[exarch]

What salient factors distinguish a cable company from a "mere" streaming video service? Demand programming? Nope. Time shifting? Nope. Advertisement? Nope. Other than the literal media the data flows over, what is the legally meaningful difference?

[jimrandomh]

A cable company is a natural monopoly; servicing an area requires a large infrastructure investment, there is usually only one cable company willing to service a given household, and cable companies negotiate with municipalities. A video streaming service doesn't have these properties. This is a legally meaningful difference because much of the regulation imposed on cable companies is intended to compensate for lack of competition.

[spathi_fwiffo]

I would disagree with you somewhat:

Cable isn't a natural monopoly, they are sanctioned monopolies due to their negotiations with municipalities; Previously their only competition was over-the-air broadcast. We have this model in place of a company being given sole propriety over the physical 'cable' infrastructure.

But, just look at what has happened now that Verizon can compete by using a different set of wires (FIOS). They want to compete because it is a huge business and the monopoly has been broken.

The difference with a video streaming service is that they don't own the infrastructure over which their service is delivered.

[markbarrington]

Of particular interest in this case, a cable company owns it's own infrastructure to transmit programming. A streaming video service over the public internet does not. Previous attempts to get the same ruling have failed on this difference.