"Timothy B. Lee sounds an awful lot like Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web and strong net neutrality proponent."

I assume you mean net neutrality oppnent?

...in broadband.

If your ISP disciminates against certain websites, and they're slower but you don't know why, you don't have enough information to switch.

The free market only works when consumers are informed.

AT&T has no intention of telling the public which websites it has put into the slow lane and which it has put into the fast lane if we get rid of "Net Neutrality."

The public will be in the dark as AT&T laughs all the way to the bank, extorting website owners and giving a rotten deal to its subscribers.

I noticed he slams you on his web page at techliberation.com, without the decency to even link to you to argue. Might want to post over there.

Tim Lee writes at techliberation.com:

"Also, for the record, I think the theory of intelligent design is nonsense, but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I'm entitled to dictate to other parents what they teach their children."

http://www.techliberation.com/archives/0 40349.php

I agree with that sentence, but intelligent design has no more place in a public school classroom than astrology.

Timothy B. Lee's argument looks better than most of the arguments I've seen from Matt Stoller--I don't see any obvious errors of fact about technology or law, which are frequent (and never corrected) in your writings, Matt.  (And from what I've seen at techliberation.com, Tim Lee has a much better grasp of the issues and expresses himself more lucidly than you do.)

Your rebuttal is to accuse him of somehow trying to mislead people into thinking he's Tim Berners-Lee, to make fun of his photograph, to call him a corporate shill, and to state without evidence that there is no competition in broadband services (my experience, in Phoenix, suggests the contrary).  It seems to me that you're displaying the characteristics of someone without the facts on your side (or at least, without them at your disposal).

He reminds me of someone . . .
Maybe they just have the same Barber, or the both have their mommies cut their hair.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uplo ads/2006/07/jason_mattera1.jpg

Are you kidding me?  A guy has a name you find confusing and therefore he's not allowed to blog or write op-eds on this topic?  And what on earth is the point of making fun of the way he looks?  How does mocking his picture do anything to further your argument?  

Disclaimer: Timothy B. Lee is a personal friend of mine.  I've known him for years.  He is not a creationist nor a wingnut. I don't agree with him politically (he's a small l libertarian, I'm a big D Democrat), which he's well aware of.  This is my first post at MyDD, but I've been an active Kossack since 2003.  May contain material unsuitable for children.  

Yeah, yeah, it's bad form, but let's face it, the guy's a Changeling: he's Security Chief Odo's son, right?

So instead of debating the points of his op-ed you're slamming him personally?  August making you lazy already, Matt?

Try reading the article Mr. Lee wrote.  You might learn a thing or two.

Like Matt, I was pretty much taken aback by the piece.  I was very surprised to see the Times run a completely counterfactual op-ed on the issue.  The underlying premise--that the internet has ever been or will ever be unregulated--is just so utterly incorrect that it boggled my little mind to see it in print in the newspaper of record.  At least when David Brooks makes up his fake people, he does it in the open, but this piece just flat out lied.

As I was reading the op-ed, in my head I saw the guy from Amazon in his debate with McCurry (which I watched on politicstv.com, but can't find now).  The Amazon guy held up Snowe-Dorgan (two pages) and the then current telecom bill (40 pages or so) and suggested that maybe the regulatory burden of the telecom bill might be a tad bit heavier.

Yes, the bill is primarily about regulating the participation of the cable companies and the telecom companies in providing digital video content.

But it also eliminates, by statute, the longstanding common carrier provision that applied to internet traffic from its inception.

And anyone who tells you that permitting packet discrimination is consistent with net neutrality is not only lying, but treating you like a fool. Net neutrality MEANS no packet discrimination.

My reference to the length and complexity of the bill was meant to illustrate that is absurd to claim that it represents "free market" approach.

And if the bill has nothing to do with the internet, why did Senator Stevens present his thoughtful analysis of the nature of the internet?  If it has nothing to do with the internet, why did we have that silly telecom tubes advertisement up on our favorite blogs?

This doesn't even pass the laugh test.

"You are talking about common carriage of telco transmission facilities, which is only one mechanism for delivery of Internet traffic (others include wireless and cable transmission, neither of which has ever had common carriage requirements)."

To clarify, there are wireless common carriers, but wireless carriers never been required to unbundle services and allow third party Internet providers to supply services over their facilities.  Only the incumbent local telcos were required to allow third-party ISPs to provide services (via dialup, ISDN, and DSL).  Those requirements did not include Internet interconnection, which has been completely unregulated--when a third-party ISP provides dialup, ISDN, or DSL Internet services, they've only used the telco transmission facilities, not the ISP's Internet services.