Netflix, you got some splainin' to do - CNET

"There is nothing wrong with what Netflix is doing " said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a group that has opposed the FCC's Net neutrality regulations. "Except for not making it public."

Harold Feld with Public Knowledge an organization that pushed hard for Net neutrality rules agrees.

"This is not a Net neutrality issue," Feld said. "But I'm not going to defend what Netflix did here. It was really a screw-up not to tell their customers about what they were doing."

Not a Net neutrality issue, but... ick

Why isn't this a Net neutrality issue? The FCC's Net neutrality rules passed a year ago prohibit slowing or blocking traffic and require that companies are open about their practices with customers. But the rules only apply to Inteet service providers. The same standards are not required of Inteet companies like Netflix.

Net neutrality advocates like Feld and Matt Wood of Free Press also point out that a video company offering a service can't "throttle" itself. It is free to transmit its video at whatever quality it wishes. The concept of "throttling" is really meant to describe when a company like a broadband provider, which controls access to the Inteet for a consumer, slows down or blocks access on that coection to another service.

It could be argued that Netflix had its customers' best interests at heart when it implemented its practice. Viewing two hours of Netflix in high-definition quality could easily eat up an entire month's worth of data.

The company, which declined to comment beyond its blog, said as much.

"We believe restrictive data caps are bad for consumers and the Inteet in general, creating a dilemma for those who increasingly rely on their mobile devices for entertainment, work and more," Ae Marie Squeo wrote in the blog on behalf of Netflix. "It's about striking a balance that ensures a good streaming experience while avoiding unplaed fines from mobile providers."

Netflix already offers customers the ability to adjust the settings to stream their data at a higher or lower quality, which could help them manage their data. What's more, the service automatically adjusts its stream to a higher or lower quality when the service detects network congestion. But the fact that Netflix defaulted to a lower quality for all customers across the board on only two carriers without informing customers is the problem.

"When a company does stuff for you that's supposed to be for your own good, but it doesn't tell you it's doing it, it gives you an icky feeling," Feld said.

Not off the hook yet