In a totally free market, yes. But as a utility provider ISPs should not be considered a free market. In exchange for near monopoly power over the internet access of a particular region (in the US), these companies have to play by extra rules protecting consumers’ access to 3rd party content.

Imagine if your electric company charged different rates because of the brand of electric car you charged. Sure, they can charge more per kWh based on time of day, total household usage, or total network availability of power at the moment, but charging more (or less) per kWh going into a Tesla than a Leaf would give that electric company monopoly too much power to pick winners and losers.

I like to think of ISP deep packet inspection using the same analogy; I for one would not like my power company to know the make and model of everything I have plugged in in my house, beyond total usage it’s really none of their business.

I recognize these aren’t perfect analogies but hope that they help get the point across.

Worse than that: imagine that they not only charge more based on the brand of electric car being charged, but they also sell (or are planning to sell) their own brand of electric car, and they know it won't be as good, but they'll offer to let you charge it for less than the other brands.

> In exchange for near monopoly power over the internet access

I don't like 'internet access' being conflated with 'high speed internet access'. Yes where I live comcast has a monopoly on the latter but I have 4-6 other cellular options ( in addition to comcast) for the former.

Right.

There are almost no free markets anywhere in the world.

I agreed to pay for the defined service, they are expected to deliver. Calling it a subsidy to other customers is meritless. Either they need to deliver as expected or go out of business. Frontier is a terribly incompetent company so I am not surprised they would attempt this sort of idiotic argument.

Basic offer and acceptance.

This is often not the case. As an example, in the US, I can buy a paperback book and then pay someone to put a hard cover on it. In the UK, many paperback books have a license that prohibits doing that. That license doesn't work in the US.

What would be the purpose of this? It seems like an oddly specific thing to exclude.

I'd expect the primary audience for a hardcover conversion would be libraries-- many of the books in my local library have been rebound, probably because the original paperback covers weren't suitable for that level of usage.

Hardbacks sell for a lot more money than paperbacks, earning the publisher (and usually the author) a lot more.

Actually, what can be sold is a function of market rules, law in other words.

That is our collective check against over exploitation, abuse of position, hazards, snake oul, and other easily identified, harmful market antics.

> what can be sold is a function of market rules

maybe what can be sold successfully. I see lot of crap that never sells in the markets.

True. However, "market rules", are at the core, law. Above that are contracts, norms.

The rules permit that crap, risk / reward being left up to the merchant.

Then there are illegal markets. Still risk / reward, but operating more on norms and some contracts, of a sort.