Wednesday Notes

Not only did the FCC roll back its Title II safeguards for Net Neutrality, now comes the depressing news that some folks in Congress want to make that gift to internet service providers more permanent. Dell Cameron at Gizmodo wrote about Representative Marsha Blackburn, who introduced her Orwellian “Net Neutrality” bill this week, and her previous calls to censor the internet.

FastCompany quoted a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers which says that the number of Americans who subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service is now about even with the number who subscribe to Netflix. That survey was probably done before Netflix raised its rates, so the backlash (as reported by Cosmopolitan of all places) might take a few points off the Netflix share in the coming months.

And Jeremy Horowitz at VentureBeat said that Apple is positioning itself to be a Netflix competitor. “Only in the context of launching a Netflix rival would it make sense for Apple to fund brand-new shows with serious themes.” I’ve been wrong before about Apple, but I don’t share his opinion that a full-blown all-you-can-eat service is in Apple’s plans for next year. I guess we’ll know for sure in about 12 months.