I agree this is a dumb proposal, but what's interesting is that we're at a point where we have to decide whether the government or handful of huge corporations with local monopolies should be in control of the Internet. If that's the choice, I personally would favor the government which is at least notionally somewhat under our control. It's not like the Internet monopolies have any incentive whatsoever to push back against government attempts to assert control or censorship.

The better solution is a breakup of the massive telecoms into many, much smaller companies, including forbidding local monopolies on home Internet access. But I have no hope of that happening anytime soon.

Either the corporations are going to do it, or the government is going to do it. Pick one.

The former please - it's been my experience that switching from Verizon to AT&T is somewhat easier than a bloody revolution.

What if they merge? Then what?

Anti-Trust?

What if the government isn't interested in that?

Civil law suits.

That's going to be really hard when the court is stacked with those sympathetic to the conglomerate because it can buy unlimited political influence.

This is not the case when there's a multitude of smaller players that have a vested interest in maintaining a competitive marketplace, or where they're all boxed in by regulations so that investors don't get wild ideas about unlimited potential profits.