The headquarters of Netflix in Los Gatos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Collectively, Americans are getting fed up with the political process, and one of the biggest examples of corruption includes the billions spent on lobby platforms to buy politicians’ allegiance, often from the viewpoint of average people in favor of corporate greed. So when word got out through hacktivist group Anonymous that Netflix was starting a PAC, and that we should all take up arms, or rotten tomatoes, or cancel our subscriptions en masse, of course social media exploded and all sorts of negative emotions flared up, turning people anti-Netflix overnight.
But let’s all take a deep breath here and examine some points. We can start with a word from Netflix:
“PACs are commonplace for companies that lead a big, growing market and Netflix is no exception. Our PAC is a way for our employees to support candidates that understand our business and technology. It was not set up for the purpose of supporting SOPA or PIPA. Instead, Netflix has engaged on other issues including network neutrality, bandwidth caps, usage based billing and reforming the Video Privacy Protection Act.”
Okay, so what does all that mean. Let’s go point by point.
- SOPA and PIPA no longer exist, and will not be resurrected. When it was first being vetted, these bills had preliminary support from many sides, including big corporations, because they did not understand all of the issues. But rest assured the majority of corporations changed their minds once they understood the flaws. Simplistically, the bills say that stealing copyrighted content is illegal. Most Americans would agree with that statement. The problem with SOPA and PIPA was in who was getting stuck with the bill of policing the internet. Under a SOPA regime, Google and other heavy hitters in the internet would be forced to be the internet police, and that would cost them billions of dollars, which would basically kill the free internet as we know it. My article Why Any Future Anti-Piracy Legislation Must Not Regulate Search Engines provides a comprehensive argument for why we have to be very careful how we deal with copyright violations.
- Net Neutrality – again, this is a very multi-faceted issue, but basically there are two sides. One side says the internet needs to be an unlimited resource to everyone for one low fee, with no restrictions placed on it. On the other side of the issue are internet providers, who wish to charge the heaviest internet users a higher fee. This is, of course, an extremely simplistic explanation, and only touches on one of the many facets. But rest assured, usage-based billing and caps on internet hurt Netflix, not help. So they are not trying to butter up the internet providers while sticking it to consumers. That would essentially kill their business. They want the internet to be able to handle as much streaming as they can serve up, and for a reasonable price.
- The reformation of the Video Privacy Protection Act – this one is more controversial, in my opinion, than points 1 and 2. I believe Netflix wants to be able to provide Facebook apps that, when put into effect, will broadcast to all your Facebook friends what you’ve been watching on your Netflix account. Blockbuster tried this a few years back, and was
Image via CrunchBase
sued, citing the VPPA. But really, Facebook is a social network. Many of us already share this type of stuff. And we don’t need to integrate our Netflix account with our Facebook account if we don’t want to. Now, if Netflix wants to share what I’ve been watching without my permission, that’s another story. We definitely need to let this one play out before we decide to get puritanical with Netflix.
The bottom line . . . while the internet is a wonderful place where there is lots of information available, it also can do a lot of damage. It’s very important to read things, even from what we consider highly credible authority sites, as conjecture until we hear all sides of a story. Much of what we read on the internet is people’s opinion. In fact, this article is my opinion, and I might be proven wrong in the overall scheme of things. But I for one am tired of Netflix being the corporate whipping boy. Now excuse me, I’m going to go stream something.
If you would like to read reviews of the top services available, check out Streaming Services Compared.
