This misses the point to an impressive degree. No one here is disputing the current legality and I think everyone here understands the difference between government and private services.

The argument is that we've come to depend on privately owned backbone infrastructure in much the same way we depend on publicly owned roads. Furthermore, the operators of that infrastructure have shown themselves to be vulnerable to public outrage. Therefore, it's reasonable to ask if additional regulations might be a good idea.

A good analogy here might be to privately operated toll roads. Surely such a system shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against you based on (for example) your bumper stickers?

That seems to imply nationalization would be the beneficial thing, not regulation.

>we've come to depend on privately owned backbone

No, you can use any other service you want. CF has no private toll roads, in fact you can make your own 'toll' road right know. But if you have your private toll road you can forbid any bumper sticker you don't want on YOUR road.

> if you have your private toll road you can forbid any bumper sticker you don't want on YOUR road

If this existed in reality somewhere in the US (or wherever you happen to live) are you seriously saying that you would be ok with it?! Do you really not see the necessity of having neutral infrastructure?

> CF has no private toll roads

They are largely analogous. They transport your traffic from point A to point B for a fee. Yes, competitors exist. No, you can't just go build your own any more than you can simply whip up a viable Twitter or Facebook clone in a weekend. Claiming otherwise is either to be profoundly misinformed or to advance an argument in bad faith.

> > we've come to depend on privately owned backbone

> No, you can use any other service you want.

... which is also private and subject to the same pressures due to public outrage. Disputing that we have come to depend on privately owned basic infrastructure in general because we could switch to depending on a different piece of privately owned infrastructure is to again miss the point entirely. There is not (to the best of my knowledge) a government operated CDN or network backbone which you could make use of in order to avoid such concerns.

> There is not (to the best of my knowledge) a government operated CDN or network backbone which you could make use of in order to avoid such concerns.

The line between private and public gets a bit blurry when talking about edge routing and CDNs. Especially edge routing.

>which is also private and subject

Then go to your Government and ask them to make such a Service, look there is just no point arguing about that, as a private firm you don't have to serve everyone, especially groups that are potentially bad for your brand.