The fight to make Netflix and Hulu pay cable fees
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Streaming services are slowly turning into cable TV - complete with bundles, an ever-growing list of channels, and a reinvented TV guide. And a series of lawsuits could portend the return of something even worse: the hidden cable fee.
Three municipalities in Georgia are suing Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming video providers for as much as 5 percent of their gross revenue in the district - joining a nationwide group of towns and counties that want these services regulated more like cable TV. It's a small but growing front in the war over cord-cutting, challenging regulators to decide which matters more: the increasing role streaming services play in American media diets or their significant practical differences from traditional TV.
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