It's also attempting to argue by rhetorical questioning alone, rather than directly and honestly stating a position. I didn't downvote, but I find arguing in such an indirect way bad form and mildly disrespectful of the reader.

IMHO even a bad argument presented directly and honestly is better than a good argument that cowers behind questions.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm convinced that most net neutrality advocates haven't asked themselves these questions.

I can't think of a better way to challenge an idea than by asking questions.

I think the past actions of these companies speaks for themselves.

The question YOU should ask yourself is why you think ATT & comsat will do a 180 turn and stop their attempts to kill the free market after this.

They will not, that's why we need better ISPs.

But you've been an advocate of deregulation all over this thread. The barrier of entry to becoming an ISP is high. A sort of compromise is to use sensible regulation to protect users from the active players. The keyword here is sensible, because I don't care for government mandated regulations. I do recognize that they are necessary. Profits (among other things) cloud judgement, and there are some ruthless, despicable people running companies.

Unless a company with lots of expendable income is going to enter the market as a competitor, there won't be very many new ISPs that can offer more than aDSL speeds. Most US communities have one or two local ISP outside of the cable company and teleco providers like Time Warner and AT&T. The speeds are only good for people who check email and don't mind watching video at 480p. The other is satellite with similar speeds at even higher prices.

What created those barriers, regulation?

I edited my comment. The key takeaway from the edit was sensible regulation.

To answer your question though, no. It was misused infrastructure that was basically given away to telecos. Instead of sharing it like a utility, they took it and ran with it.

I don't at all agree with GP's point, but "the infrastructure being given away" is, objectively, an instance of regulation. Laws were passed, government bureaucracy was involved, papers were signed in triplicate.

If we're really on the regulation-is-bad-mmkay train, then also on the chopping block needs to be franchise agreements, agreements where high-density housing buildings can only use one provider, and so on.

My guess is because people regard the shotgun questionnaire as a rhetorical tactic that burdens the responder with having to extrapolate the intended position that the questions are written to draw out, while simultaneously leaving a vacuum of supporting arguments to justify the analogies explored by the questions, as if the implied argument is so rock-solid that it requires no bolstering, convincing or exposition. This effect is compounded by the fact that some of the questions are clearly poor comparisons (e.g. the comparison between an organization that chooses to filter content within the confines of its network vs an ISP monopoly restricting a paying customer's access to legal content - no matter which way you come down on the question, they are clearly totally different scenarios)

Because people use the down-vote button to express disagreement.

I wish they didn't, but as far as I can tell it's not explicitly against the guidelines, so what can you do really.

I don't agree with GP (as in, I'm pro-neutrality) but there are interesting points there that stir the free-market-ist in me. On some level I think 'let them' and I'll vote with my money.

However, I don't think that will actually work, it doesn't seem to be working with mobile phones even on price of text/voice/data; never mind data-neutrality.

> Because people use the down-vote button to express disagreement.

While that is often true, this is not the case here.

The purpose of the "downvote" is to push poor discussion to the bottom of the page.

The rhetorical questions and obviously poor comparisons add nothing to the discussion.