FCC Should Investigate Whether Netflix Lied to Agency, O'Rielly Says
FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the FCC should take a closer look at whether Netflix violated commission rules in a number of areas, after allegations it throttled its own transmission to AT&T and Verizon devices for five years (see 1603250050).…
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O’Rielly said emphatically he opposes calls to subject edge providers like Netflix to the 2015 net neutrality rules. “A company cannot knowingly make misrepresentations and inaccurate statements before the Commission,” O’Rielly said in a speech to the American Action Forum. “In fact, doing so violates Commission rules intended to protect the integrity of the Commission and our decisions. We need to closely examine filings that were made for potential violations in light of this new information. It appears that Netflix made accusations of wrongdoing by ISPs, all the while knowing that its own practices were one of the causes of consumer video downgrading.” The FCC also should acknowledge Netflix wasn't “some passive participant when it came to the formation [o]f the Commission’s Title II mandates for net neutrality,” he said. “It was a key representative of the supposed marketplace the rules were designed to protect: the over-the-top video distribution business. Many rules were based on the representations made by Netflix and other similarly situated entities, including Google.” The FCC posted O’Rielly’s remarks.