Net neutrality — in which all Internet traffic flows at one speed without preference for any content provider — is a hit with companies such as Google and Netflix that hope to dodge paying for the huge amount of online bandwidth they actually use, a government watchdog told
Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"What we're talking about here is a bunch of huge, bandwidth-hog companies that don't want to pay their freight for their shipping," Seton Motley, of Less Government and stopnetregulation.org, told "Midpoint" host Ed Berliner.
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Netflix, the online a la carte movie and television subscription service, grudgingly agreed to pay Verizon and other Internet service providers more money to speed up video streams — a decision that set off howls of protest among
net neutrality advocates, who want the federal government to enforce a one-speed-for-all-content rule online.
At the same time, Netflix continues to blame Verizon for slow delivery of its content. Verizon has responded by threatening to sue Netflix for slander.
Motley cited figures showing that on any given evening Netflix viewers are singlehandedly responsible for 30 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic.
Given that, and given the billions that telecommunications companies have spent building Internet infrastructure, "why shouldn't Netflix pay for all the bandwidth they're using?" said Motley.
Government-enforced net neutrality is not the law of the land, thanks in part to Verizon lawsuits challenging federal rules on Internet regulation. But if it were, Motley said, it would amount to "crony socialism" for big Internet companies.
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