Netflix Recants on Obamanet

[theguru]

With that in mind, consider what David Wells, chief financial officer of Netflix , said last week at the annual Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. He disclosed that Netflix, one of the few companies that advocated the most extreme form of Internet regulation, had lobbyist’s remorse only a week after the Federal Communications Commission voted to replace the open Internet with Obamanet.

 

“Were we pleased it pushed to Title II?” Mr. Wells said to investors. “Probably not. We were hoping there might be a nonregulated solution.”

 

Last year National Journal reported that Netflix was “relishing” its role as the lead lobbyist for net neutrality, “not only advocating a position that would protect its profits,” but “also earning goodwill from web activists and liberals.”

 

Today Netflix is a poster child for crony capitalism. When CEO Reed Hastings lobbied for Internet regulations, all he apparently really wanted was for regulators to tilt the scales in his direction with service providers. Or as Geoffrey Manne of the International Center for Law and Economics put it in Wired: “Did we really just enact 300 pages of legally questionable, enormously costly, transformative rules just to help Netflix in a trivial commercial spat?”

 

L. Gordon Crovitz: Netflix Recants on Obamanet - WSJ

[theguru]

Lots in this article, I need someone smarter than me to break it down for us.

 

Anyone?

[marvel]

If you're going to link WSJ or any other requires a subscription (but gives you limited views), link from Google, like this:

 

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=wall+street+journal+netflix&tbm=nws

 

(it's the first article.)

 

That way, we don't have to subscribe to read it.