Matt Peckham for TIME.com:
If you own the highway as well as several of the vehicles that use it, is it fair to tax everyone except your drivers? That’s essentially what Comcast did when it decided to exempt its TV-based Xfinity “On Demand” service for the Xbox 360 from counting against periodic data caps, effectively un-leveling the playing field. Comcast’s defense: The service is delivered over its private IP network, not the public Internet.Should that exempt Comcast? Absolutely not, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles,” writes Hastings on his Facebook page. “Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.”
I doubt Comcast is going to get a lot of complaints from its own customers that it’s offering them “favored nation” status, but Hastings is right – it’s the principle of the thing, and this is what some activists who are concerned over net neutrality feared would happen.