Have you ever attended a sporting event where billboards flashed advertisements? Quite likely. Have you ever been to a conference with sponsored events, shuttles and meals? Happens all the time. In these cases, and many more, advertisers in effect help subsidize your ticket purchase. The practice is so common as to be unremarkable. 

And yet the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), prodded by self-styled consumer interest groups, is seeking to ban sponsored data on the Internet. Spotify and Pandora may want to help pay for part of your T-Mobile subscription, and Facebook may wish to defray the cost of getting online for cash-strapped young people, but these groups insist these consumer subsidies are secretly dangerous. Free data, they are hoping the FCC will declare, is bad for you. 

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