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Comment by nnfy | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile we are lobbying for net neutrality legislation which gives out own government (famous for freedoms like the patriot act) additional power over ISPs by reclassifying them as common carriers.

Do you really want your government deciding what is and is not neutral content delivery? No one sees any way in which it can go wrong?

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Do you mean legislation abolishing net neutrality? Because AFAIA the point of net neutrality is that only the delivery of _all_ content is neutral. (Note that it's not the content that's supposed to be neutral, whatever that would mean, but the delivery.)

How are people so niave as to not understand that such a broad concept like "neutrality" can easily be abused? Legislation is slow to change and adapt as is, you want to give government further power to apply law to an industry which has already been captured? Never mind the quickness with which tech like the internet changes.

I feel like I'm the only sane person on HN. How are people so oblivious to the downsides of broad, sweeping regulation?

It sounds like you mean that people can redefine the word neutral to suit their use case? Because "net neutrality" is pretty well defined, and basically means "nobody should have the power to interfere with our communications". The government already has the power to apply law - what we're supposed to care about is what law they're applying, and whether those are good laws.

I think the reason people are "oblivious" is basically because they're also (i.e. not only) aware of the downside of the absence of regulation, and feel that those downsides outweigh those of regulation.

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