What's the best way to punish the same early adopter customers that helped make your service a success in the first place? If you're Netflix, it's charging them extra for renting Blu-ray. CEO Reed Hastings justifies this action by saying "consumers are used to paying more for high-definition," basically punching this next generation of early adopters in the nads for doing what they love to do.

We're not sure how many Blu-ray rentals you need to have before you qualify for the higher-priced membership (or if you need to pay up before you even rent one), but this is undoubtedly a limited time deal. We can't imagine Netflix will keep charging people more once 25-50% of their customer base starts renting Blu-ray movies.

Will Blockbuster follow? We hope not. For their sake as much as ours. [Alley Insider via Marketwatch via CNET]

Send an email to Jason Chen, the author of this post, at jchen@gizmodo.com.