I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but the power analogy doesn't quite work: > Our current situation is like your power company getting to decide wha

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but the power analogy doesn't quite work: > Our current situation is like your power company getting to decide what devices you can plug into your outlets (and trying to shake down device manufacturers for permisson to use the outlets). Power (at least in my part of the US) uses metered billing (plus a flat cost). If some company starts selling a device which draws a large amount of power, anyone who uses it will pay larger power bills as a result, so the power company isn't left carrying the financial burden. I suspect that if your ISP could convince you to pay $40/month plus $0.01/GB of up/down bandwidth then all these arguments would probably disappear, because people streaming lots of Netflix more would naturally pay more. And with the bandwidth caps of some providers, it is already heading in that direction. (Of course subscribers have all sorts of reasons not to prefer such a system. Just because it would resolve the current political situation doesn't mean people would like it.)