The idealistic conservative's perspective is that the government should regulate the minimum amount of conduct necessary to have a successful and functioning market. In accordance with free market principles, this regulation is being repealed on the belief that it does not serve a necessary function.

Before you scoff, please realize that legal restrictions are immensely heavy-handed, and very frequently abused or misappropriated. Regulations frequently accidentally overshoot their target, and they stay on the books for years. Discarding unnecessary regulations is not only good hygiene, but it may be critical to the development of some improvement or technology that the lawmakers had not conceived when the law was made.

It'd be nice if Congress was fast enough on its feet to recognize this as it was occurring and make the necessary adjustments, but it simply does not work that way; once something is law, it's very likely going to stay that way, untouched for decades or even centuries. Remember all the articles about the FBI attempting to invoke a statute from 1798 (yes, seventeen-ninety-eight, numbers not transposed) to compel the decryption of an iPhone?

For example, the CFAA passed long before the World Wide Web was a thing, but it's had an immense effect on the internet's development and continues to be misappropriated by large companies to harass small players and break their products before they get large enough to pose a threat. Another example is the Copyright Act, which, under current interpretation, considers RAM copies of copyrighted works as distinct copies eligible for protection. This means that you're potentially violating someone's copyright just by downloading their web site!

Combine these two statutes written for bygone times but very much in full effect today, and if you make the wrong person mad, you're looking at not only going bankrupt trying to figure out how to pay your legal bills, but also becoming a felon. Such was the case with Aaron Swartz, who was facing prosecution under these outdated regulations for downloading publicly-funded research papers from a paywalled database.

It should also be clarified that this repeal only removes one set of regulations, a set imposed by the FCC and that has only existed for the last couple of years. I'm not a lawyer, but somehow I doubt the issue is so simplistic that Comcast is going to open up "BuyYourNeighborsBrowsingHistory.com" any time soon. There are a variety of other laws that may apply to the legality of reselling such data, and surely these would require evaluation before the concept was greenlit. Furthermore, if Congress can be convinced that this is a bad idea, they need only to pass a new bill.

The core issue is that telecommunications services, including ISPs, are not what most people would consider a functioning free market, because 90%+ of the U.S. can not obtain comparable service from anyone besides the main telecommunication provider in their area. If they could, moving to an ISP that respected privacy without being compelled to do so by legal force would be a perfectly reasonable position to take.

The focus must be on getting our reps to solve the constrained telco market. Interestingly enough, that may also involve liberations to and/or removals of the FCC regulations around radio broadcasting, licensing, etc.

One humorous note: if we believe the most dramatic prophecies about the meaning of this repeal, the last season of South Park may be closer to real life than we think. A foreign company develops technology to uncover the complete internet history of every human and the real-world identity behind every anonymous or pseudonymous post and threatens to publicize these. Complete social breakdown ensues.