 In January 2005, Netflix changed its terms of use to acknowledge "throttling" (Mike Kaltschnee, owner of the Hacking Netflix blog, says Netflix calls this practice "smoothing" internally).In October 2005, Netflix proposed a settlement for those who had enrolled as a paid Netflix member prior to January 15, 2005.These earlier members would be able to renew their subscriptions with a one-month free membership, and those early members with current subscriptions would receive a one-month free upgrade to the next-highest membership level.