Net neutrality RIP?

[Commentary] The Washington Post’s Brian Fung recently argued that a Netflix-Time Warner Cable collaboration would be bad news for net neutrality because it would take one of its strongest advocates off the playing field. I agree that Netflix’s evolution is bad news for net neutrality, but on economic rather than political grounds. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Netflix isn’t, and perhaps never was, a likely victim of anticompetitive discrimination by Internet service providers.

That’s important, because if there was ever a plausible scenario for discriminatory conduct by infrastructure owners against “edge” firms -- the heart of the case for the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules -- Netflix was the poster child. But in its July 2013 Fifteenth Report on Competition in the Market for Video Delivery, released just six months after its brief to the DC Circuit defending Open Internet rules, Netflix went from being a substitute for cable service to a complement. We now know that one of the central arguments for net neutrality regulation was based on a faulty assumption. One could make a pretty good argument that the rule ought to be withdrawn and reconsidered. At a minimum, though, if the rule is overturned by the Court as many believe likely, it surely should be allowed to RIP.