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Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

Actually I've just stumbled across a very(!) active HN poster that seems to be against it on a popular micro blogging platform..

The common counter argument seems to be that "Regulation is bad for the open market" and that "Better options would come up if an ISP starts doing weird shit, if the market demands it".

It's interesting to me that the very same people seem to be pro Freedom of Press/Freedom of Speech (as a German, the US Freedom of Speech is something I'm not used to, something that doesn't align with my culture/upbringing), but feel different about this subject because it involves a "market"?

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"Regulation is bad for the open market" - that's the root of the problem here. If it weren't for various "licences", "concessions", "permits" to become mobile operator or be allowed to install your cables then we will not need a discussion about net neutrality.

Definitely the bar to become ISP is too high, lower it and the problem will be gone. I don't belive that people don't want to become ISP just like that - something is wrong here.

On the other hand I have to say that sane regulations make sense, for instance mobile operators in Poland who own hardware infrastructure are obliged by law to sell bandwith to virtual operators when requested. That indeed lowered prices and provided better serivces including mobile internet. However, to have a full picture, I need to say that at the down of mobile telephony in Poland, initial investment and infrastructure was build by companies owned or controlled by the state, so, to some extent, infrastructure was payed from public money and later sold to 100% private entities.

That's some wishful thinking.

The real reason we have few ISPs is that building facilities require large amounts of capital, returns are low and the incumbents have already built out the profitable markets.

Regulation is not the root of the problem. Sure, lessening the burden would help, but not solve the problem.

But I can't see why regulation must be necessary to maintain net neutrality; of course it's a good thing, I'm just not sure the government necessarily needs to mandate it.

Documented abuses of net neutrality were few and far between and there really wasn't a precedent for the 2010 Act in the first place. Mobile phone carriers are not subject to the same net neutrality rules, yet I haven't heard of any of the 4 major providers deliberately throttling internet service.

If you check out /r/libertarian, there is lots of debate over this idea right now.

> It's interesting to me that the very same people seem to be pro Freedom of Press/Freedom of Speech (as a German, the US Freedom of Speech is something I'm not used to, something that doesn't align with my culture/upbringing), but feel different about this subject because it involves a "market"?

That's Libertarianism. Everything done by government is bad, everything done by businesses is good. Looking at the actual effects is verboten.

I didn't downvote you and have little experience with the US concept of (capital L) Libertarianism.

But it's kinda weird to see you use 'verboten' - probably to make this sound "really bad",in some sort of authoritarian way - in a reply to a post that contains the words "as a German". That seems inappropriate.

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