The issue for Netflix with not having net neutrality is that some of Netflix’s competitors are run by some of the ISPs. If those ISPs were to decide that they wanted their customers to be forced to go with their service, and net neutrality weren’t a thing, they could block (or essentially block) Netflix.
We have other more applicable laws to that task: It's called antitrust laws. It's already illegal to use your monopoly in one market segment to progress your control in another. The reason you won't see Google or Netflix promoting that ISPs face antitrust investigations, is because they're monopolies themselves. So they're investing in laws that hurt ISPs, but protect them.
Net neutrality is a custom love letter to big tech, rather than a generally applicable law against bad practices. You'll notice exceptions are carved out to ensure Comcast is a telecom, and Google isn't, even if they both provide video services and both also run ISPs. (You could see similar when Google tried to avoid registering as a telecom when trying to deploy Fiber in Austin, so that they had less regulatory limitations than their competitors.) You'll note that Google has both last mile service in terms of Fiber and Fi, as well as major international infrastructure, like their undersea cables. They aren't shockingly different from Comcast in that regard, either.
We should be promoting antitrust, where big tech and ISPs face similar penalties for their behaviors. And yes, Google and Netflix are both monopolies under any reasonable definition of the term. Yes, ISPs are in some areas, regional monopolies, but Google and Netflix are global ones, and they're a far bigger threat.
The problem with antitrust is that the law is extremely vague, there is no administrative rule-making process for it and Congress rarely touches it. It's possible to argue that it applies in this case, but actually applying it would involve a decade-long court proceeding, meanwhile everyone is open to getting pillaged by their ISPs.
> You'll notice exceptions are carved out to ensure Comcast is a telecom, and Google isn't, even if they both provide video services and both also run ISPs.
The telecom is the thing that owns the physical last mile network. YouTube isn't a telecom, Comcast is. Google Fiber is too, and if they claim they're not they should lose.
100% agree that promoting antitrust legislation has the potential to improve our current economic trajectory. Both regional and global monopolies are a threat.
Google and Netflix aren't monopolies. And neither are any of the ISPs.
You could definitely consider some of the ISPs a monopoly in certain regions but that doesn't apply in this case. Either way your antitrust argument makes absolutely no sense.
Many are, in areas where there is only one ISP with high bandwidth. That's exactly why net neutrality is critical. Monopolies among ISPs combined with data caps allow them to harm all Internet services that compete with other business they own (such as video and etc.).
The vast majority of Americans have but one choice for wired high speed Internet. Cable cos like to pretend that they compete with DSL, which is a lie.
