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Why should they be regulated? They provide a popular, non-essential product for free. What threat are we protecting the consumer from in the name of this regula
by root_axis 9y ago
Why should they be regulated? They provide a popular, non-essential product for free. What threat are we protecting the consumer from in the name of this regulation? Consumers are free to visit any competitor site with identical ease of accessibility and competitors have very few barriers to entry (though this trend is slowly changing, e.g. in wireless land where a lack of net-netruality has enabled cell phone providers to harm competition by offering free data-transfer for partnered services like Spotify. A start-up will never be able to compete because their potential customers will pay streaming data fees to use their service or pay nothing to stick with the established incumbent.
- ethbro 9y ago> Consumers are free to visit any competitor site with identical ease of accessibility and competitors have very few barriers to entry I would strongly disagree with this characterization of the market. From joe_the_user's link [1] on oligopolies, every item under Barriers to Entry: Artificial Barriers applies to large, network-effect web companies. Google Takeout is probably the guiding light on fighting this, but were Google no longer in a dominant market position I'm not confident it would remain a corporate emphasis. ... Ironically, this same debate (regulating ISP vs edge provider) just came up in Zuckerberg's Senate questioning.