[tlb]

I think the country needs net neutrality. But the specific point he's making here is valid: it'll suck if there are 50 different sets of laws that ISPs have to conform to. From a technical point of view, routers everywhere in the country will have to know to treat traffic going to to California customers differently from Nevada customers.

We could hope to repeat the history of vehicle emissions controls, where CA introduced regulations and auto makers eventually found it cheaper to make one kind of vehicle than two. But the incentives for non-net-neutral policies are so large that if major states have different rules, we'll end up with a huge mess. And regulatory messes tend to favor large incumbents, because they can devote the resources to them. That's why, for example, we have no new banks (which are regulated by states.)