“When you say “A world with free on-ramps for CAS providers is simply not economically viable.” you are ignoring the phenomenal growth and success of exactly this model over the last 20 years of the commercial Internet.”

You’re fantasizing. If you think Internet transit bandwidth (especially dedicated content providers) is free, I’ve got some beach front property in Nevada to sell you.

The bottom line is that people don’t only want to sell “dumb pipes”, but it is exactly those dumb pipes that allow innovation at the edges.

You are very mistaken about that, and I can prove it to you rather than lower myself to your name calling. Here’s some examples where we are told that everyone should get the same speed regardless of what they pay.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/11/11/net-neutrality-preserves-writers’-inkwell
“Net Neutrality” is the basic principle that keeps the Internet free from corporate control. It means that companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T cannot block or control content on the Web, and that all Web sites and applications download and upload at the same speeds. In other words, any blog, video or Web site that I create will travel at the same speed as something produced by the mammoth media conglomerates.”

But we know this “principle” where all websites operate at the same quality and speed is a myth and it is NOT how the Internet actually works. I can assure you that my $50/month hosting service for our tiny poor digitalsociety.org website doesn’t work as well as a NewYorkTimes.com or Huffingtonpost.com site. But I don’t think my rights are violated because I’m getting what I’m paying for and I don’t have this entitlement mindset where I think I’m owed the kind of connectivity that big companies have.

Furthermore, we’re told by Larry Lessig in his 2006 testimony to Congress (http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/30115.PDF) against fee-based priority services because they would have only been affordable to the big companies.

Free Press opposes any enhanced services because it allows the ISPs to “control the Internet by picking winners and losers in a pay-for-play scheme”.

But the Internet has always been a pay-for-play scheme where you pay more, you get more. But Free Press and other Net Neutrality proponents want an Internet where you pay less, you get as much as someone else paying more.

So do some research before you start calling people “idiots”, and try actually debating the issues for once.