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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