On Thursday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stood up — way up — for Net Neutrality.

“The Internet is improving lives everywhere — democratizing access to ideas, services and goods. To ensure the Internet remains humanity’s most important platform for progress, Net Neutrality must be defended and strengthened,” Hastings wrote in a blog post.

It’s important that Netflix is coming out for “strong” Net Neutrality — and not the watered-down rules the Federal Communications Commission passed in 2010. Those loophole-ridden rules left Internet users open to corporate abuse, especially when it came to the mobile Internet. It’s gratifying that Hastings is thinking along the same lines.

“This weak Net Neutrality isn't enough to protect an open, competitive Internet; a stronger form of Net Neutrality is required,” he wrote.

To be fair, Netflix has skin in this game; its business model depends on an open Internet. As the recent kerfuffle with Comcast illustrated, big cable companies and Internet service providers are putting the squeeze on content providers, forcing them to pay up to ensure their content isn’t degraded.

And this kind of interference doesn’t just harm Netflix — it hurts all of us.

We don’t want an Internet where companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon can discriminate against or outright block the websites and services we depend on. Neither does Netflix.

Ensuring the outcome of real Net Neutrality will require the FCC to adopt policies that give it the authority it needs to step in and protect Internet users from abuse. It means that the FCC must reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service.

This is the only way the agency will have the authority it needs to safeguard the open Internet and prevent giant phone and cable companies from taking it over.

Original photo by Flickr user Susi