Can we accept that Verizon benefits no matter how the dispute with Cogent ends? Verizon claims they’re not hampering Netflix to benefit their service, Redbox. This is epic level sophistry. The implication being they’re not purposefully doing these things to help themselves.
Cogent must pay exorbitant rates to maintain peering with Verizon, increasing the overhead to Netflix’ costs of operations. Taking money from a competitor certainly benefits Verizon. Alternately if they don’t pay these higher rates to maintain similar speeds with Redbox then Verizon gets to advertise their video service as faster and (for the moment at least) cheaper for what you get.
Verizon is using the principle of double effect to get around the nasty truth their actions benefit them in what would otherwise be an unethical, formerly illegal, way. Even their primary goal is unconscionable; they want to charge a peer more for data. The secondary goal of hampering a competitor is just the freaking icing on this shit cake.