You say consumers would be appalled. Except they aren’t, in real life. It’s been happening for 75 years (or more) in the telco world and nobody seems to care. The telco decides what apps see the light of day. And guess what, there have been darned few of them, right? Consumers don’t become appalled about what they don’t know they’re missing.

The fact that anyone could put up anything and the market decides is what gave us the amazing innovations we’ve seen on the net, much of it in the last 10 years. All those ideas flowing to end-users, and end-users shifting to newer and better apps all the time.

If new apps don’t work because the first mile access providers are messing with them, who is going to know the underlying reason? The app won’t work, so nobody is going to use it, so the app will die off before anybody really even knows about it. The end-users will never see the app, so they won’t have anything to be appalled about. Their 2006 version of the internet will still work, so they won’t even notice.

If government decides to intervene, the Internet is suddenly succeptible to a bevy of special interests. Wther or not these interests seek to stifle innovation is a crap shoot, and not a chance that I am willing to take without ample evidence that our fears of gatekeeper monopolies are coming true.