Thursday 22 May 2014

Netflix vs Comcast

The Netflix/Comcast agreement demonstrates that Net Neutrality is not a case of poor, overworked, underpaid ISPs finally getting their due from freeloading content providers. It's a hostage situation or a protection racket. "Pay up, or else all your lovely bandwidth could have a nasty accident". This is bandwidth, by the way, that everyone has already been paid for once. Netflix already pays its ISP to provide a service, and Comcast customers already pay Comcast and Netflix for the bandwidth and service, respectively. The only reason Netflix had to pay Comcast again is that Comcast has the power to kill Netflix traffic. That's not a normal commercial agreement. It's extortion.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At least, for their part, Comcast seems to have used the extortion money to make Netflix faster.
PPS - It just shouldn't have been Netflix that had to pay for it.

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