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But what the ISP cannot do is artificially inflate their advantage, as doing so would be in violation of a free market on the Internet.

Can we please stop using this term, please? It's pretty clear that we can't agree on a definition of "free market"(¹), so we might as well stop using it.

(¹) For many people, the idea that one must restrict the ISP and subscriber's freedom of contract to preserve the free market is a logical contradiction.

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Yes, there's no one true definition of a free market but to say there's a logical contradiction rather strikes me as a jump to conclusions. What I meant was, impeding the flow of packets to or from competing networks prevents free trade on the Internet. It's easy to get the two mixed up, but the parallels between net neutrality and the rise of free trade in the 18th and 19th century seem realistic imho. I'm no historian though, merely biased by being on the content provider side of the fence.

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