Transcripts For CSPAN3 Future Of Net Neutrality 20171213

So im with the American Consumer institute. Its a pleasure to be here today and thank you all for coming. Of importance is on thursday the federal Communications Commission holds one of its December Open meeting and deals with one of several very important topics and the issue today is the order to restore the Internet Freedom which includes a number of important provisions, one is classifying Broadband Access services as an Information Service as it was once before, removing the ambiguous internet conduct standard and the bright line rules, reestablishing the private mobile Service Classification for mobile broadband and promoting Internet Service provider transparency among other things and the transparency issue is very important to us because it helps give consumers better information to make better decisions. But theres a lot of noise out there, confusion, misinformation on what will mean for consumers and today we have a panel of experts that will address the issues but first id like to introduce a special guest to give remarks and were so glad you were able to make it and join us today. The fcc commissioner was unanimously confirmed to the senate and took office. This commissioner brandon carr. Before he became commissioner he served as General Council for the fcc and prior to this he was the lead adviser to the fcc commissioner on wireless Public Safety and International Issues and before that he worked as an attorney for the fccs office of general counsel. Prior to joining this commission in 2012, commissioner carr was an attorney for wiley ryan who dealt way lot of issues including telecommunications and Communications Regulatory law. A foul bio for all of our speakers today are available on your chairs. I wont go any further with this. I think this is a wonderful event. Theres a lot to be learned on this issue and let me just say, you know, here to talk about and give remarks on what this will mean to the public in general, its my great pleasure to introduce commissioner brandon carr. [ applause ] thanks, stiefeve, for that k introduction. Before turning it over to the panel, ill make brief opening remarks. Happy to talk about the fccs restoring internet proceeding. This is a really great moment for consumers, for innovation and for freedom. In two days the fcc is going to vote to reverse an obama era fccs unprecedented decision to apply title 2 regulations to Internet Access services. This two year experiment has failed. Weve seen investment in broadband decline, weve seen isps pull back on deployments and weve seen Innovative New services kept on the shelf. All of this has harmed consumers. Before the fccs 2015 decision consumers enjoyed a free and open internet. This wasnt because the fcc had title 2 in place. It didnt. It was because the fcc had this longstanding approach for 20 years we abided by congresss direction, a bipartisan decision that the internet should be allowed to flourish free from heavy handed government regulation. This was not a complete no holds bar. If you think back to 2015 thats the framework that were going back to. Consumers were protected, noeflers were allowed to innovate and we saw the internet in the u. S. Become the greatest Success Story that weve seen. 1. 5 trillion in investment, businesses of all sizes from startups to large corporations launched and succeeded. Im really excited that after this, again, two year detour were going back to that same Regulatory Framework that tried and true approach. Now, if you step back im sure youve seen, ive seen, theres a lot of colorful rhetoric that surrounds the fccs decision. The fake news stories about what the fcc is doing or trending faster than the real ones. So i want to dispel some of that. The passion thats out there is really understandable. This is the interception of the government in the internet. Americans cherish the free and open swint, they cherish their experiences but we have to bust some of the myths out there. A lot of what im seeing is what i call the great title 2 head bake which is attributing to title 2 things that title 2 simply does not do. One of the ones ive seen a lot of and maybe youve seen it as well is this portuguese internet meme or the cablization of the internet. This claim by repealing title 2, isps will be free for the first time to charge you for bundled access to the internet or make you pay per website or for packages of websites similar according to the allegations as what goes on in the cable space. This is not true. The fccs title 2 decision specifically determined that if isps want to offered bundled or curated internet packages theyre allowed to do so. The fccs decision repealing title 2 does not change the law on legality of those curated services. Another claim that you may have seen is the fccs vote is going to raise rates for consumers. That isps will be free to start charging consumers a lot more. Again, this isnt true. The 2015 fcc decision, the majority went to great pains to state that their approach was not going to result in rate regulation or government control of the rates that are charged to consumers. So again were not opening the door to isps having different ability to charge consumers than what is currently the place with title 2 in place. Another claim that ive seen is that isps are now going to be free to block websites or throttle or create fast lanes and slow lanes on the internet. Again, title 2 is not the thin line between where we are and that conduct taking place. If you look at the d. C. Circuit decision that reviewed the fccs 2015 decision, it expressly said that isps can block, they can throttle and do fast lanes under title 2 provided they disclose to consumers that theyre engaging in that conduct. The court even said theres no dispute that thats the casement repealing title 2 is not going to change the law with respect to that sort of conduct. Ive also heard claims that the fccs decision is going to be legally unsustainable or unlawful. Its not the case. The Supreme Court in 2005, the only time the Supreme Court has spoken to the regulatory classification of the internet upheld the fccs 2002 decision that found that broadband Internet Access service is a title 1 Information Service. So again that claim doesnt withhold scrutiny. I also want to take a second to again emphasize that we arent experimenting with some new or radical approach that is going to give isps free reign to do whatever they want on the internet. The title 1 framework that we are voting to put back in place includes robust Consumer Protections. One that ill start with is one of the d. C. Circuit found persuasive which is Market Forces. When they observed that isps were entitled to, theres a reasons why isps arent doing. Its free of subscriber losses, Market Forces. I know theres many people that wont except Market Forces as a solution either in the broadband market or otherwise, so the fcc and our title 1 approach were not relying purely on Market Forces. I want to highlight Consumer Protections staying in place. First, consumers are actually getting back strong Consumer Protection provisions. The federal trade commission is our nations premier Consumer Protection agency. In 2015 when the fcc voted to move to title 2 that decision as a legal matter stripped the ftc of 100 of its authority to protect consumers with respect to isps. That was a loss for consumers that theyre getting back as a result of this decision. Second, the federal trade commission has been the nations premier privacy enforcement agency. It brought over 500 enforcement cases including against isps, again, when the fcc voted in 2015 it created a donut hole where consumers had immediately fewer online protections they did before that decision. That donut hole is where we are today. After the vote on thursday, consumers are going to get back strong, Online Privacy protections that can be enforced by the ftc. Third theres federal antitrust laws. Section 1 of the sherman act makes clear that if an isp enters an agreement that involves anticompetitively blocking or throttling websites thats going to be per se unlawful. Section 2 applies to vertically isp. When its verse i cannily integrated to discriminate against another provider unaffiliated in terms of its content, thats subject to being found unlawful under section 2 of the sherman act and fourth we have state attorney generals and state Consumer Protection laws that are going to continue to apply. This is one where theres been some confusion. The fccs order which is public, you can read it makes clear that state level Net Neutrality laws are preempted as a matter of law because they would conflict with the fccs decision in its title 1 decision. At the same time its clear that general state level Consumer Protection laws as they would apply to isps are not preempted so consumers get to continue to benefit from those protections. Finally theres a transparency rule. The fccs adopting a rule that is likely more robust than what you would see purely from an ftc based regime so it ensures that consumers have full disclosure about the services theyre getting, if providers dont live up to those, the ftc is empowered to take enforcement action. This is also this claim that somehow the ftcs regime is going to be more difficult to enforce because theres this claim that it doesnt have rules under like the fccs approach. At this point misses the mark. The fcc we have a law which right now are the fccs title 2 rules but those rules are not selfenforcing. The same is going to be true after our vote with respect to the ftc. The ftc has legal standards, has precedence out there. Ive walked through some of what they are. Just like the fcc would, the ftc can take enforcement action. I think that this is really a great moment for consumers. Were getting back to the same regime that governed for 20 years, a regime that had robust Consumer Protections, it saw consumers launch and thrive. This is not some sort of new experiment with an entirely radical new free market approach. Theres robust Consumer Protections in place. Im really excited about it. This is a two with year detour that the fcc was ultimately pushed into as the Senate Committee found through political pressure from the white house. It was not a place the Senate Committee found in terms of full title 2 that the fcc was going to go based on its own independent judgment. With that im happy to take a couple questions putting back my old formal General Council hat on. We are in the sunshine period of the fcc which prohibits lobbying of Decision Makers during this period. So to speak in legalese a little bit. You cannot make a presentation to me that goes against the merits. If you have a question that falls within that, feel free to ask it. If you are not certain probably best not to say anything and we can transition ultimately to the panel. Thanks. Do we have any questions . I think that it may think its difficult to ask a question that is completely devoid of a presentation, so i think youre caution was probably perhaps well taken, but. Any one have a question thats not a presentation i think probably would have some would be presenters but that wouldnt be appropriate as you noted. Thanks very much. Everyone, it commissioner carr. [ applause ] thank you, commissioner carr. So it sounds to me that to some extent we have some regulations that were put in place to fix something that was not a problem and without any evidence of market failure to justify a remedy and all in the name of benefiting consumers. With that it seems like theres no surprise that weve how do we get there . You know, what are the various aspects of the provisions of the order, what does the fcc need to do, how will restoring Internet Freedom effect consumers, investors, innovators . Does Congress Need to have a role in all of this . Theres a number of issues that, you know, teed up to be considered and with that today we have an expert panel to clear up some of these and other important questions on restoring Internet Freedom. Moderating on the panel today is randolph may. Randolph is a founder and president of the free state foundation. Earlier he worked in policy research for think tank and Practice Communications and regulatory law at major law firms and prior to this he served as associate general counsel and general counsel. The full bios have been distributed so randy is always its an honor to have you join us today. Steve, first of all thanks very much for organizing this program. Obviously it couldnt be more timely and thanks to the American Consumer institute for all the work that you do. So were going to jump right in and what im going to do is just introduce the panelists just by their affiliation then im going to ask them to speak initially no more than five minutes and less than five minutes will be fine, maybe even preferred because were going to make sure we have time for questions and unlike with regard to commissioner carr, you can absolutely i dont want to put it that way but you dont have to be quite as careful as asking your question to these noted panelists because theyre not covered by the sunshine act. We do want to have time for questions. I want to say one thing briefly before i introduce the panelists and get started just on my own behalf. I was associate general counsel at the fcc from 1978 to 81. It started doing communication even before that. Its been a long time that ive been watching the fcc. I want to tell you that ive got a concern really about the way that in a proceeding like this the comment process in my view really has been subject to some distortion. Public participation is obviously welcome. Its important everyone can follow a comment that wants to and should but when you get into arguments about, you know, in this case with 20 million comments filed, when you argue about whether 50,000 or valid or not, ultimately whats happening now disturbs me because i think at bottom it diminishes the notion ultimately of the expertise of the fcc and the fccs institutional integrity and the role of expertise, so, you know, i hope we dont, you know, go too far down that road because ultimately whats going to occur thursday shouldnt be based and is not going to be based on the vote, how many comments are for or against a particular proposal. That shouldnt be the way the process works and i think thats important to understand. If that were the way the process worked then we really wouldnt we wouldnt need the fcc really to make that decision, would we . I think thats important. So with that, im going to tell you whos on the panel. We have katie mcauliffe, executive director of digital liberty. Barn soak who is the president of tech freedom. And of course steve posciak whos the president of American Consumer institute whos putting on this program today. I think what i want to do is ask remember the speakers only going to speak at most for five minutes. I want to ask barron if hell lead off, hes been a leader exploring the legal ramifications of the fcc. I think hell probably agree with me, maybe not, but if the fcc doesnt have the Legal Authority to do to maintain these rules then that goes a long way to answering the question as to what the fcc should do. So im going to ask barron whether hell speak first. Thanks. In fact, thats the first question to be asked and if the answer is no, the fcc doesnt determine it does have authority. Thats it. Game over. This is how agencies are supposed to work. You dont start with policy questions, you dont start by looking at comments, you start by asking what authority you have. You can validly claim and if you have authority then using that to the extent that you can and thats exactly what the agencys done here. The draft order, the one thats going to be voted on this week includes the two major claims of the authority made by the Barack Obama Era fcc were mistaken. 2010 claiming that section 706 was an independent grant of authority to let the agency have free range to regulate Communication Services and in 2015 that broadband was a title 2 service. The fcc is reversing both of those claims, tesktively at that point says there is no longer any basis for the Net Neutrality rules except for with the important exception the transparency rule. Judge soberman back in 2014 in the verizon decision noted that the fcc had always argued that there was another simplier basis for upholding that transparency rule and its on that basis that the fcc is maintaining that rule. We are reverting back to the status quo and this is really at heart as a legal issue really should not be controversial and if anything, people who across the political spectrum who are worried about the government claiming too much power over the internet and in particular who might be afraid of what this administration might do over the internet should be applauding this decision for the same reasons that the Frontier Foundation back in 2008, 2010 was warning that the previous claim of authority over the internet that had been made by chairman kevin martin was a trojan horse for broader regulation of the internet. I would say the same thing about these two claims of authorities. They are afraid that the fccs legal interpretation opened the door not only to blocking the services that they want to offer but to those services themselves being subject to title 2 regulation because and this is very important the 2015 order not only said that broadband in general is a title 2 service, but it had to go to Great Lengths to justify reclassifying mobile broadband and it did so by saying that anything that uses an ip address could be subject to title 2. Well, that to us effectively undoes the line that the fcc drew back in 2004 between the internet and the Telephone Network and opens the door to the fcc regulating the entire internet under that framework that was originally developed for the Telephone Network back in 1934. Thats why were glad that the fcc is undoing all of that and handing authority of the internet back to not just the federal trade commission, not just the department of justice but also the state attorneys general. Its really important here to emphasize that even if you have no confidence in republican ftc or Republican Department of justice, the states can bring those cases too. Its true that they do have fewer resources but if theres a problem theyll sound the alarm about it. Well know. If they themselves dont bring Enforcement Actions its going to be because there isnt a problem thats actually legally cog nizable. Since i dont have a lot of time ill just wrap this up by saying while im very glad to see that the fcc is undoing those claims of Legal Authority and we will continue to argue in court that the agency should not get deference in claiming that kind of authority over the internet, ultimately the fcc is going to win the next round of lit zbags for the same reasons it won the last round. That also means that this issue will revert back in the next democratic fcc theyll claim the same broad sources of authority over the internet. So were going to continue arguing with the Supreme Court should recognize that this is a major question that congress has to act and that absent legislation, that the fcc should not be able to claim that authority over the internet but unless the Supreme Court takes that up ultimately its going to be up to congress to resolve this issue and so i hope that over the next few years, the ftc and the doj can deal with this issue, i hope we have a way of making that permanent in legislation. That is the way well resolve this fight. Thank you. I do think its important to start with Legal Authority issues. Thanks for that. I think next i want to call on steve. Steve, do you want to im sure add to your introductory remarks and say a bit more at this time . And well move down the line . Thank you. Im going to defer to the rest of the panel, but since you gave me the opportunity im not going to bass up the mike for a second as im looking back at where we we were. The reality is that governments can fail, and government regulations can be imperfect. And very costly for example. They can permit errors on what might be good market conduct. These source of errors can be very costly. Create uncertainty in the market. They can increase various costs and fees and cross subsidies, they can take away opportunities of value, they can limit service and price differentiation which is important for maximizing consumer welfare. And then they can lead to seeking and game iing. With that, im going to turn it over to the panel and let them handle the rest of this, thank you randy. Okay, why dont we hear next from shane. Shane . First, id like to thank you all. You have taken many emails, phone calls and had a lovely thanksgiving like i did. I thought i cleared the hurdle and my dad said a day later, explain to your brother why we dont like Net Neutrality. By december 14th, hopefully this issue will be moved on so i can explain to my uncle the tax bill. Thats always fun at the holidays. I want to review real quick the three bright line issues in a have been brought up. That seems like a pretty natural thing, we dont want no throttling, no blocking, no pay issues. Most of these have been agreed to with the isps. Some of them in merger acquisitions. Theres also reasons why you might want to do any of these three things, and i want to highlight those. With the idea of the transparency being in place, you would understand hopefully why if any of these things took place it was happening. Well start with no throttling, i do a lot of work in Cyber Security. Denial attacks are a major reason why we have cyber attacks. You dont ever get a sorry cant go there right now. Its a constant throughput. If you dont have an ability to throttle or block it is one of the reasons why we had the major iot problem last year, where we were able to take Baby Monitors over. If you can see that on the system, wherever you are in the stack, and you might be the isp. Right now the isps can see that, they have to let it wash over them. Ideally they can be a more proactive part of the Cyber Security, protection that were going to need. Especially in the future. As more and more machine and machine devices come online. The no pay prioritization, with transparency rules. This is going to be important when we start looking at health care monitoring, we need very strong throughput. Close to zero late ansi as we can get. A lot of the great things that were seeing with 5g selfdriving cars. One of the reasons selfdriving cars will work, is because the information flow will be seamless. For the information flow to be seamless, we may need to prioritize the information that comes from the automobile over maybe your down loading of netflix. That wont actually interfere with your downloading of video, and i think theres a lot of misunderstanding that if you put something first, it automatically cues everything last. Theres several papers i can point you to on that item. Those are the three issues that have a reason for occasionally doing something. Throttling blocking, a lot of it is to protect the internet. We havent heard a lot about. We havent heard before protecting the internet. One thing thats always sort of surprised me, especially when youre trying to talk to laymen is that weve fallen into a european style, precautionary principle, we have a fear that these things are going to happen, they havent happened. There have been two incidents on the throttling, one was when comcast was moving from one set of systems to another, they really had a legitimate reason to do it, they just didnt handle it well from a Public Relations perspective, perhaps. And then weve had, very early on, when you had a lot of downloads of illegal content, and there was a point where they just the isps are trying to figure out, how do we manage people downloading full length major Motion Pictures on the system, and throttling was very early 2000s. How they were managing that. The precautionary principles is a little like that monster under the bed. Your kid is sure exists, and proof point is stevie has one too. We have to look at why were looking at these ideas. And when is an appropriate time to use any of these three bright line issues. As baron pointed out, the new online Consumer Protection that the ftc and fcc said theyll enter into later this week, is very born. It puts us back from taking the precautionary principle of fear of things that might happen, which does impede what we need to be happening in technology and innovation. Looking at the specific cases of what is happening, and what do we do to make sure that is not more than one case, ftc is the place for that to take place. Another point and then ill hand over the microphone. A lot of times you consider you think that youre having problems with your issue because the isp is the only thing you have you understand that the speed is coming from them, and the fcc is looking at upload time and download time, were not actually looking as the load time of the web. Next time youre sitting in front of your browser, and thinking, god, this is taking frev. We expect things to load within three seconds. If you look at the websites, theyre probably hitting 140 different domain names. They average 5,000 pieces of information. If that doesnt load in three seconds, theres abandonment. Were asking a lot of every level of the system. We need to have working on our next Generation Networks that can provide us the network that were all looking forward to having today and the next generation. Were going to call on katie mcca mcauliffe. Its very apt. Shes a great promoter, we thank you for all of that. I think im hearing a lot of the theme about trans parentscy, transparen transparency. This is the most transparent fcc weve had. If you look at this, we have the open internet, sorry, the restoring Internet Freedom order out three weeks ahead of the meeting, where as the open Internet Order we didnt see until a week after it was voted on. Two weeks, excuse me. This kind of transparency has been helpful for us to talk about how this is going. To look at how this chairman particularly, he talked about transparency, now hes practicing what hes preaching, as are the other commissioners weve had the opportunity to review this, its very important, its not saying there shouldnt be someone regulating conduct as both baron and shane have talked about, you have the ftc and state attorneys general. The transparency rule gives both of these entities a tool to go after bad actors. We dont want to be in a setup where were presuming harm before it happens. Thats the kind of thing that precludes any kind much or a lot of the innovations going forward. You think about where we are going to be, we cant imagine before the iphone was here, what that was going to be. Setting these kind of regulations in place before anything has happened would be problematic for our innovative future. Thats the first point on transparency. We dont want to freeze things where they are. And when you talk about applying utility style regulations to the internet, the internet has only been around commercially for 20 years. Compare that to our utilities, which you would say are electric, sewage, water, controlled by the government, theyre regulated, the speeds are regulated, the networks are regulated the rates are regulated. Those are all set not by market demand by what the government thinks should be happening. By that example it doesnt translate well to the internet. In looking at those things, i think we are wise to have a rule that responds to bad actors and doesnt presume that people are doing things wrong before anything happens. And i think thats just a better system to be under. Another aspect of the rule i wanted to touch on was preempts. We saw after the title i irules went into effect in 2015 a number of states coming forward with rules that amounted to data localization. Thats a major problem worldwide. You dont want to see the internet vulcanized and broken up with data stored in different areas. We want it to be seamless. We want information to flow and people to have access to that. If states start drawing borders around their own internets, it interferes with interstate commerce. By going back to title one, we avoid this issue, and the fcc has clarified this is an issue of interstate commerce. This doesnt conflict with anything that happened before, when we talked about some people brought up the issue of municipal broadband. You cant mess with what states are doing there. That was because the fcc was intervening and how states were managing their budgets. A state actually creates localities within it, localities have no constitutional protection to exist. They are a manifestation of the state, and the state managing its own budget. The federal government does not have a right to come in and tell a state how it should manage its internal government in that aspect. These are not the same kind of thing. Were talking about an interstate commerce issue. In talking about privacy. We dont want to have states making these rules. We want the Expert Agency to be working on. The ftc has been looking at these issues for decades, talking about how data should be used. Bravecy. We dont want to preclude different models before they should come up. We dont want to hamper unlimited data, and we dont want to prevent an instance where perhaps we could be compensated for the data we are exchanging with companies, i think that would be problematic, some of us might like to get paid for surfing facebook all day. Ill stop there. Katie, thank you very much. I was glad you mentioned order. It reminded me, in susan crawfords book, shes one of the leading opponents. She flat out and unabash edly said she thought the internet should be regulated just like we regulate electricity and water delivery. When you think about it, water hadnt changed that much over the next couple years. The internet changes almost weekly. It makes me wonder if thats the way the internet ought to be regulated. What i want to do, and you guys in the audience be thinking of questions. But lits do this i want to touch on the investment. One of the important considerations for repealing at a time when our economy needs more investment, thats awfully important. Ill ask the panel, i know steve is certainly an acknowledge d leader in the economics field. Do you huang the want to explai current regulation has an impact if you think it does. Yeah, well, first weve observed it, if you look at the decline that happened within several quarters of the decision itself. And also an absolute reduction in the number of broadband wired lines on the telco side. Weve had testimony from a number of small isps that indicated the same thing. It really gets back to what uncertainty does to the market. When you get into this mentality that says, you know, you can commit an error based on your conduct which in the end may be good conduct. What you end up going is you snuff out good innovation at the risk, rather than later on coming back and saying, hey, in retrospect, was this the right thing to do . So this kind of think iing is a little bit backwards. Its really as simple as that, it gets to be a sort of a matter of increasing industry costs and those costs flow through to consumers in the form of higher prices. Any time you shift that supply curve. Not only do you get increased costs, but you have restricted output. Thats what you would expect. Its basic micro economics. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, thats the problem with onerous regulations. The now, looking at these things after the fact to say, hey, is somebody out stepped out of the bounds of Something Like that, thats why we have antitrust laws at the doj and the ftc, to come back and take a look at whether or not there have been some violations. But to do that as i said early on, before not allow Internet Service providers to experiment then youre not going to get experimentation. You remember the free minutes that were on the phone, there were plans coming out to provide free minutes so you could watch espn and various other online providers. And the fcc indicated that they may look at those case by case bas basis. Essentially you cant give away minutes for free . How do consumers benefit from plans that give away free services. When you do Something Like that, you chill market investment. What investor wants to take a risk at something, if they dont know whether the investment they made paid dividends. Were talking about long Term Investments that people have to put in the ground and then the short run decisions as randy said at break neck speeds. The problem isnt Net Neutrality. Lets distinguish between three things. Net nutrality is of value. Privacy is on the same level as that abstract. Then theres the question of the specific regulations put in place. The thing that had the effect on investment, the arent fcc had always been reluctant to impose regulation upon the internet, across democratic and republican chairman was the concern that about that larger uncertainty, which is not really again about Net Neutrality, but what happens when the fcc opens that door. Dont worry, all were doing is just using title ii, just a little bit to do Net Neutrality. Dont worry about it, you cant have just a little bit of Net Neutrality any more a little bit of title ii any more than just a little bit pregnant. Its really one or the other. The fcc said, dont worry, were forebearing from the rest of title ii, that can be reversed as easy as the fcc made that initial decision. Moreover, the fcc when they said, well, dont worry, because were not applying all these other parts of title 2, what they did apply was the core of title 2. 202 a is about discrimination, right . That is common regulation. Everything else is just more particular implementation of that. Once you have those two things on the table. You are regulating broadband providers as common carriers, youre doing what bill kennard in the late 1990s warned against, the very thing that caused the other democratic chairman who considered but decided not to apply title ii, those are the things that have effect on investment, and the only way you remove that uncertainty is for the fcc to reclaim that power. I think what baron was referring to is chairman kennard said he didnt want to dump the whole morass of regulation on the broadband pipe. That was a direct quote. I want to ask in question. Maybe anyone on the panel can answer it. Weve seen so many instances recently, where the edge providers, google and facebook and twitter and others, where they discriminate, they take actions that are not neutral. They wouldnt be considered Net Neutrality as some of us think about that. You know, the chairman has actually in the last week or so, provide provided all of us with a list of a bunch of those actions. So and those are the advocates of course that are out front in advocating maintaining title ii regulation. I guess my question is this, ill just say for myself to be clear, ive never advocated regulating those companies or restricting their speech i dont think that should be done. There is a situation here where you have differences in their actions and how you think about those terms of Net Neutrality. What does that trouble you at all and how do you what do you think, if any, the answer should be to put these two types of firms that are in the internet ecosystem as we say on an equal footing, if anything. Who wants to one of the things thats important, the systems global, and we all need to be working together on this. When you think about what twitter, facebook, google and apple, especially in china are going through, it does have a Warning System of the challenges that we have for the internet ecosystem. The idea of internet governance, is something we have an appreciation for, it falls in line with our constitution. The rest of the world doesnt see it that way, i can understand why people again going back to the fed, they have a fear, they see whats going on in russia or china. We want to be able to handle our system in china, thank you very much, which theyre doing. The fact that we see that in an interference in what would be our First Amendment right. That doesnt one of the other things that are happening, theyre having control of the system, we can help from a lot of the bad things that are happening. We saw with the russians in the election. The very beginning we didnt have a clue how that was being managed, and were all learning it realtime, thats important at every level of the network stack. Including the edge providers, were learning how to protect the system and protect the internet of today. I want to say in 2020 i want the internet to be as cool then as it is now. I dont want to be thinking, remember the internet . Yeah. At any point we dont want to diminish property rights. In going back to principles that can be applied across the entire ecosystem. Limited government, that daits role is to arbitrate disputes, is what the ftc transparency rule process leads to. In that way you can respect a networks ability to moderate whats going on through their networks, to manage for reasonable Network Management. And those sorts of things. If youre looking at the principle to deter fraud, to ash trade disputes and enforce contracts, then i think that works pressty well across the entire ecosystem. Its more than that. The ftc has the ability to compete. No ones saying we should have lawless internet, the ftc and the state ags and department of justice, all of them have quite robust power to protect consumers. We focus on the ftc because it is really the de facto technology division. They deal with problems as they come up. I always smile when people say, how will we protect consumers without specific rules on the books. The whole point of creating the ftc was to give them those broad standards they could apply case by case and build a common law over time to address those issues. I have my own criticisms of how the ftc works. No one, including me wants to tie the agencys hands. At most were saying we should understand better how the agency works and make sure that its building an effective common law, it should hold companies to their promises. Prevent practices that harm consumers, and punish practices that injure competition. That approach again will be a back and forth between plaintiffs and defendants, both private plaintiffs and government actors over time. And well deal with problems. And importantly, if you find that there are gaps in that process, well legislate. Thats why congress why the ftc hasnt found it necessary to use the Rule Making Authority that it does have since when issues come up like the do not call registry. Congress has passed more specific legislation. Thats the trust i would have goingforward. Im happy to do that in a Technology Neutral way. Im going to ask one more question, and then im going to ask the audience whether they have questions. And this question, i was thinking about it when earlier the panelists were talking about innovation and how they thought that the current rules, the title 2 rules stifle or perhaps stifle innovation, and something ive actually written about, sort of puzzled over for a number of years is this. In trying to understand what people certain people and entities take positions in this proceeding. Google has said many times, ive actually been on panels like this, sean which theyve said it. Theyre not concerned about google or facebook protecting themselves. At all, because theyre big enough to protect themselves, theyre concerned about the next google. I mean, google says its not really it doesnt need the Net Neutrality rules to protect itself, its concerninged about the next google and so forth, that always having been around washington for a long time, that makes me really wonder whats going on here. And i think that in fact these rules that are in place this is what i believe, that those rules in place, actually serve to protect the large incumbents of the Net Neutrality providers and make if more difficult for a new the net google, the next facebook, to be able to use the increased flexibility to gain a foothold and change those incumbents. I want to ask a panelist. What do you think about the next google theory. Can i combine that going back to the question on investment . It looks the same to us, when it comes across a device that looks similar to this, we dont always understand how this is changing in the underlying infrastructure as well as the athe edge. There will be network a lot of times only at the google element, where we look at the browser where we see the difference in whats going on. A lot of that is divided into apps. The one thing we may see is having one app that aggregates everything. Right now, were popping in and out, you go to venmo, you come back to facebook or whats app. There will be an integrated app that will help you manage a lot of things in your life p. M. Theres a lot of reasons theyre doing it in china, theyre monitoring whats going on. Theres an element to that that its seamless in how we manage things. What were going to see is probably a little more aggregation with the way we manage our own individual Financial Services and our technology as well as other things that go on there. So theres multiple things beyond social media, and the basic networks that were looking at here. Lets see if anyone in the audience has a question. Well be able to get more questions in if we have them. If you can identify yourself as well, when you have a question. I wanted to ask some questions specific to Small Businesses. We represent Small Businesses that dont have the purchasing power of some large corporations and they depend very heavily on the internet in order to survive in many cases. Some of our members have expressed concerns that repealing the fcc regulations would put their businesses at a disadvantage, theyre worried their web pages will not be able to load as quickly as the web page for a Large Company that has great purchasing power like target and walmart. Is that concern valid or are they misunderstanding the impact of the fcc regulations. If they have a good web designer, they shouldnt be having a problem. The zeros and ones dont know if the end user is sending it to target, walmart, amazon or the Small Business down the road. Theres a report by a guy named richard bennett, that talks about load time. They can front end invest and make sure theyre on a system that doesnt put too much on the front page. The one thing i would say they have a concern with that actually having your Internet Service provider could be more valuable to them, is using the cloud for Cyber Security. Small businesses are a huge target for ransom wear. A lot of times if you lock up their web presence. Theyre losing business, theyre making no money that day or that week. And so a lot thats become a very heavy in the ransomware area. If you can notify your Customer Base youre going to do additional monitoring and quarantine as you see Something Like that come up. That would be where they actually have a great enhancement. And to do that, you would have to be able to monitor the systems, which the current rules under title ii, its a little gray whether thats considered throttling or blocking. Personally when i think about the idea of Net Neutrality. I think everything should slow up equally. I shouldnt notice a difference in how my email shows up or face timing someone. Prioritization doesnt necessarily mean that something loads slower. It means that in order for everything to show up the same way, some things have to get prioritized. When you think about a video call that requires more data than it does to simply load a web page. Thats where Network Management happens, so those things appear seamless, and they all appear the same. I wouldnt think that would be a problem, and again to shanes point about your web page or how those are functioning. A lot of times the things in a slow down, web page loads the most are the advertising on the side, and how much data there is behind that, whether its video or those sorts of things. There are a lot of other things to look at rather than title two type rules. What kind of regulations at state, local federal government can put on the internet and less about that seamless nature that you would want the customers to experience. The commissioner said, under the fccs own rules if a broadband provider would opt out, i want to make that really clear, if you thought that was a problem, title two would not address that problem. As a practical matter, there is no market for doing what youre describing, and i dont think there ever will be. The concerns that join tech freedom over the litigation raised were not about that theyre in the position of offering realtime high quality voice streaming. The idea that its somehow websites are not going to load or that someone will not be able to get services that they want. That run of the mill service is it never going to be affected. Some services being able to ensure that there is quality given to their the delivery of the packets, thats why they were concerned. You can do that without affecting the delivery of orbits. Did you have a question over here . Yeah, i did. Thank you. Hi, tracy rosenberg, im a. Two questions. When it comes to the question of broadband earn vestment and its deklained, there are several isps, including two of the largest ones in the country whos investments have not declined in the last two years. That includes charter, win stream, media come, i have a question as to whether we are overstating the amount and the impact. Some of the largest isps in the country were not affected. I didnt hear anyone on the panel manage the current case with regard to at t and the ftc. At t as some of you know, is an isp, one of the largest ones in the country. And it went to court to remove ftc jurisdiction from itself. This case is being call eed bac for an on bank hearing. The ftc may not be able to do so much and secondly, why didnt any of you guys mention it, it seems kind of relevant with all this talk. I bet theyll mention it now. One has to do with investment, the other has to do with the impact of the at t mobility. I didnt mention the at t mobility case because i didnt have time. The ftc has jurisdiction over all companies in america except those that are specifically excluded. Which includes common carriers. Until the at t Panel Decision, the ftc had always understood that that meant it was activity based. If you were a company that offered a common Carrier Service and a noncommon Carrier Service, the common Carrier Service would be regulated by the fcc. And the noncommon Carrier Services would be left in the ftcs jurisdiction. In that circumstance, it would be a clean transition, once the fcc undid common carrier reclassification. The lady is correct and im glad you mentioned that the Panel Decision would have created some remaining issues, it would. The transition would work, a company that offered both services, for example, like google fiber offers Broadband Service as well as a voice service. There was a concern that a company like that would still be in the fccs jurisdiction, exclusively, because its status was that of a common carrier, and its the noncommon Carrier Services would not revert back to the ftcs jurisdiction and would fall into a no mans land. Thats the concern. The thing is, that the full ninth circuit, when they decided to rehear that case, not only does that rehearing suggest that they think the underlying Panel Decision was mistaken, and, therefore the full ninth circuit is not going to reach that conclusion, they took the unusual step of vacating the underlying Panel Decision. That decision never happened. It is still a question, and it is possible that the fc c might ultimately lose now and at ts argument may prevail. Its extremely unlikely. That question is going to exist. And its possible that another circuit might find that, but if youre concerned about that, then the answer here is for congress to clearly legislation. Thats a one sentence bill that simply care phis that the previous common carrier exception is correct. Something that democrats and republicans have long called for. But its an easy fix, and something that again is very speculative at that point. Even if it did happen, the full ninth circuit upheld the Panel Decision, that would only apply in the ninth circuit. Apart from google fiber, im not aware of any large isp thats based in the ninth circuit. The law in the country would be the same. Its a fair point, but its pretty speculative. And until the ninth circuit issues its decision, which could happen pretty soon, there isnt a problem. If there were, tech freedom would be one of the first organizations going out and saying, congress should legislate immediately, and even this congress for all its dysfunction can pass that one page bill pretty quickly. That was a thorough explanation of that point. Lets see whether anyone wants to say anything about the investment point. On the investment, first of all, we dont want to see investment go down, even though there have been several studies that have shown that. Not all these companies do the same thing im glad to see, if charter is putting money into their system, thats good for all of us. Theyre not the only ones were concerned about, though. You need to have investment in fiber, and people knowing that as were going to small cell technology, theres several companies that are going to be engaged in that that are beyond just your regular isps, however, there are several studies that show that theres this was a challenging year for them, the last two years have had a decline. But again, that were looking for an apples to apples comparison as to what these companies are doing. When you go to their corporate data, you see that charter is merged with another large cable company. Verizon has merged with aol and yahoo, youre adding in their base level. I would suggest going back and making that correction to the baseline. I think when youre talking about investment, its important to understand that its not whether you have some absolute increase in investment or decrease, i think i believe the studies the number of credible studies have shown theres been a decrease, really the way you want to think about it is whether theres less investment than there otherwise would have been absent the regulations. You might have increasing investment, if its less than it would have been absent the regulation and you dont need the regulation to protect consumers, thats not good, thats harmful to the economy when you think about it, in a cost benefit way, really. Did you want to add something . Yeah, i can follow up on that with exact numbers. I just pulled up the study, here from the Phoenix Center which is very interestingly compared investment before 2010 when the rules were first talked about, and after 2010, and showed a decline fixed assets would have been about 30 billion more annual annually. Just with that uncertainty it reclassed investment. Its not that there wouldnt have been investment, there would have been more. In that specific study, theyre comparing it to industries. Theyre trying to find a baseline that is even for everybody. Is there another question from the audience . Do we have a question . Maybe okay, here in the front row, just a minute, i think hes going to bring up a mike. Can you identify yourself . [ inaudible ] spectrum and all of that is about. The language you talk about. Yet, we want to have congress resolve similar regulations. Immigration, theres a very simple thing theyre not willing to do. Were going to allow politics or shadow hopefully well have some of that again, title ii doesnt do the things that everyone claims it does. The regime is a voluntary one. The companies could opt out of. So if youre concerned that theres a problem i just i reiterate to you, that title two is not in fact the solution that you think it is if what you want is a clear legal basis for addressing this. Weve supported Net Neutrality legislation for years and would continue to do so. I happen to think its better for that to live at the ftc. But id be happy to codify the underlying core rules. If people are concerned. If thats the issue, people are concerned that a case by case enforcement alone is inning adequate we can, and theres been bipartisan consensus on codifying a rule against throttling and a rule against blocking and so on and so forth. I think that should live at the ftc. The hard question is what you do on the margins, like giving away free data. Theres all sorts of cases, concerned about the effect on voip services. Those are things you need a flexible standard to deal with. The one that google neg other yatesed with verizon is a great solution to the problem, we could put that in legislation, and that will resolve these debates once and for all. The sky is not going to fall without legislation. The dog is going to police in real harms and hold companies to it in the interim. It may only last until the next democratic fcc, where we might be right back to where we were last year, absent legislation. We do have a regime under which title i, we should be following the clarification of interpretation on this would be helpful from congress a discussion with what to codify would come up in the future, there have been bills discussed. I dont think that talking about politics or the slowness of congress is a good way to look at that. The fcc is a creation of congress, so to just start putting out rules from unelected bureaucrats who dont have that much accountability is really not the direction we should be going on that. There are when we look also at the way consumer response to things, Companies Respond to that very well, weve seen that a lot in the past year when people have expressed certain opinions about a corporate ceo or about a product or about a store. Or having a particular product. Well, i might not agree with those inclinations, companies do respond very well. And very quickly to consumer preferences. That would just be my edition to that. Well, i think our time is drawing out here, unless anyone has one more question. Okay, i see one in the back, well take that, and then well wrap up. Hi, im from congressman gomezs office. Over the past couple weeks weve been getting calls from constituents who are concerned about their prices going up for Internet Access. I want to see if you can give me soming in on that. On that point i would say, your prices are not going to change any more than they would with the market. This is the same trajectory from title one, were going back to the internet from a year ago, two years ago. This is there have not been any major changes. When you see prices change. The interesting thing about the transparency requirement from title 2, which and i dont know if this has been worked out. When companies disclose their prices, theyre not required to disclose what the taxes and fees are on top of that, when i worked on the Consumer Advisory Committee at the fcc and we were working on the broadband label, it was decided that it would be too difficult to include date and local taxes and fees on Internet Access, because they are too many of them and too varied. One of the important things for transparency is what is the government charging . And we just had a study come out from the Tax Foundation about how high mobil taxes are, in some states on your mobil phone taxes can be up to 22 , its well above the average sales tax rate. And those are the with title ii, that doesnt prevent any of the socalled Net Neutrality tenets. What title 2 does add is more government involvement, more ability of state and local governments to add fees. More ability for states to carve out the internet at their borders, thats not something we want. Within a title i framework, we can rely on the ftc. Two really quick things. The governments ability to tax broadband to impose universal services. Actually depends on title 2 classification, now, the fcc was smart enough to wait until after the election to drop that shoe, because they realized it was a loser, so thats the only reason that hasnt happened yet. That is actually the thing that would have raised prices for broadband. And that will not be possible once the fcc undoes that title two classification, but regardless of that, let me point out the irony here is now people are are saying, prices might go up. Even though that doesnt have anything to do with net neutrali neutrality. The fcc assured us they werent going to use title ii to regulate prices. Price regulation is the essence of common courage. As long as title 2 is on the table. That is a very real thing. In my opinion, price regulation tends to drive up prices. They said they would never ever dream of using title 2 do regulate prices. If thats the concern, the real answer is to promote competition, the fcc is doing a great deal on that right now to work on broadband deployment. There are things in that department, the fcc can do on its own. There are other things that congress will need to do. There are flurries of bills out there now, that have broad bipartisan support and thats where we should be focused. On thursday, the fcc will be meeting on this, i think weve really covered the waterfront, and been fortunate to have an expert panel here. We talked about the Legal Authority of the fcc and the policy decisions confronting the fcc, hopefully you agree with me that its been really educational to do that my hope is, goingforward the fcc will remain an institution, where we value the expertise of the commissioners, whether we may not always agree with them or not. Whether there are a million more comments here or there, if we do that, then actually, it will bedy involving into political institute, and the place for politics is more appropriately right up here in Congress Rather than over at the portals. So with that i want to thank steve and the American Consumer institute for sponsoring a program thats timely. Join me in thanking our panelists here today. Please. Thank you too, randy. Thank you, everyone. Watch cspan3, thursday at 10ek 30 a. M. Eastern for a live coverage of the vote on Net Neutrality. The vote is to roll back net neutrutrality roles and reduce regulation of the internet, live thursday on cspan3, cspan. Org or listen to it live with the free cspan radio app. Deputy attorney general visited capitol hill this morning for an oversite hearing of Robert Muellers investigation into russias influence in the 2016 election. Heres a look. According to the department, the office of the Inspector General informs special Council Mueller of the existence of these Text Messages between peter struck and lisa page on july 27th, 2017. The texts he sent last night. Mr. Mueller immediately concluded mr. Strut could no longer participate in the investigation and he was removed from the team the same day. Did he take appropriate action in this case . Yes, he did. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee, you said you would only fire special counsel mueller for good cause, and you had not seen any yet. Several months have passed since then, have you seen good cause to fire special Council Mueller . No. Thank you. If you ordered today to fire mr. Mueller, what would you do . I would follow the regulation if there were good cause, i would act, if there were no good cause, i would not. And youve seen no good cause so far . Correct. Thank you. Next, we take you to the council on Foreign Relations indiana for a look at the Cyber Security infrastructure in the u. S. This runs about 1 15