Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Will Too

Re:Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Wi... by Karunamon on Thursday September 04, 2014 @09:57AM (#8268238)

Probably because it's easier to prevent the companies from abusing their position than it is to do something about the fact that the monopolies exist in the first place.

The former is a matter of defining a rule that says "If you do this, we will fine you or worse", where "this" is defined as various anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices.

The latter is a morass of legal wrangling (think ma bell getting broken up) that would have to repeat itself for every single major ISP out there.

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Re:Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Wi... by wrkng on Thursday September 04, 2014 @11:02AM (#8268632)

that is true for sure

i like to believe that competition can solve this particular problem, but the honest truth is that real competition in broadband internet access is a distant distant idea, regardless of what policies we put in place (which would also be long term policies -- like dig once). enabling real competition would also require even more "heavy handed" regulation, like requiring open access to infrastructure & public right-of-ways, which are at the heart of the physical portion of broadband networks, and which would be a 10x bigger fight than the net neutrality fight.

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