We missed it earlier: South Korea on May 7 amended its Telecommunications Business Act that would essentially hold content providers like messaging apps and streaming services liable for network issues. This is a significant Net Neutrality issue, since this makes Quality of Service for individual services the content providers' problem, as opposed to ISPs. While the amendment doesn't specify what exactly content providers can do to avoid liability, lawyers Kim Jong-hyun and Lee Yunjoh indicated that this might legitimise ISPs' practice of forcing content providers to cough up fees as a kind of internet traffic tax. This is hardly a new phenomenon, even in Korea. Companies that run KakaoTalk and Line, popular chat apps in the country, pay tens of millions of dollars every year to Korean internet providers. Netflix refused to pay this fee, and sued the carrier SK Telecom for asking for it, arguing that its subscribers were already paying telecom operators for access to the internet. Facebook has criticised South Korea's network sharing rules; after traffic congestion in 2017, the company chose to redirect users to Hong Kong servers rather than pay up the fees ISPs demanded. In a statement, Netflix told MediaNama, "We’ve been working with telecommunications networks all around the world for years. Our pioneering Open Connect servers — which we provide free of charge — ensure that the Netflix catalog is stored as close as possible to people’s homes. This is a win-win for both sides, helping ISPs to cut costs while ensuring a…
