when this year's 1 GHz Snapdragon processor seems like your old 486? Consumer demand for mobile bandwidth is going to keep growing exponentially.

If the mobile carriers don't increase caps at a corresponding (albeit halting) rate, they'll get some dissatisfied customers. The only solution is going to be more spectrum. I hope the unregulated TV white spaces ruling yesterday (yippee!!!) is just part of a continuing trend of freeing spectrum for IP-based (rather than dumb radio) uses, but at this rate, the mobile wireless industry is going to be hungry for more auctioned space soon.

I generally think telco lobbyists cry wolf at policymakers' doors all the time, but in this case, I think they're right.

While I love Wired, Public Knowledge actually broke this story. The Wired blogger even credits Art Brodsky for the tip. The original blog post, with the MP3 (to which Wired hotlinked), is available here: Stevens on Network Neutrality. Maybe this detail got lost in the tubes, which are all stopped up with video.

Anyway, do listen to the MP3! It's very funny.

(Full disclosure: I'm a PK intern this summer.)