Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Netflix to Wheeler: "We were only kidding!"

Please see the Variety story, "Netflix Now Says It Didn't Actually Want FCC to Regulate Broadband So Heavily," with this report:

"On Wednesday, Netflix chief financial officer David Wells, speaking at the 2015 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, said the company wasn’t happy with the FCC move. He said that, while the streaming-video company wanted to see “strong” net neutrality measures to ensure content providers would be protected against ISPs charging arbitrary interconnection fees, Netflix would have preferred a lighter regulatory touch.

“Were we pleased it pushed to Title II? Probably not,” Wells said at the conference. “We were hoping there would be a non-regulated solution.”


Are you kidding me? Or was Netflix kidding FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler?

Everyone knows that Netflix was a leading -- if not the leading -- proponent of Title II regulation.

This must be a storyline for a very bad Netflix movie -- I don't know whether it's a comedy or a tragedy.

Thank the good Lord that the Commission always reserves "editorial privileges" to revise, even substantially, its orders before public release. Maybe there's time to rewrite the whole nightmare scenario!