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Comment by jlv | Hacker News Reader

He's considering the basic freedoms of service providers to restrict access as they see fit - not the right of the consumers.

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That's seldom an argument that I've never seen featured prominently on blogs that oppose network neutrality legislation, but on this little slice of reddit inside HN I suppose painting the worst possible picture of people you disagree with is all that matters. Most people who oppose regulation of the internet use utilitarian arguments, claiming that the quality and neutrality of the internet will be biased by government regulation.

Believe it or not, there is not a cabal of people getting together on wednesday nights to sacrifice children to corporate logos. Rather, there are many people who in good-faith believe that heavy-handed regulation is bad for the consumer.

Myself, I haven't made up my mind on the issue yet, but hivemind behavior just rubs me the wrong way.

I'm not trying to paint a prejudiced picture though. Hell - I'm not even trying to twist words. The core of the cognitive dissonance can be explained away by understanding for whom Boehner is speaking out for - the providers and their 'basic freedom' to regulate a service as they see fit. Obviously, net neutrality proponents understand the issue differently.

The conspiracy isn't particularly hidden -- this is just rational behavior by large ISPs. Like every producer of a service, the telcos don't want to see their product commoditized and subject to pure competition, and they are doing all they can to delay this.

The motivation for a company to want deregulation cannot be to increase market competition for their own product. To the extent that they claim otherwise they are being dishonest.

What a company/industry might honestly claim is that regulation will prevent the development of valuable markets, satisfying neither producers nor consumers. This is an empirical claim, however, that stands on evidence rather than ideology. And we have only to look to the countries with faster internet to see whether it holds.

That's true, and a good point in regards to legislation. Not everyone who oppose Net Neutrality is dong so because of the corporations. There are legitimate concerns about how the FCC would regulate the internet.

However, when speaking of freedom being restricted in opposition to Net Neutrality, it seems like the only possible freedoms being restricted are those of corporations who would wish to do things that would be restricted by Net Neutrality, not those of their customers. However, when this is mentioned, it's painted as "our" freedoms, making it look like it's everyone's freedom, when realistically it's only the freedom of those corporations, and not the citizens, as is implied.

I'm not really sure how net-neutrality (status quo) is supposed to be a "heavy-handed regulation". While a bunch of new regulation that ensures a heavily controlled and regulated and multi-tiered internet is not.

You're right. The blogs that oppose network neutrality are far less coherent than that.

Oh, my God. I understand it perfectly now. I don't know whether to thank you for helping me get it, or damn you for making me die inside a little. (Either way you get an upvote)

Perhaps so, but the ISPs must serve the consumers; they have no other path to profit.

The alternative is the freedom of government to restrict access as they see fit. And governments money comes from taxes (or inflation), they have no incentive to improve access or quality.

Who are their customers? It seems that the crux of the issue is that the ISP's want to extend their reach to include websites owners as customers as well.

I'll never understand the ideology that all regulation is bad. It's not only laughable, but demonstrably false.

When there is an alternative, but they are a utility, there are essentially no options.

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