The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently sided with GameFly's position that the U.S. Postal Service had been practicing price discrimination among its customers. GameFly's original suit alleged that USPS was providing better terms of service to Netflix by waiving extra fees for hand-sorting. E-Commerce Times discussed the decision with Gardere Partner Peter S. Vogel, chair of the Firm's Internet, eCommerce and Technology Team.
Presumably, the USPS came to this conclusion after considering the costs and volume Netflix delivers, Mr. Vogel said. The upside for consumers is that such considerations will not be necessary when everyone moves to video streaming and DVDs become obsolete. "Look at what happened on Christmas Eve when Netflix was out because the Amazon cloud was not operating. The vulnerability of hosted sites creates a whole other situation."
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