[SmG Battlefire]

Netflix is under Xbox live. You have a Netflix app in it.
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You gotta pay to have your Xbox to connect and get those features.

[PirateEggs]

Skype, netflix ect have nothing to do with xbl. Maybe someone wants to use netflix but doesn't play online games. Why should he have to pay for XBL just to use a side feature when it has nothing to do with xbl.

Tell me, who owns Skype? I'll make it easy for you and tell you, Microsoft own Skype.

Beasty, you're so uneducated on the subject it actually hurts. All data that comes to your XBOX is routed through Microsoft's servers. Everything, excluding the peer-to-peer connections of games, but, before you even get online to that, you need to connect to Microsoft's authentication servers, to check for multiple things, that your account is valid, your game is valid, and your console is valid. It does this every time you play a game online.
Have you ever watched Netflix on XBOX, I doubt it, since you probably don't even have an XBOX nor Gold. You know where all the data for that comes from? I'll give you a hint, not any Netlix CDN.
Well, Microsoft own Skype, so, well, that's clearly Microsoft's stuff there.

Lines have to be drawn somewhere in what's free, and what isn't free. If Microsoft were to allow some things to be free, and others not, people would complain why's the other thing not free.
Microsoft own it all, they can tell you what you can and can't access.

Here's a nice little article.

The Xbox One game console will enable all users of a single console to enjoy the benefits of a single users' Xbox Live Gold account, Microsoft announced this afternoon. This initiative, called "Home Gold," includes online multiplayer, various streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, NFL), Game DVR and the One Guide -- services that are specifically enabled through Xbox Live Gold membership ($60 a year). That also includes digital games that any user of a single Xbox One purchased as well, a variant of functionality that Microsoft previously promised with Xbox One and subsequently rolled back after consumers reacted negatively.

They're slightly improving things for people, but they can't change completely. There are (as of last check) 46 million XBL Gold subscribers, if Microsoft removed the cost, or changed the terms, that's a lot of people they'd be pissing off and probably have to reimburse.
$5 per month is honestly not a lot of money, and with the 2 actual free games per month, it's so much more worth it now. Got AC2, a $20 games, for free, for ever, my brother has got his moneys worth out of the game, also got Fable 3, granted, not the best Fable, but it's still a nice game that I now own. Even if I cancel my gold, I still own those games, and I can still play them whenever I feel like, although I'm never going to cancel my gold, well, I don't pay for it, my brother does, he uses it, he can pay for it.