result for the average user would be less innovation and fewer free services. Facebook, and many other useful social networking tools, would not be in existence today if they had to rely on donors and grants, instead of investors and venture capital, and if their innovations were DOA because of strict privacy regulations. If privacy fundamentalists only cared about their own privacy, they could simply opt to not use Facebook. But these people instead see the world as one in which everyone else needs to be saved from having Facebook and its army of evil programmers sell off their personal data to the highest bidder (something Facebook is not doing). Consider a recent statement by Chris Conley at the ACLU who said, "People are not necessarily thinking about how long this information will stick around, or how it could be used and exploited by marketer." It is this type of paternalistic view of Internet users that is at the heart of arguments in favor of government regulation to protect consumers from themselves. Government intervention is not needed because there is already a simple solution--if you don't like Facebook's policies or services, then don't use it. Or use it, but use Facebook's privacy options to not share certain information. Facebook offers consumers a tradeoff--consumers can use its free service, and in return, Facebook can sell targeted advertising based on user data (which, again, is fundamentally different than selling consumers' data). Consumers face trade-offs all the time. I personally don't like paying