The net threatens the status quo, so the status quo will attempt to control the net. Stronger attempts to put the net.genie back in the bottle are coming.

I most certainly agree that the net should not be censored, but stopping censorship will not happen through democratic means - the herd is easily panicked with tales of child abuse, terrorism, organized crime, etc.

The control will be defeated through technical means - pervasive encryption seamlessly integrated into every day applications, such that filtering "bad stuff" from "normal usage" is impossible.

All I'm saying is that I'd like to see one ISP blaze the trail of total control (and thus become the technical battleground) instead of all of them at once.

Ah, so you'd rather have one established technology to circumvent than numerous being worked on in parallel. Gotcha.

I will stick with my irrational assumption that the Internet at large is safe from this shit, at least until I'm too old to care ;)

More like I'd rather have a sandbox that gives an advance look at what's coming to the rest of the net.

My assumption is only slightly weaker - the long term internet is fine as privacy technology will outpace politics, but there will be turmoil as they battle.

You make an interesting point, analogous to building an immune system slowly from small diseases, so one big disease can't kill you or an entire population. Similarly, small-time malware over the years has made us stronger against major internet attacks by governments or mafias. However, it's a risky path - from what I've read China's firewall has enough holes for business to get by with annoyances, but it is very effective at keeping most people from learning what they shouldn't.