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dave562 writes: "There was an interesting article posted on Zero Hedge lately on the throttling of Netflix.
'For years, the Netflix streaming business has been growing like a parasite, happy to piggyback on established broadband infrastructures, where the broadband companies themselves have becomes competitors to Netflix for both distribution and content. Until now. Emboldened by the recent Net Neutrality ruling, which has put bandwidth hogs like Netflix which at last check was responsible for over 30% of all downstream US internet traffic, broadband providers are finally making their move, and in a preliminary salvo whose ultimate compromise will be NFLX paying lots of money, have started to throttle Netflix traffic. The WSJ reports (Paywall) that the war between the broadband-ers and the video streaming company has finally emerged from the "cold" phase and is fully hot.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by WildWombat on Friday February 21 2014, @01:21AM
"Where exactly is netflix getting free access? Surely they have to pay someone to get access to the internet at all, unless they themselves are a tier-1 backbone provider?"
Netflix isn't getting anything for free. They're paying their own way. So are their customers who have already paid for their bandwidth. The problem is that our major ISPs are greedy motherfuckers who almost always have a local monopoly or duopoly and the vast amounts of power that come with that. They're double dipping and trying to get Netflix to pay a second time for Bandwidth that the ISPs customers have already paid for. It should be fucking criminal but when you own as many lawmakers as the major ISPs you get to write the laws....
Hope that helps clear up any confusion.
Cheers,
-WW
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dry on Friday February 21 2014, @02:38AM
You forgot to add that the ISPs have also expanded into content and are directly competing with netflix so naturally want to leverage their monopoly in the ISP business to push their media business.
At one time there were rules about what a company could own, rules meant to foster competition and somehow we got sold on the idea that no regulations (actually just certain regulations) is better for competition.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @04:28AM
But the rules are ebil socialism!! How dare you question deregulation. Corporations are model citizens and would never screw consumers over when allowed to self-regulate!