Thethe l. A. Times, deregulation of at t, comcast, and other raw been providers is a dramatic advocation of authority that could usher in an thatnew era for Companies Offer services and content online and the people who rely on them. Theobvious problem is that broadband providers could pick winners and losers online. There is also a realistic fear that broadband providers would favor their own sites and services because some are doing it already. For example, at t effectively exempts video streams from its directv subsidiary from its wireless data caps. Congress these to clean up the pai that the fcc chair ajit is making. Right,s absolutely giving preferential treatment to some providers over others like you described, and the fcc ignored that history that led their predecessors to create enforce thesed principles, these protections, over the last almost 15 years. I dispute the notion that there is a long history of any type of discriminatory action. They were literally three or four examples cited when the sec adopted the rules in 2015 the fcc adopted the rules in 2015. I think many people are beginning to realize the greatest threat of discrimination comes from the socalled edge providers. The googles, twitters, facebooks. Twitter, for example commercially took down in ad for congresswoman Marsha Blackburn that was prolife. Theres an increasing the giantn that are more likely to discriminate because of their and theirthese dominance than these Internet Service providers. And i was that these organizations and those that are concerned about Net Neutrality with the Internet Service providers were as concerned about the same type of conduct that we see from the edge providers. I dont believe that they should be regulated, either, like public utilities. But i think it is wrong to look at this in a onesided way. What we have now and this is the important point that they will be able to oversee the types of practices of both the Internet Service providers on the one hand and the edge hand tos on the other see whether they are living up to the representations. One final point. We really focused on the action yesterday by the commission. It is very important to understand that the commission strengthened transparency rules that apply to the Internet Service providers. They have to disclose their practices. They are going to have to be clear to consumers. That is the basis upon which, if they violate those practices, the ftc will be able to sanction it. Steve both of our guests have worked at the fcc, so they come at this from very different perspectives. Christopher lewis is a graduate of harvard, the former Deputy Director for legislative affairs. Our phone lines are open. Frank in fort lauderdale, florida, on the line for republicans. Thank you for waiting. Im concerned about the present censorship on the internet. I have been censored about four times in the last year. Just last night i was censored again. I raised a question about any collusion between the prodemocratic people at the fbi in the seth rich murder case, send my would not tweets on the subject matter. The more i worked up to the final question, they still havent sent the final two. Steve what sites were you on frank . Guest im just hoping that under the new system there wont be censorship. Steve thanks for the call. Will there be censorship on the larger issue of what people can or cannot post . I think it is real important about who the Net Neutrality rules impact. They only have jurisdiction given by congress over the broadcast providers that give access to the internet. They do not have jurisdiction over websites, web services, and large platforms. While i agree with randy that there are concerns with some platforms and we have spoken out about that recently and agree with those who are calling for, if you look at the top edition of those large platforms, we have a tool right now under the law that the fcc could be using to have strong Net Neutrality rules to make sure those who give you access to the internet. The difference is the usually dont have a choice in the Network Provider. Mostly 71 highspeed Network Provider and some have none most places have one highspeed Network Provider, and some have none. If they dont want the rules, they have nowhere of to go. Thatis why we need an fcc says, you cannot block to website or throttle an application or set up a prioritization scheme for some content. From 2009t the fcc to 2012. 2009 the interesting thing is, back when i was at the fcc we were still coping with the bell monopoly. Online providers were beginning to emerge at that time. And what we did, and i was actually part of working on the process, was classifying online dividers as Information Services so that they would be on regulated. Ma bell and the Telephone Companies would be regulated. Steve,s the environment, that we had, really from that. Ime at least right up until 2015,hen the information providers the Broadband Companies were flipped and classified as Telecommunications Carriers and public utilities. And i think most people agree that all of those years that we have the light touch regulation of information Service Providers, the internet did flourish surely. We would all like fort the faster. We would like for to be cheaper. Were overy is, there 1. 5 trillion in investment to build broadband networks. Switched overn we to a new regime without a good reason toere was no impose innovation stifling regulation. Steve by the way, we will delve even more into this issue with our program the communicators. Again on the table, is Net Neutrality . According to the fcc, this is the definition. Broadband Service Providers cannot block or deliberately slow speeds for apps. They cannot favor internet traffic in exchange for consideration, or engage in other practices that hard internet openness. When i first got my computer, i watched live television. I could record. But anyway, now i cannot even anything on the internet that is live. Nothing. Yesterday, i was looking for emails, reading different sites, and all of a sudden, they were gone. I could not find them anywhere. They were off the internet. I could not access one thing about schrock that happened yesterday. I would like to know why. Steve thank you, elaine. Christopher lewis. That is a great thing to ask your broadband provider. Hopefully, nothing is going wrong with her service. What is really important about these rules is that there is Nothing Holding back broadband providers from taking a service or a website and saying we will not show that anymore. That says you cannot block anything is now gone with this repeal. Unfortunately, the federal trade commission is not a rulemaking body. They do not have the ability to create and enforce noblocking rules. All they can do is use their section five deceptive practices where if a broadband provider says they are going to block, they can hold them accountable if they do. Rely on the broadband providers to be honest and set the rules for themselves. Steve opinion and views aside, what happens next . What can congress to . What can we face in the courts . There is anpher opportunity for court challenge. Build a casewe can to overturn the decision of the fcc. We hope people will follow that. Has an opportunity to overturn the rules as well, and there have already been to members who have suggested that they will introduce a resolution to overturn the rule. Steve we heard from eric about bogus names on the petition, citing that as new yorkers on there. Unfortunately, he did not post a point of view. Seen anher we have not investigation into the credibility of those comments. At least nothing that ensured that people are not putting up take comments. Comments. Up fake in san diego, democrats line. Thank you for being with us. M overturning Net Neutrality is a huge mistake. It could put hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Right now, the internet runs at the same speed for everybody. That was a rule put in place during obama. What they are doing is trying to reverse that. Huge corporations, a couple way, what they will do is right now everything is running at full speed. The only way tos beat up theres to speed up their speed is to slow down everyone elses. It, things will drop right off Google Search for being too slow. Republicans have really done it this time. They do not know what they are doing. Congress needs to stop them and vote against us. Steve jim, thanks for the call. Randy. Randy the reality is that it takes billions of dollars each year to keep building out the network to accommodate the explosion in traffic. Would agree with that. On average, it is about 70 billion each year invested by isps. That is not government money. That is private capital by Internet Service providers. Decision may do over time is allowed the Internet Service providers to innovate new types of offerings that allow them to recover more of those costs from those companies that really impose disproportionate amount of cost. It is not clear that that could happen, but it could. Netflix. Le, google and on any given night, 50 of the internet traffic is actually generated by those two companies. Are notis the case, we talking about the average consumer that is in posing those costs or paying for it. It may be that in order to ,nsure that their Services Netflix video and youtube are delivered in a matter that satisfies their consumers, it is possible that they could end up paying a little more for that. But it would mean is, ultimately, the end user would pay less because ultimately, someone has to pay for the investment in these networks. Steve if you are just tuning in, we are talking about the issue of Net Neutrality at the table. Fcc. Terans of the randolph may is the president of the free state foundation, and Christopher Lewis, Vice President of public knowledge. Netflix with this current tweet, were disappointed in the decision to cut Net Neutrality protections that usher in an unprecedented level of creativity. This is the beginning of a longer legal hassle. Netflix stands with innovators both large and small to oppose the misguided fcc order. Richard, springfield, oregon. Good morning. Good morning. I just got off the phone with my , and i want members them to go to a preinternet, pennies on the dollar utility board and bypass a lot of this internet providers with their nocompete contracts to keep prices up. To be competitive with the rest the United States is, what, 20th in speed . Is fasterf the world than us . South korea is faster than us . This monopoly they had is actually holding us back. Steve they, richard. Christopher lewis. Christopher i do not know the monopolynkings, but providers lead to higher costs. Particularly the cost randy was talking about, which well see with these rules. Your story is a common one. A lot of local communities looking to find ways to provide Affordable Access to broadband. Companies do not have a Business Case to roll out and Deploy Networks to their communities. More and more communities are stepping up to invest money to make sure there assistance have access to broadband. Their citizens have ccess to broadband. Sec was smart to watch its hands of the legal aspects. Congress needs to regulate its commerce. Industrys lobbying efforts says, our objection to title ii is not about not wanting to provide our customers with open internet. Rather, these big prohibitions and the potential rate regulation. Mel joins us from ohio. Republican line. Mel good morning, cspan. I have a question that is a little off the subject, but with it. Supplier. T a comcast they blanked us out on the youngstown station, and we used to watch the news in the morning for two hours. A really good news show from youngstown, ohio. And now, they blanked it out. I can get all of the pittsburgh stations, but youngstown is not that far. They tell me that they had to do that through the fcc. I would like to know why that was then. Steve thank you, mel. And you of you want to answer that . It has to do with the negotiations between broadcasters and cable companies. But if i could just go back quickly to the last caller, this is something that we may agree upon here. It would be good if congress would actually take up this issue. If it could reach a resolution, at least one that i think would thathe debate in a way from my perspective did not adopt the public utilitytype regime. But nevertheless, it did leave in place some oversight over the internet providers. Going back and forth on this Net Neutrality issue for over 10 years, now. It is an issue that is really within congresss domain. So perhaps congress will now decide to take it up. Steve Jeff Fortenberry tweet. Urge the fcc chair to preserve the framework of Net Neutrality. The upcoming decision should not allow for monopolistic other Internet Service provider delivery or content creators. David from grand rapids. Democrats line. Good morning. David good morning. Real quick, why should Congress Make rules when the fcc under obama made rules that said you have to be neutral . Enough said. Be neutral. And real quick, all of those republicans that are complaining, you voted for trump. What did you expect . He is for business. All he is doing is lining his pockets for the next four years. David, thank you for the call. Christopher lewis. Christopher what i am encouraged by with the fortenberry quote is that a number of republicans have heard from their constituents. Because outside of the beltway, 75 of republicans want strong Net Neutrality rules. It is probably 80 with democrats. Only inside washington is this even remotely controversial. You have large special interests led by the big rock band providers, trying to roll back these protections. It is very important that people have, if the rules we said,o away, as randy congress could act. But unfortunately, we have not seen any legislation come along that protects an open internet is fully as the rules we have. At which Congress Moves is simply not fast enough. The good news is, we do have a law that Congress Passed in 1996 empowers the fcc to create these nondiscriminatory rules. Rules they say they will continue to adhere to. If they can adhere to these, i see no reason why they should go at all. One note. Chris mentioned the 1996 Telecommunications Act that Congress Passed. Important, because it is the First Time Congress made a statement about the internet in the telecom act. Is that the competitive internet should by federalettered and state regulations. So that is the policy of the United States. That is essentially a bipartisan policy that we had up until 2015. Steve brian fun with the front page story at the washington post. Split fcc votes to end rules on Net Neutrality. He begins the pieces follows. Gulators voted to block or slowed and others, repealing landmark obama era regulations overseeing broadband Broadband Companies such as at t and verizon. It is a prominent example of policy shifts taking place under president trump. It is viewed as a major setback by Tech Companies and democrats who heavily lobbied against it. Lines2 vote along partys ensured that ajit pai could make repeal his threats to the government 2015 Net Neutrality rules. Good morning. My question is that, the way i see it, the fcc has to regulate the rules of commerce. Whether it is good or bad or Internet Service providers is kind of irrelevant. Is, all of the reinterpretations, which one is really implementing what congress has directed the agency to do . Steve thank you, Peter Christopher lewis. Christopher the 2015 rules actually did implement it. They make sure that the Communications Network of the 21st century, i the phone network, is nondiscriminatory. You can pay for access, call anyone you want to. You can go to any website you want. Wasreating these rules, it a long effort by the fcc to ensure these protections were in place. In 2005, a Republican Administration tried to lock rules. Again, that was under a republican. In 2010 we tried to create rules of the road to stop the throttling of traffic, as they had done during those previous Republican Administrations. They came back to the fcc in said if you do not want nonthrottling rules, you have to do it under title ii. You have to buy broadband as a common carrier. Dover, delaware. Good morning. Good morning. I want to talk about investing. These companies are able to charge more money, and they go along with it. Why would the ist now invest money in smaller clients with no capital . Irrationa. T it is l. Really believe is driving it for the isps is that growth is coming from the providers. That is where the future is. That is where they want to go. That is why they are trying to go into the market. The only way they can really get ahead even into the market is if advanced you know, content. That is where it starts. We already know what is driving it. When you look at the rule, it is a shame. It is a drag. Steve thank you for the call. Randy may. The question is, will it take billions and billions of ongoing dollars of investment to deal with expanding traffic . A lot of the expansion is due to the consumption of video, which is exploding. Ultimately, the network has to be paid for. I suggest that new rules will smallver time that willmers and businesses end up paying less than they would pay, absent these rules. I think that is the way we see the economy work in other sectors, where we have different types of differentiation between products where we do not treat andything absolutely equal other segments of the economy. That is the way ultimately that consumers benefit from this type of differential treatment. Opinion aside, will Congress Take this up . Will it be challenged by the courts . Randy there is no question that the courts will challenge it. Chris will see to that. I do not know whether congress will take it up. I hope that ultimately it does. But i just want to quickly say something. I respect chriss view on the authority of the fcc and the legal question, and i understand that perspective. But it is not my opinion that ultimately the fccs decision that it lacked authority to impose the public utility regime will be affirmed by the courts. It may take going up to the supreme court, but we have a difference in terms of the ultimate legal authority. Steve chris, you can respond. Christopher i wanted to answer the callers question. One of the rules was ranting against paid prioritization. The small content creator, the small voices online rather or googlestflix is googles that will be penalized. They are trying to compete and create content online. They have to pay to get preferential treatment online. That is why we had these rules in the first place, to create an equal market. Now that the rule is gone away, i am very concerned about the longterm viability for some of these Small Companies online. Steve front page of the new york times. David from bethesda. i have not heard anybody talk about the potential impact of this on independent media. For example, netflix and google or youtubes equivalent to cnn or msnbc, that maybe smaller independent media would have the potential to be restricted. I would like to have both sides comment on this, because i think with all of the fake news and Mainstream Media stuff, it has been so huge this year that i think this could potentially be damaging for people who want to get their media from smaller and more independent content creators. Thanks. Steve david, thanks. Quick comment . Ultimately, these broadband providers will respond to what consumers want. Complaints. To we want more competition in the marketplace, i agree with chris. But we are seeing it. I just do not believe it will happen. One other quick comment. Know, the d. C. Circuit judge the rehearing petition from the original decision actually made clear the internet providers could have a nonneutral network under the obama rules, if they wanted to as long as they disclose the practice. It should be discussed more. People ought to be aware of it. There truly was not as much that happened yesterday as we are all hearing because of that d. C. Circuit rehearing petition. Wall street journal editorial. Talks about removing the fcc as a political gatekeeper. Christopher lewis, your response to what we just heard from randy may. Christopher there are a number of problems with what we are hearing. Number one, the caller was concerned about independent media. They are absolutely right. Whether from the left or the right need to have consumers. To access consumers need the ability to access them. It will go away if they are forced to compete with media conglomerates. The competition that randy says he wants is going away, and you see it with merger after merger after merger. The mergers we are seeing right now are not the same as the 1990s. Is ane are seeing now even greater consolidation where they are buying content. Comcast owns nbc. At t owns directv. It is now trying to buy time warner, and fortunately the Trump Administration is trying to block it. Now have a greater incentive to preferred content that they own over others. These rules going away is just an extra it makes it easier for the companies to make even greater profits, and to edge out independent voices and competition. Steve in the interest of full disclosure, cspan is fully. Unded by the cable industry a few pennies each month of your cable bill provides the funds that we use to operate three networks, our Radio Station and the websites. We thank you for that. Abcs jimmy kimmel show, this on Net Neutrality. The fcc did something absolutely despicable. They voted to put an end to Net Neutrality. It says everyone has equal access to the internet, whether a big company or someone selling crocheted owls from their house in the midwest. As long as they are telling us providers, service will be allowed to slow down or , whichock traffic benefits the big Telecom Companies and does the opposite for all of us. 83 of americans support Net Neutrality, and a Million People fccsupposedly wrote to the turned out to be dead people. Someone stole the identities of dead people to push this through, so now we have to Hope Congress agrees to reverse it. Thank you, president trump. Thanks to you and this jackhole you appointed to run the fcc, corporations will take full control of the internet. So merry christmas, everybody. Steve randy may, a chance to respond briefly. Not forget that the fcc actually strengthen the transparency rules. It restored the ftcs authority to enforce any violations of the promises made by the isps to their customers. Of the major isps, and i think almost all of the isps in the country, have already said that they intend not to block , not to throttle, and not to engage in unfair prioritization. Will now be in a position to enforce those promises. Steve we began with randy may. Chris lewis, the final word. Christopher randy described the rollback of protections well. When the providers choose to change their policies, there is no one to hold them back from blocking or throttling your content. Weve already seen them start to do this. Instead of isps saying they will not engage in it, they talk about harmful prioritization. They are easing it ends so that people do not notice that they are changing their practices. We will continue to see this overtime. It is important that congress acts. I hope people will contact their Congress Members to overturn this. Steve both gentlemen today veterans of the fcc. We want to thank Christopher Lewis and randy may. We appreciate your time, and your perspective. Thank you for being with us. Next, cspans profile interview with mercedes schlapp. Then, president trumps comments on the at the i. After that, the United NationsSecurity Council meeting on north Koreas NuclearWeapons Program and missile test. Senior white house adviser discusses herpp personal and national life, the state of discourse in the united