Netflix Considers Fighting for Net Neutrality by Harnessing Internet's Sense of Entitlement
Netflix, as should be fairly obvious, has a significant financial stake in the net neutrality fight. If Internet service providers charge companies based on how much bandwidth they use, obviously that's going to roll over to companies like Netflix, whose customers may use lots of it to stream the next season of House of Cards. So in their latest letter to investors, Netflix is assuring that they'll fight tooth and nail to avoid this situation.
Via Entrepreneur:
Netflix is threatening to rally its roughly 34 million domestic users against a hotly contentious ruling last week overturning laws that heretofore stated all data on the internet should be treated equally.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals against net neutrality in a case brought by Verizon against the FCC means that service providers can now theoretically charge inflated fees to companies like Netflix, for instance, whose video streaming facilities require more bandwidth.
Translation: the end of net neutrality could hypothetically mean that streaming quality diminishes or that consumers must pay more to ensure that streaming bandwidth remains high.
"Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP, we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open internet they are paying their ISP to deliver," Netflix pledged in a letter to investors.
I don't think the word "draconian" means what they think it means. Is there any other provider of limited resource (and yes, for now, bandwidth is still a limited resource) that doesn't charge those who consume more a higher amount of money than those who consume less?
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