Level 3 Communications, one of the companies that provides middle mile broadband transit between content providers and last-mile ISPs, has weighed in on the peering fight that occurred last month between Comcast and Netflix (without actually mentioning the deal). As you might expect, Level 3, which will now deliver fewer of Netflix’s bits to Comcast, is not a fan of how much power ISPs have in paid peering negotiations.

But in a blog posted Tuesday, Level 3 took what was a coherent argument detailing the problems associated with some paid peering deals, and poisoned it by conflating paid peering with network neutrality. After explaining paid peering and detailing how ISPs are trying to charge content providers for direct peering as a means get money for capacity upgrades, it delves into the problems associated with these arrangements:

So what if content providers refuse to pay? Some ISPs agree…