I’ve been working on an internal web app for the past few weeks.

I’m not a “real” programmer, so as usual I just figure things out as I go along and make lots of mistakes, but I always learn new stuff.  This is how I learned programming in the first place, got my first gigs building websites, then ended up at OpenPlans, Code for America and now USV.  My favorite thing about the web is how it makes it possible to just pick a direction and learn as you go.  It’s amazing, really.

My background is that I’m good with front-end development (html/css/js) and decent with PHP (have built a ton of wordpress websites, plugins, themes), but I quickly trail off from there.   So I’m very comfortable in some places, and not so much in others (linux admin, deploying python apps, etc).

But for this project, I decided to try something new.  I’m using tornado (a python web framework), paired with mongodb.  The app is hosted at Heroku and my mongo database is running in the cloud at Mongolab.  I’m using twitter auth for log-ins, and  I’m also using the hackpad API to embed editable documents in the app.  

What’s so cool about this is that pretty much everything is a cloud-hosted service, wired together in a really light way to make the app.  There is a tiny amount of application-specific code.   If we had used Brubeck instead of Tornado, there’d be even less.  

It’s been a joy to develop in this environment.  I like programming in python, and mongodb is a breath of fresh air.  And being able to simply wire in things like hackpad (with some really great help from Igor) has been amazing.  Deploying updates is as simple as git push heroku master and heroku does all the heavy lifting.

Much of the starter code for this came from Zach, our hacker-in-residence at USV, who’s been working on an update for USV.com.  I don’t think I’d have been able to do it without his starting point — but looking at the Brubeck docs, which are quite good (kudos, James), perhaps that’s not true.

All of this reminds me of a post my friend Ian Bicking wrote a few years ago about What PHP Deployment Gets Right.  For those who don’t know Ian, he is a rockstar python developer who understands the low level stuff better than anyone I’ve been around — among other things he wrote pip and virtualenv, which are primary tools for anyone developing in python.  Anyway, the point of Ian’s post is that PHP deployment is, and always has been, so easy that it’s possible for people (like me, until recently) who are afraid of going deeper than the file system, to program and deploy apps.  

Ian’s post is 5 years old now, and a lot has changed.  It’s pretty sweet how the hurdles for developing web apps keep getting lower and lower.

6hmm, web development, large,

Today I’ve got a post up on the USV blog about Senator Chuck Schumer’s Patent Quality Improvement Act, and the problem of software patents and patent trolls in general.

The PQIA would make it easier and cheaper to defend against frivolous patent infringement suits.  This isn’t everything we need to fix the problem, but it’s a step.  

Let’s give Schumer some twitter love for making this a priority and taking a crack at it.

6hmm, large, patents, chuck schumer,

The week before last, I attended the Mesh Conference in SF, which brought together a big group of folks working at the intersection of the web and the “new economy”: i.e., the “sharing economy”, “peer economy”, “connection economy”, “collaborative consumption”, “the mesh”, etc.  As you might imagine, a large part of the discussion focused on the lexical problem that this “movement”  faces, with all of these overlapping and somewhat competing terms that attempt to describe it.  

I’ve written about this problem before — and it’s true that any discussion with folks working around this space has to struggle to avoid falling into the “what do we call this?” trap.  Which is annoying, but I do think necessary.  It’s clear that there’s an unfulfilled need to try and describe what we see happening here in a way that really connects.  While the words we’ve tried so far do make sense, I don’t think they yet create an appropriately wide tent, and I definitely don’t think they resonate with folks outside the tech community bubble.

As I was thinking about this on my way home from the Mesh, it struck me that maybe there is a common theme that runs through all of this.  At the heart of all of these platforms and communities is the fact that they are people-powered.  They exist to super-charge people — to turn them into superheroes.  They empower people and are powered by people.

They are powered by us.

At USV, we talk a lot about how “networks” are a fundamentally new kind of entity.  Whether you’re talking about marketplaces like Etsy, Zaarly, or GoodEggs, communities like Tumblr or Indaba, or funding platforms like Kickstarter or Kiva, they all share a common theme: that they are people-powered.  The platform is simply a lightweight architecture which allows people to connect and transact directly with one another on top of it.

Of course, you would be correct to note that all companies and industries are powered by people, whether you’re talking about school teachers, auto workers, or movie executives.  But there’s a difference between traditional companies and these new people-powered networks.  Buying a car from GM is about buying something from a company.  Buying a lamp on Etsy is about buying from a person.   Getting a record deal with a label involves people, but building a music career on a network like Indaba and getting your album funded on Kickstarter is powered by us.

In each of these cases, the companies and organizations (nonprofits like Wikipedia or the Freelancers Union) at the center of this aren’t traditional bureaucratic hierarchies — they are networks, and what they do is help people connect with one another directly in new, exciting, and groundbreaking ways.  The connection is the service, and what’s being connected is us.

Nicco Mele calls this “the end of big” — and argues (correctly, I think) that this is not just a passing fad (like “social networking”), but a fundamental shift in society.  And for all the opportunity it brings, it also presents new challenges as we work to hold on to the most fundamental societal values (safety, accountability, freedom, privacy).  He’s right, and part of the puzzle here is to create a policy environment that honors and protects those values while leaving ample room for us to explore “powered by us” approaches that have never been possible before now.

After two centuries of de-personalization through industrialization, we’re now flooded with new ways to both re-discover individuality and community, while simultaneously tackling huge social and economic problems (education, health, energy, transportation).  And just to make sure I include the word “awesome” in this post at least once, I’ll end by saying that this is all pretty awesome and exciting.

6hmm, large,

I am writing this post from the balcony of my Airbnb apartment in nob hill in sf.

Its by far the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in sf. Beautiful duplex penthouse, with an amazing view of downtown, for less than the price of a hotel room.

To get here, I hopped a ride via Lyft, with a super nice guy.

I guess this is my first travel experience fully powered by the peer economy. And is super awesome all around.

It just goes to show that you can travel and transport yourself via peer to peer means and have a totally normal, and exceptionally awesome experience.

This is something you can’t do in most places - sf is definitely the best testing ground for this kind of thing right now.

But for sure: the experience is more authentic and more enjoyable than would have been possible otherwise.

As much as all of this is mainstream in the tech community discussion, its still pretty outside the norm for most people.

But this weeks experience has definitely demonstrated to me that we have new and reliable ways of establishing trust with others, which are totally real and effective.

Pretty cool.

6hmm, large, airbnb, lyft, peer economy,

Matthew Yglesias has a good piece up this morning on the immigration debate in the wake of the Boston bombings.  He points out that historically, as we’ve tightened our border lockdown, we’ve not decreased illegal immigration, we’ve just made the coyote industry more lucrative.  

In my favorite line, he suggests that rather than tighten our lockdown, we should open up:

by far the best way to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country is to make it easier for nondangerous ones to enter.

In other words, the best approach is not lockdown, but antilockdown.

If you think about it, this counterintuitive thinking applies to lots of other issues, and particularly reminds me of the debate over piracy — e.g., the best way to decrease illegal downloading is not to make it harder to copy files, but rather to make it easier to buy & share them legally.

I am going to keep thinking of other issues where this kind of thinking applies.

6hmm, large,

What happened yesterday in Boston so sad and awful.  And it’s deeply scary.  All of the communities I’m part of — family, work, school, city — have been shaken by this.

But the most important thing we can do coming away from this is not get scared in our core.  If that happens, they win and we lose - way bigger than we lost yesterday.

I’ve been scared before — deathly scared.  For me, it was 1991-1993 when I was 12-14 years old, growing up in Brooklyn.  At that precise time, there was a lot of street crime in New York.  Pretty much everyone I knew got jumped, robbed, or beaten up doing things like walking home from school.  

For me it started when I was 12, riding my bike home from baseball practice in Prospect Park.  Two kids stopped me and relieved me of my bicycle (hand-drawn “Nick” license plate and all).  I was upset that day, and cried when I got home.  But the “terror” didn’t set in until sometime later — when I started getting harassed (usually in small ways, sometimes in larger ways) nearly every day.  

The world went from being a place to joyfully explore to being a place to be fucking terrified of.  I didn’t want to leave my house, not even to go two blocks to the grocery store.  Taking the subway home from school was a mission.  I detoured my route at the slightest sign of danger on the horizon. I was in a constant state of condition orange. It sucked. 

The terrorists (in my case, the kids on the street who were bigger and badder that I was) totally won. I hated it. I wanted to get as far away from NYC as fast as I could.   And in fact, by the end of high school, that’s exactly what I did (even though things were better by then).

I lived for years — a small number of years, but formative ones — in terror.  And when I got through with it I vowed never to live that way again.

Part of what makes it possible to live without terror is to be in it together.  If my 1992-era self had had a bigger posse (no offense, Dave; we did what we could), things would have been different, easier.  

I don’t mean that we need to be in a constant state of vigilance together — rather, we need to be there to help each other keep calm and carry on.  We — people in the US and elsewhere who don’t want to live in fear — have to be each others’ posse, coach, shoulder, and heart.

I refuse to be scared by this.

6hmm, large,

Over the weekend, Christina pointed me to Uber’s new policy white paper on ridesharing.  In a nutshell, Uber has decided to compete (with Lyft, Sidecar and others) in the ridesharing space, and will use a framework for deciding how and where to do that, based on the perceived regulatory friendliness in each city.  Here’s their rubric:

Uber’s Ridesharing Policy

Uber will roll out ridesharing on its existing platform in any market where the regulators have tacitly approved doing so.

• If a competitor is operating for 30 days without direct enforcement against transportation providers, then Uber will interpret that as “tacit approval” of ridesharing activity.
• If clear and consistent enforcement has taken place within 30 days of a competitor rolling out a ridesharing service, then Uber will not roll out its platform for ridesharing in that jurisdiction.

In the absence of regulatory clarity, Uber will implement safeguards in terms of safety and insurance that will go beyond what local regulatory bodies have in place for commercial transportation.

• At minimum, there will be a $2,000,000 insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips. This insurance applies to any ridesharing trip requested through the Uber technology platform.
• Extensive and strict background checks will be performed on any ridesharing transportation provider allowed on the Uber platform. The criteria for which a driver will be disqualified will be stricter than what any existing local regulatory body already has in place for commercial transportation providers.

Conclusion

Innovation and consumer safety are at the core of Uber’s culture. Until this policy shift, Uber hesitated to engage in a market perceiving extreme regulatory risk. Finding the principles for engagement with such risk in this market was crucial. We wanted to set the rules in a place where everyone would agree that safety and welfare of consumers was taken care of while regulators catch up to the innovation they are letting flourish. We look forward to ridesharing spreading across the country but look to do so only after first getting a read from regulators on this new relaxed approach to transportation licensing and enforcement.

I think this is a pretty brilliant move.  Rather than wait for cities to challenge ridesharing and react defensively, Uber is leading with a clear and reasonable policy position.  This puts cities in an interesting position as they consider how to respond — both in terms of allowing ridesharing or not, and also in terms of being consistent and not playing favorites.

It’s also interesting as an example of Uber’s philosophy re: disruptive competition.  As new and disruptive as Uber has been to the traditional taxi market, ridesharing presents a similarly disruptive threat to Uber.  In his post, Travis makes a point of calling this out and highlighting the fact that Uber is choosing to compete in the marketplace rather than fight using legal means:

In the face of this challenge, Uber could have chosen to do nothing. We could have chosen to use regulation to thwart our competitors. Instead, we chose the path that reflects our company’s core: we chose to compete.

This should be a great case study in trying to establish certainty in the face of ambiguity. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

6large, hmm, uber, ridesharing, lyft, sidecar,

It’s been pretty awesome to watch the roll out of Google Fiber.

For those who haven’t been following, Google is piloting a program to deliver gigabit internet service (symmetrical — equal speeds for uploads and download), starting with Kansas City and coming soon to Austin, TX.

This is important and interesting for several reasons: 1) the state of broadband access in the US is shameful, 2) the incumbent wired internet providers (Time Warner and Comcast) have divided up the US and essentially operate as unregulated monopolies in most markets, resulting in crappy + expensive service, and 3) gigabit service a game-changing 10-20x faster than the typical high-end cable service (which is 50-100mbit).

So it’s been entertaining to see everyone react to Google Fiber.  I love Mike Masnick’s coverage yesterday of AT&T’s bullshit response to gFiber coming to Austin (“Hours After Google Announces Google Fiber In Austin, AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network There”).  See also: “Likely pressured by Google Fiber, Time Warner ups speeds, slashes rates”.

Maybe this is an argument that true competition is possible in the wired internet access space; I’m not sure.  Google has successfully negotiated unusually favorable terms in each of these pilot cities so far, which may make it hard or impossible to do this on a nationwide basis.

I keep coming back to the idea that it may cost as little as $100 billion to lay fiber to every home and business in the US.  $100 billion is certainly a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the cost of other infrastructure projects.  To put it in perspective, that’s about the amount of cash that Apple has on hand, and about 8x Comcast’s 2012 profits.

I am intrigued by the idea that we (we being everyone that has an interest in expanding opportunity on and by way of the internet) could just raise that $100b and build the fucking thing.  Maybe it would take the form of a nonprofit utility-like company; maybe it could pile on to an effort like Google Fiber (with conditions about neutrality and perhaps wholesale resale); I’m not sure.  

But the one thing I’m sure about is that the benefit of symmetrical gigabit fiber to every American is incalculable.

6hmm, large, google fiber, broadband,

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law that intends to protect computer systems from intruders and criminals.  

For those that haven’t been following, this is also the law that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted under for downloading too many academic papers at MIT.

Right now, Congress is considering updates to the CFAA.  It’s widely acknowledged that the way the law is written now, it not only doesn’t accomplish its goal effectively, but it also (like any good over-reaching internet law) makes criminals out of everyone.  From FixTheCFAA.com:

The CFAA is so broad that law enforcement says it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: Potentially even breaking a website’s fine print terms of service agreement. Don’t set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don’t fudge your height on a dating site. Don’t share your Facebook password with anybody: You could be committing a federal crime.

Unfortunately, the latest proposed changes to the CFAA don’t make it better; they actually make it worse.

It’s absolutely important that we protect our networks and computer systems through technical and legal means.  But the way to do it can’t be to criminalize tons of pretty regular behavior and quash the kind of experimenting and hacking (the good kind) that has been at the root of so much of our innovation and progress.

So, add your voice to the cause and let’s make sure congress doesn’t make things worse than they already are.

6hmm, large, cfaa, cyber security, aaron swartz,

Today I turn 34.

For some reason, I can’t get Fred’s post about turning 17 for the third time out of my head. As I have been approaching this milestone, I can’t help but feel like I’m turning the corner to a new phase.

I definitely feel like the last 17 years have been about figuring out how to be an adult.  I owe a lot of that learning to Frannie.

And I’m pretty excited to look ahead at the next 17, and to figure out how to be a really good professional, husband and dad.

I’m not big on birthdays, and generally don’t like to make a big deal out of them.  But Frannie and I have arrived at a really nice way of celebrating ours — we’ve started taking days off together on each others’ birthdays, playing hooky and doing something fun.  Last year on my birthday we rented a tiny little boat and cruised around Boston Harbor in 45 degree weather.  This year on hers we caught a matinee movie and made an early escape for a few cocktails.  It’s a really nice thing to do and I hope we keep doing it forever.

I’m excited for the next 17. If they’re anything like the last 17 they will be twisty and turny, but will hopefully end up taking me (and us) in a good direction.

6hmm, large,

I wrote last week about the Indie Web: the way that the web has the ability to help us grow and connect as individuals in awesome new ways.

Here’s my latest entry in that story:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved doing everything by bike.  As a kid, the bike was my favorite way to get around, and to this day I use my bike daily to run errands and get places.  I particularly love using my bike for actual tasks, not just for “going for a ride” — I think there is something natural and awesome about that, as I’ve written about before.

And I’ve also always been a bike hacker.  I distinctly remember taking my first bike apart and spray painting it all different colors.  My current bike is a 1970s racer hacked to become a fast city bike.  It’s awesome.

So, bringing those two ideas together, along with what’s possible on the Indie Web, something great happened this week:

For a long time, I’ve wanted a cargo bike - these are regular bikes hacked to accomodate passengers and other loads. They’re super popular in Europe, in particular places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.  It seems so obvious to me that I should be riding my kids to school and to the park in one of these things.  The fact that I don’t have one is majorly disappointing.

But, the problem is that they’re super expensive.  Buying a brand new cargo bike from one of the manufacturers in Europe or the US can run upwards of $4k.  And, there’s virtually no secondhand market for cargo bikes in the US — I assume both because they are relatively uncommon, and because once you have one you tend to hold on to it.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to get ahold of one without dropping crazy dollars.

The other day I tweeted out my problem, and within five minutes was pointed to something amazing: Tom’s Cargo Bikes.  Tom is a former muscle car builder in — where else — Portland, Oregon, who over the past few years has turned his attention to building custom cargo bikes.  His bikes are amazing — choppers of all shapes and sizes, using entirely recycled parts.  No two are the same.  You can check out all of his bikes here.

And, rather than costing thousands of dollars, Tom’s custom bikes start at a much more modest $600.  So, for my birthday this year (which is Sunday), we are all chipping in and Tom is going to build me a cargo bike.

For the past few days, Tom and I have been emailing about ideas, and when he’s done with his current batch of bikes he’ll start in on mine.  It’ll probably end up looking something like this (but with a seat for the kids):

I am beyond psyched about this, and for so many reasons.

I’m going to end up with something way cooler than I could have ever imagined, I’m supporting a super talented craftsman who is building a great small business, and it’s costing way less than any of the alternatives.

Vive le Indie Web!

6hmm, indie web, large,

For the past two months, Frannie and I have been doing yoga.  It’s a totally new thing for me.  I was skeptical about it at first, but it’s been totally awesome and perspective changing.  Even though I am completely inflexible and unaccustomed to all of the poses (and perhaps because of this), doing the practice and cracking open my body in new ways has really had a noticeable effect.  I walk out of yoga feeling open, calm, confident, and clear.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but perhaps the idea that has stuck with me the most so far is the idea that we — generally speaking — walk around carrying an air of “subtle discontent”.  This is the nagging feeling that there’s something wrong, somethin missing,  something to get to (that’s not here), something more important to be focusing on, to be doing.  If you think about it and try to notice it, you might be surprised how ever-present it is.

This tends to manifest itself physically in tension between the eyebrows.  And a part of the yoga practice is noticing that feeling, releasing it, letting it melt away, and focusing on experiencing and enjoying the current moment.

For me at least — and I assume for lots of folks who are working hard and are generally under stress — this idea really hit home.  I think there is also something related to this in being hyper connected and constantly checking our phones.  Checking my phone, anxiously, habitually, for new emails, tweets, etc., is a certain form of this subtle discontent.  

And I love the idea of noticing it, being aware of it, melting it away, and refocusing on the present.

6hmm, yoga, large,

Last night at USV, we hosted the latest of several recent meetups on the “Peer Economy”.  We are in the process of organizing a number of companies and organizations that represent a certain sector of the internet economy in NYC, with an eye towards building a more formal coalition (perhaps in the model of San Francisco’s BayShare) at some point in the future.

As is to be expected, we spent the bulk of the discussion trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that ties us all together.   I think there’s a pretty strong thread, but it’s not immediately clear how best to describe it.  So I hereby invite you, the Internet, into the conversation.

So, as a thought experiment, how might you describe the common approaches and values between:

• peer-to-peer marketplace platforms like Etsy, Krrb, Skillshare, Shapeways and Zaarly;
• collaborative consumption networks like Airbnb and Carpooling.com;
• crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and LendingClub;
• co-working and education/development spaces like General Assembly and the DUMBO Startup Lab;
• support networks for independent professionals like the Freelancer’s Union;
• communications and media networks like Twitter, Tumblr, SoundCloud and StackExchange.

At USV, we have a word for all of this, which is simply “networks”.  That’s great and effective as an investment thesis, but it’s actually rather abstract as way of communicating the idea widely.  In Steven Johnson’s recent book Future Perfect, he uses the term “peer network”, which is better but still somewhat problematic (as peer means “pier” to most people and “napster” to others).  And our working description, as you can see, is “peer economy”.

Anyway, rather than try to “draw a box” around all of this — we instead attempted to (at Matt Brimer’s suggestion) focus on the center — on the core opportunities, values, and methods that all of these communities believe in and operate around.

The ones that stood out to me the most were:

• valuing creativity, self expression & individualism;
• increasing personal freedom through community support;
• creating economic empowerment;
• valuing authenticity and real human connection;
• built on trust (as developed within each community);
• and perhaps my favorite: Andrew Wagner’s “as New York as a slice of pizza”

In my world, I focus a lot on words like “innovation” and “networks” — but I think the thing that really stood out to me about last night’s conversation was the centrality of the human component.  Empowering “real people” to do new and awesome things.  To access new economic opportunities for themselves, while at the same time rediscovering community.

The idea that stuck in my head last night is about the “Indie Web” — what’s so interesting about the web and the networks of people on it is that they are at the same time individual & independent AND hyper-connected.  The fact that we’re connected lets us be independent.  It’s almost a paradox.

I like the idea that the web makes it possible to be an indie musician, dj or filmmaker, to be an indie craftsperson or manufacturer, an indie journalist, publisher, or even an indie scientist.

And what makes most (if not all) of this possible is the ability to be an indie entrepreneur, whether that’s through an open source project, a meetup, a web app, or even a venture-backed company (which is, admittedly, a certain flavor of “indie”).  

The point is, that on an open web, we have the unfettered ability to make new things that enable people to do new things.  Which is pretty awesome and exciting.

6hmm, peer networks, large,

Freedom is such a loaded word.  And what makes it harder is that there is not a single “freedom”.  There are many freedoms, that are intertwined and often in tension with one another.

In yesterday’s Times, Cornell economics professor Robert Frank notes:

while almost everyone celebrates freedom in the abstract, defending one cherished freedom often requires sacrificing another. Whatever the flaws in Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal, it sprang from an entirely commendable concern: a desire to protect parents’ freedom to raise healthy children.

Here is a case of one freedom (the freedom to sell and buy whatever we please) is in tension with another: the freedom to make healthy choices. To the critique that the wide availability of and social norms around sugary drinks doesn’t restrict that second freedom, Frank responds:

Unless we’re prepared to deny, against all evidence, that the environment powerfully influences children’s choices, we’re forced to conclude that rejecting Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal significantly curtails parents’ freedom to achieve the perfectly reasonable goal of raising healthy children.

Regardless of what you think about the soda ban, it’s a good example of the problem.  And a microcosm of the large tension around freedoms between the right (“lower-level” personal freedoms) and the left (“higher-level” social freedoms).

This tension of freedoms is also at the center of the debate over the open internet.  I just finished reading Susan Crawford’s new book, Captive Audience, which makes an impassioned argument that we need to prioritize our freedom to connect to the internet and our freedom to innovate on the internet over certain other freedoms (namely: the freedom to build network infrastructure without government regulation).  

In Crawford’s view, data is the new electricity — a utility and commodity that must be provided openly and non-discriminately to all Americans — and should be regulated as such (much the way that electricity underwent regulation in the early 20th century, with the result of ensuring equal access). And she argues that the freedom to connect (as individuals) and the freedom to innovate (as companies) are much more important to society than the freedom to operate a broadband network sans regulation.

Many on the right don’t agree with this view — either because of fear of government surveillance and control, or a belief that the infrastructure market, left alone, will get the job done.  

On this particular issue, it will be really interesting to see what happens this year, as FCC chairman Julius Genachowski leaves office (along with his net neutrality foe on the right, Robert McDowell).

I personally find Crawford’s argument compelling, at least in that we must choose to prioritize the freedom to connect and the freedom to innovate.  It’s clear that we’re quickly falling behind other countries in this effort (e.g., our target connectivity for 2012 is 4mbit up / 1mbit down, while South Korea is targeting symmetrical gigabit connections for every citizen this year).  As we continue to prioritize our freedoms, we should choose the ones that embody the greatest amount of potential and opportunity - and to my mind, that’s freedom to connect to and innovate on top of an open internet.

But we must also distinguish between the notion of government ownership & control of the internet and government regulation of internet access.  Fred Campbell’s argument on Red State frames Crawford’s argument as a play for government ownership and control — e.g., data is not like electricity because data is speech, and it can’t be controlled or owned by government.  I’m with that — but in practice I don’t believe that a privately operated network is any safer from government’s prying eyes than a publicly operated network (see CISPA).  

So the real question seems to me to be: what can we do to ensure that people have freedom of choice at the application layer? That’s where the innovation is happening, where the biggest opportunities for growth and progress are, and where we should be placing our freedom chips.

6large, hmm, net neutrality,