Superlawyer Lawrence Lessig won't have Comcast to kick around at the FCC hearing on network neutrality — the principle that broadband providers can't discriminate against certain kinds of Internet traffic — being held at Stanford tomorrow. The event was only scheduled after Comcast paid chumps to fill chairs at an earlier hearing at Harvard in an obvious effort to squelch debate. With Comcast working with BitTorrent and just today joining with legal file-sharing startup Pando to work on a "bill of rights" for file sharers and ISPs, the company is trying to make voluntary moves in an effort to stave off involuntary regulation. I was planning on attending, if only because it promised to be an entertaining nerdfight — now, I'm not so sure. Since public hearings are supposedly democracy in action, you tell me if I should bother buying a Caltrain ticket.

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(Illustration by Victor Agreda, Jr.)

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