"T-Mobile's new "Binge On" service "undermines the core vision of net neutrality," Stanford professor Barbara van Schewick says in a new report about the service.
"The program harms competition, user choice, free expression, and innovation," the professor says in a 51-page paper published Friday.
The service also riles net neutrality advocates because its technical requirements exclude some video distributors -- including YouTube, Periscope, educational sites like Coursera and a host of small companies. Schewick's report largely focuses on those exclusions. She argues that T-Mobile shouldn't give people incentives to watch videos from some companies and not others.
"A core principle of net neutrality is that ISPs should not pick winners and losers online by favoring some applications over others," she writes. "But that’s exactly what Binge On does."
Schewick also argues that the program harms free expression because it zero-rates sites offering professional entertainment, but not sites that offer user-generated content or educational programs. "In its current form, Binge On turns the mobile Internet delivered by T-Mobile into a space for watching commercial entertainment," she writes. "And it hurts T-Mobile's subscribers as listeners, making it harder for them to benefit from the breadth and depth of video content on the Internet.""