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Do you want monopoly providers making those choices for you? Hulu over Netflix. DailyKos over FR. Vimeo over YouTube.

DailyKos over FR - that's exactly what I'm afraid the current gov't will do.

Of course I don't want monopolies running the show any more than I want gov't regs that effectively amount to the same thing.

A few years ago we had the ability to choose who we bought our electricity and phone service from, the company that hung the wires was not necessarily the same as the service provider. What happened to that?

Instead of the gov't making rules of what should be available, why not open up the digital world to similar competition, so that no matter where you live, you have a choice who your ISP provider will be.

------------Do you want monopoly providers making those choices for you? Hulu over Netflix. DailyKos over FR. Vimeo over YouTube.

DailyKos over FR - that's exactly what I'm afraid the current gov't will do.--------------

Obama’s Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein’s Big Gov Power Grabbing Mandate to Legally Control the Internet(listen to him for yourself)

Kagan and the Cass Sunstein Connection

Sites of one point of view [would] agree to provide links to other sites
If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction that would be great. And if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates.
The best would for this to be done voluntarily but uh the word ‘voluntary’ is a little complicated

"A few years ago we had the ability to choose who we bought our electricity and phone service from, the company that hung the wires was not necessarily the same as the service provider. What happened to that?"

Those companies had names like Enron and Duke energy.

The problem is that it was deemed very inefficient to allow multiple companies to run their own sets of wires/cables to every home.

So the government gave monopolies to certain companies. In exchange for the advantage of monopoly power those companies had to agree to certain rules. One of those rules was that any third party that wanted to run a virtual phone company on top of their lines had to be charged fees such that they could be competitive with the company that had run the lines.

So you have companies like Virgin, Boost, etc. running on top of Sprint. You also have ISPs running on top of AT&T, Verizon, etc.

Every company needs something from the government in order to have a profitable business plans. The companies that spent all the money to build up the infrastructure need to recoup those expenses. The companies sitting on top of the infrastructure need to be able to provide their services at a reasonable cost.

Thus they are all lobbying government to get the best deal possible.

The Net Neutrality issue is not free market capitalism vs. evil socialistic government. It is one set of crony capitalists vs. another group of crony capitalists.

I have had generally bad service from AT&T. I've heard only bad things about Time/Warner and Comcast. I get good service from Netflix.

I am therefore siding with the crony capitalists that provide me the best service: Netflix.

It's as simple as that.