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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

This is a genius move. It's exactly what needs to happen to get consumers to realize that it's their ISP fucking them over, not Netflix.

The average joe isn't outraged enough about net neutrality. If only they'd start doing this to other known bad actors coughcomcastcough, that might just be what the doctor ordered.

I wonder why they ponied up the money to the protection rackets first, and only then started pointing fingers. Maybe the agreement gave them access to some better data? If not, this should have been done months ago!

By the way, don't bother with the comments on the article page unless you want to lose all faith in humanity :(

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From a strategic perspective, I think paying off one of the ISPs in this case strengthens their case by showing that the problem is a shakedown for money. If they didn't pay up and the issue was never fixed then the ISPs could attempt to play it off as some larger-than-money issue. They've proven the problem is greed.

Even better, it attacks Verizon using their own words against them.

Verizon: Netflix performance sucks because their traffic is congesting our network!

Netflix: Our performance sucks because their network is congested!

Verizon: OMG WTF you can't say that!

I never thought of this, but it's quite genius when laid out this way.

It could be so that the ISP can't claim "if you had peered with us, we wouldn't be so congested" or some other BS.

Sure, but Netflix did "peer" with Verizon (read: put their servers on the Verizon network). At this point, anything happening is either Netflix's fault (for not buying enough bandwidth) or Verizon's fault (for having a congested internal network), and we don't have enough information to know which.

Could also be that the agreement had an anti-defamation clause, and Verizon was counting on that to avoid upgrading their internal network.

In Germany, this would actually be a great thing! If the German Telekom (biggest provider here, formerly owned by the state) played that card, other providers could start to demand peering with them. The strange thing with German Telekom is not that peering with them would be too expensive, it is that they don't take part in the big peering points at all. As a "smaller" provider, you can connect with Telekom on by becoming a Telekom customer, but not on eye level as a peering partner.

We have a similar problem in australia. The ACCC (consumer competition watchdogs) forced the 4 largest at the time to peer together (which was a good move) but they refuse to peer with other australian ISPs.

They also control a fair chunk of the overseas connections.

If I had to guess, I would say that Comcast had a huge proportion of 'users paying Netflix money and which live in an area where there is no broadband competition'.

If the problem with Comcast is that their network is congested and users can't switch to another provider then it doesn't matter whose fault it is, those people are going to leave regardless.

Note that Netflix is only showing these notices in areas where Verizon has competition to which their customers can switch, which lends a lot of credence to the idea that 'ISP switchability' is a key factor guiding Netflix's behaviour.

Re: comments, I didn't believe you, now I wish I had.

> NetFlix will lose huge. Obama is protecting the Taliban now. That's the only reason Silicon Valley soared. Democrats (from Jan 2007) and Obama 'til his Taliban kiss.

I wonder why they ponied up the money to the protection rackets first, and only then started pointing fingers.

One possible reason is that it makes it easy to quantify their economic injury.

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