The City of Maple Heights only has about 20,000 people, but it is making statewide headlines by taking on two multi-billion dollar companies in the Ohio Supreme Court. The town argued Wednesday morning that Netflix and Hulu must pay franchise fees to municipalities, the same as cable does.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The City of Maple Heights only has about 20,000 people, but it is making statewide headlines by taking on two multi-billion dollar companies in the Ohio Supreme Court. The town argued Wednesday morning that Netflix and Hulu must pay franchise fees to municipalities, the same as cable companies.
The 2007 video service authorization law states companies deemed"video service providers" must pay a fee to local governments. "There's nothing in that definition of video service that requires Netflix and Hulu to operate facilities in the rights of way, nothing that requires them to construct facilities in the rights of way," Hawal said."They only must provide their programming over wires and cables, and there's no dispute."
Sridharan said that another program under the statute would be to even get the authorization from the municipalities. Justice Pat Fischer posed a hypothetical: if governments are taxing streaming services, does that mean that Columbus should tax the Ohio Government channel, where anyone can stream most state government hearings if they have access to the internet?"Video programming is defined in the statute as being comparable to that of broadcast television, and so our allegations are such that an entity like this, I mean—" Hawal started, getting cut off.
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