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Comment by abrenzel | Hacker News Reader

Well you're right in a sense that Netflix probably pays the appropriate amount purely for what's outbound from their servers, but that last cost does count and the cost will be borne by someone - either by what Netflix pays the ISP for its data in particular, or by the users that use it. The problem with Net Neutrality is that you're basically saying "everyone should pay for what some content providers provide to some users." Either ISPs "discriminate" against the content provider or the end users, or everyone ends up paying more. Currently IMO, the best world would be to allow the ISPs to charge Netflix properly for the total cost of providing it, which would build in to Netflix's subscription price and properly reflect to end users the true cost of Netflix's services.

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Currently IMO, the best world would be to allow the ISPs to charge Netflix properly for the total cost of providing it

How is that better than charging customers directly for the bandwidth they use? The problem with the recent Canada fiasco wasn't (IMO) the concept of metered billing itself, but trying to charge hundreds of times the actual cost.

It may be more of an aesthetic preference, but the pricing signal makes more sense to me on a per-service basis than it does on a tiered internet service basis. Tiered bandwidth plans are inexact - should I buy the 250 MB plan or the 5 GB - and require a lot of thought as to what you will actually use. If the charge is per-service, you know exactly what you're buying with each additional service you consume. That's my thinking anyway.

Tiered bandwidth plans are inexact - should I buy the 250 MB plan or the 5 GB

That's still more accurate than charging you a Netflix access fee whether you download one movie or 20. And charging per-service opens the door to all sorts of anti-competitive agreements.

and require a lot of thought as to what you will actually use.

That seems like a feature. The alleged problem isn't "customers accessing netflix.com", it's "customers using lots of data". If you want to use pricing signals to correct that, then charge directly for the scarce resource.

IMO, the best world would be to allow the ISPs to charge Netflix properly for the total cost of providing it, which would build in to Netflix's subscription price

This effectively introduces M*N billing relationships (every ISP to every content provider), which would have significant transaction costs.

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