Transcripts For CSPAN Open Internet 20141109

I am delighted to now introduce the board of trustees, Jacob Weisberg, who has been involved in the internet before we knew what it was since 1996. Eer in then a pionw field and what we talked about how to take on the topic whouding experts and people signed Net Neutrality and their eyes glazed over and we got the perfect person would be Jacob Weisberg so over to you. Thank you. Want to think of the fordham system for sponsoring this event. We are going to do way better than have your eyes glaze over. A hallucination of this interesting and lively and very urgent issue. I want to briefly introduce the panel and then give them a chance to make Opening Statements and will mix it up and save time for questions. I will start with my old friend micah sifry and i know him going back to when he was a writer for the nation. That he works for the democracy for and author of a new book called the big disconnect. Agree with the premise. To my left is tim wu, you may recognize him from his recent unsuccessful yet widely Successful Campaign for Lieutenant Governor with 39 of the vote. 40 . No background in politics. Slateground is writer. He is the author of the master switch the rise and fall of information empires. Relevant for today he coined the term Net Neutrality and no discussion of it is complete without his perspective. Manney. To him, jeffrey professorntly, a law and now he runs an organization that he found it, i will have to put my reading glasses. International center for law and economics based in portland, oregon. For the first round here, i would like each of you to be as neutral and descriptive and diagnostic and explanatory as possible. It is very important to try to have the philosophical perspective and i want to start with you, tim. Explaining where the whole issue of Net Neutrality is and where the idea comes from. Thank you to pen for having us here. As dutch of importance and concern. I want to discuss why it is a give somebody historical background. Daynt to the fcc the other to go to a hearing, with the chairman, there was a crowd of protesters there. People beating drums. I have to tell you when i started working on this issue in the 2000, we would be lucky to have 10 people show up. It was an obscure academic issue. Theres a lot of reason why Net Neutrality has become an important issue. I want to describe some of the issues i think. It raises in our time questions of the power of private power in particular, and the exercise thereof. There is discussion in this country whether private power has gone too far. It puts into question the perennial issue of free speech. And the internet has been an incredible engine and some people feel it will be a direct. Threat. Ect if there will be a slow line created, and put in place some of the issues of equality or seem soty which striking in American Society right now. What feels to many people like Public Infrastructure might work better for some speakers and for other speakers. Both raises questions of free speech and basic sense of equality. Foro not have sidewalks rich people and others for poor people. Historyo back into the of this issue you candidate it from as far as you want and i would date it to the nationstate of the idea of Public Infrastructure. One of the thing that countries have always done is provide some amount of what you can call infrastructure, essential like forthand bridges and so that everyone relies on. All businesses and citizens. For a very long part of human history, a were provided by government, the roman empire builder the roads. Now, that has begin to change particularly in england is spreading to the United States with a model where we would have private actors build what mightve been otherwise they consider Public Infrastructure. Prior nnkeepers or somete ferry operators and under regulation or rules they gave the public duties. This is the origins of the idea of a public or common carrier. At some level since the last 500 years, we have been struggling with exactly what the rules should be for these kinds of businesses, which are not private businesses. But somehow invest it with a public function. Its not enough to say that infrastructure, everyone thinks the New York Times or slate seem to be different. When it comes to the internet, a project originally funded by the government. In its initial stages by the government and taken over by private companies will stop today, dominated by the private. Its the same rules faced forever when you look in ancient times at bridges and ferries. Should these private operators of white what might be described as public facilities have special duties of nondiscrimination delivery of goods or services with special pricing rules . Should they have to give it to everyone and make sure we have it . We are asking, what are the essentials of the 21stcentury . We are asking is the Broadband Internet the same as the electricity was or water. That is the basic introduction. In some ways, it is defining what citizenship is and i will leave it there. I know you will want to respond. Could you just bring us up to speed on where we are in laymans term on this issue . Pendinghas a ruling irrespective of the president who is charge express his opinion and public. What where are we on this issue . Ok, briefly, sort of picking left off. Im he started with the beginning of the nationstate as fastforward to the 2000. Yada, yada, yada. We have the internet, broadband. Telephones, Telecommunications Services have been regulated by the as is the for many years since 1934. Along comes in this new thing called broadband. Older broadband as you know of did a lotll we more than talk to each other. There is no longer a singlepurpose network. Something capable of doing everything at what came to be characterized as an information service. It is important. I decided i was not going to be annoying details. It is important to note under the clinton administration, the first fcc chairman made this determination that we would be better served if broad friend was class broadband was classified as Information Services because it is less regulated than telecommunications. After that decision was made came along challenges to it. The fcc continued on this path and continue to assert broadband less regulation. As the debate on Net Neutrality started to rage on, some people started to suggest we need more regulation for the internet. When michael powell, now chairman of the federal communication under bush, decided it was accurate and from the arguments that others have had said, it was a need to treat the internet differently in different ideals that tim mentioned. He mentioned Internet Freedom, and aspirational set of goals. Content should be treated the same on internet and everybody should have access. That worked really well until it didnt. It is not entirely clear. That you neverly work. It was only absurd not to be working and we need more rules. Decisions. Weurt can elaborate later. The core continue to throw out the fccs efforts to impose stronger rules. In 2010, the rules were promulgated. The court this year, threw out those rules as exceeding the fcc authority to regulate the internet. Those rules today, have been thrown out of revenue chairman tom weller have been thrown out and we have a new chairman tom wheeler. With thestent limitations that the court imposed, they try to reimpose the rules. Chairman wheeler proposed something mpr, another set of rules. Those rules were meant immediately with a massive thery, massive opposition, likes that never been seen before. Left. Opposition from the not the same kind opposition to regulation that we have seen it was opposition that you have not gone far enough. You have to do something far more substantial in this case. The argument was you have to impose these title ii common carrier regulators, true to the internet like it is a water utility, electric utility. Waiting to see what happens. Chairman wheeler proposed the second world that do not go that far. He would be open to the possibility of title to regulation. Fccs had debate and the record and hours of events like words inmillions of publications like jacob, assessing the question of whether we should treat the internet like a common carrier or something less. Maybe it can segue for you. The issue underlying regulation of internet and in this fashion whether anything ranging from the Internet Freedom up to treatment like a common carrier are what we want to talk about rather than debating the merits or demerits of the rules. I think we can do that despite we are right now is really asking the question, whether it will be regulating the internet as title 2 or something less . Back into that, i want to ask about the political stakes. Open internet versus close internet and the issue of Free Expression and political expression, the week before last i was in turkey. Democracy,which is a the president got a law passed saying he could take down anything from the internet at will and immediately began to do so. Political censorship of the internet is very clear. We are taught by different bandwidth speeds, isnt a rhetoric it rhetoric . [indiscernible] theres no question we are not in turkey. Now on . The turkey example. It is worth noting that when the protests broke out about a year ago over a government proposal that will does impart bulldozed impart to the wishes of the local community, the state media and private broadcast media in turkey not cover it at all. It was only because people in turkey have access to Services Like twitter that they were able to get the news out of what was going on with people protesting in the streets. Throughdom to connect relatively open Services Like twitter is really absolutely any hope of an open society. We, here in the United States, it is worth going back to maybe 20 plus years ago he for we had the internet at all, before we had social networking, before we had email, we had mainstream media. It was a much more closed system. If you wanted to be heard by the larger society, you have to get through a gatekeeper. Editor that what you had to say was valuable and the gatekeepers was not a particularly diverse group. We had a much more constrained National Conversation as a result. As we have now is absolutely a much better situation of an open media system thanks to the open internet. I think this argument about Net Neutrality is part of a larger argument of merits of open versus closed systems. I think i can illustrate with a recent example. There are services on the ellen internet that are more open and services a more closed and the philosophical issue if andybody has equal access equal opportunity to reach everybody else with her message is playing out in realtime and many other ways. Not just a question of if the notrs of the pipes have to discriminate in the content they carry. You may remember about two months ago when it was in the middle of the summer and mike brown was murdered in ferguson protests in the streets almost from the beginning. If you were on twitter and glancing at what was coming through your feed, you probably saw fairly quickly there were a lot of angry and upset people and people were sharing pictures of the police in their robocop uniforms and so on. If you were on facebook, you do not see this at all in your news feed for the first few days. Bucket the als ice showers. The reason so many people saw the challenge opposed to the ferguson challenge and the cause facebook has a different because facebook has a different, random of what they of what they put on your news feed. Facebook put what they think you will want. Not upsetting their users they want to keep their users happy and in a mood to Pay Attention to advertisers. Lgorit is muchs a more direct of by what you choosehm to follow. Its algorithm is you more direct cousin what have chosen to follow. The Net Neutrality of the services we rely on is absolutely vital to whether or not we have an open and robust conversation or one that is in all kinds of ways shaped and throttle and limited by private interests. I am not sure i totally agree with you. I do want to go back to this question about the internet as public utility or not. He used the metaphor of sidewalk. Electricity, and if bandwidth is like electricity, you pay the more you use. Mainlytice, isnt this from the point of view of the carriers, commercial issue whether they can charge more to the people we use the most of it . No. I do not think that is the issue. That is how it is friend to itgest framed to suggest is an issue that the government should stay away from but it is much more, less than that. It can be expressed as simply payment. That hides the complexity of the issue. My position on the advocacy side, i think in our era, it has become one of the essentials and should be regarded as a public utility. It was a different story 15 years ago when we were trying to do broadband rollout. It has come to the point where you go to a new apartment or this is a you want electricity, water, and broadband. What do one for the broadband carrier is to be reliable, as cheap as possible, and for the service to give you what you want and not impose its own strange little speedups or slowdowns or whatever else. But the carriers have long wanted and i can understand the economic reason is the ability taxes on theate internet. Those who have more to pay, they like to charge the more and create a fast lane and slow lane. There is some economic justifications are those type of deals. Go against it. It comes to the idea there are some businesses which are in the nature of Public Infrastructure. If you imagine the brooklyn bridge, i could say the George Washington bridge, but more politically loaded. If they were privately owned a favorite one Pizza Delivery Company over another, you could sort of immediately see how it works competition. Lyr has a competitor calledl ft and uber gets over and it tips competition in favor of uber. In a way that hurts the internet because it derails fair competition. I will also say when we talk about speech, the idea that rich speakers get better access to people is to some great tryitable but we should not to facilitate is to some degree inevitable but we should not try to facilitate. , buttill have to be good it is possible for a really wellinformed thoughtful blogger to compete with the opinion page of the New York Times for fox news and that is a function. In a world of great inequality, we have enough inequality as it is, we do not need more. People it be the only who have money. In andic utility ties what is a natural monopoly. Electricity and water clearly are. And there are a lot of places orre you have one of them way of accessing Broadband Internet more than one way of accessing Broadband Internet and it might be a function of a monopoly for consumers in new york. You can access through you uvers oruver verizon. E it may not be available for everybody. Is question of whether tim right and if it is a public utility and if it should be treated. In issue extent that may be an economic what, a problem of monopoly, if that is the fear they may be adding conduct and it does not add competition, we have laws the deal with it and they are called antitrust laws. It begs the question and apart, i am not saying it is an answer, it begs the question why we need to build an enormous new apparatus to try to achieve this think that at the root is a problem perhaps, if its a insufficient competition when we have lost the deal with it. Until the issues that tim was talking about, the implications, whether true or not, i take issue with the characterization of what the effects would be allowed prioritization and what a forcedts would be mandated neutrality. We have nothing approaching neutrality right now. Nothing. Theres nothing neutral about the internet. Fromis interesting is far fromstraining that are, the parties advocating for more regulation for common carrier treatment are enormously rich. Google, facebook, Companies Like those are advocating for neutrality and that should give you a bit of pause and you shall wonder if there is a reason they are advocating for the little guy. Or whether there might be Something Else going on. One of the things we should consider going on here is prioritization is actually really, really useful and important for the startup, the unknown company that needs some way of trying to distinguish itself from the incumbent. Then, and has a massive Consumer Base and easy access to financing. The incumbent has a massive Consumer Base and easy access to financing. A startup that is looking to make sure the incumbents customers can find the new guy. We have so much information out there, it is not enough to be better. You have to find a way to make sure that people who are your potential customers know you are better. One way is getting some form of prioritization. You can call advertising or promotion. I can tell you one thing that the likely consequence if we were to close any ability for the startup or anybody to access , it can only mean they would be spending more money on other forms of promotion and prioritization which probably means buying more ads on google. Dennett i mention and didnt i mention that google is in favor of Net Neutrality . 100 additional points but let me add one in particular because i this great quote from tim. It is useful to bring it up. He said, consider that the driver charges you the posted rate and take you where you go and that is common carrier in action. I think that is right. Two, treating it like a common carrier is like barring uber. The problem with the overregulated the internet is locking it into a status quo. If you are going to impose regulations in ways that outlaw certain conduct we can conceive andnd allow other conduct most we can conceive of is conduct happening right now. People enshrine those forms of conduct and impede innovation, new Business Models and ways of structuring not only the internet but the very content providers, who are the beneficiaries of his Net Neutrality regime. We have to be really careful before we impose essentially mandate the Business Models of the internet of yesterday. We better be sure were not outline the Business Models of the future. There is real common ground. You both think it is working. The internet is working pretty well so far. You, tim, think its partly because companies have not been. Ble to differentiate they have not been able to commercially regulate the market and say the carrier. And jeffrey, you think that the risk is government. Thernment regulating internet. Both of you like it pretty well the way it works right now. Question is what is the definition of an unregulated an internet without unhealthy regulation . Usually it is government and unhealthy regulation is what it does without government. That is right. Acting without regulation, the government has an obligation to defend. The carriers can do what they until theyit or not, run afoul of the law. The government has defended its imposition and one of the big issues at least to me, there is really as we were just discussing, no evidence anything that has ever happened. Thingse of little, tiny that we can debate of the three examples anybody can come all went. The internet works pretty well. Even if they are things that may have gone wrong, isnt enough . Is it enough evidence for a shift in regulation or is there not enough . While there might be problems validhe road, the only course is restrict a humility and we shall wait until the problems materialized because we do not have enough evidence. Object to wanted to this consensus that in the internet works pretty well right now. Overchargedre being would, wee that should be embarrassed by. We are paying first world prices for third world service. A kid in south korea can get to the library of Congress Website 100 times faster than a kid in the south bronx. If the kid in the south bronx can even afford to buy Broadband Service for one of the monopolists, who may not be choosing to put fast service into their neighborhood they have already paid the rich neighborhood. There are a lot of premises it got thrown past us. The idea that jacob, we might in five years see more competition or Faster Services being provided with verizon has already said they are not going to build fio any further than they already haves onestop for most people, unless you want to pay exorbitant prices or moved one of the few cities that either google or a mass municipality that is putting this gigabit level of Internet Service, we are never going to catch up large chunks of the rest of the industrialized world takes for granted at a price a fraction of what we paid. Lets not likely to the internet works well now. From the consumers point of view, it does not work well at all. Itwhat i meant, we agreed works well in terms of fostering themation and allow encourage and Free Expression. He makes a good point. Net neutrality is part of a broader conversation. Thatld side with the view the antitrust laws have not been in adequate and we have Serious Problems and we should open the door. As time goes by, thinking of things if you have a continued trend toward more consolidation toward a few companies being in charge and over a pretty important public facility, that naturally invites. A monopoly that shows no sign of disappearing at all or 2 companies charge monopoly prices, as some point, you have to say, just the price you are going to charge. Andcase for rate regulation also saying you need to provide access to more people in exchange for the monopoly is strong and thats what to do with cable. I am not saying i want to close and were when we have close the door when we have constraints. The government should never say we will allow it monopolist charge excess of the price of the costs because the internet is special. There is no reason to have that kind of will. It needs to keep prices. Issue, thenequality sense that while middleclass theries are flat, essentials keep getting more and more expensive. Internet service being one example and cell phone service. They keep going up. Some of these issues are not just tech issues and are becoming issues of what it means to be middle class in this country. We should not taken off the table. An important question is are goinge carriers to become more like monopolies are less likely monopolies . Most people experience them now as companies that behave like monopolies. I certainly do. I am not confident, i do not know which way it will go. What do we think . Making Net Neutrality policy on the basis that people hate comcast is a bad idea. If it stays a monopoly it is not clear that comcast is a monopoly. There is at least one other competitor in about everywhere. We are talking about broadband here. It is true for cable as well. Broadband, there is at t or verizon pretty much everywhere in the country. There are other options, centurylink and other companies that are investing enormously in their networks. Why these monopolist have invested trillions of dollars and demonstrated ever improving speeds relative to the costs of content and not especially rapid increases in prices, prices have generally gone and that is not true. Prices have gone up up way past inflation. Like 1800. You are talking about cable video. The point is that we are not experiencing exactly i understand that people hate comcast. Their Customer Service is terrible. We would rather pay less for whenever we want. All of these things are true but we have to be careful about translating that kind of conflict into and i want to bring it back to that neutrality into the detailed and potentially counterproductive rules we are talking about. A burst of was honesty on your point at what you are saying is i wanted a backdoor way to essentially nationalized this infrastructure that i believe should be offered by the government or the very minimum, regulated so heavily by the government it is indistinguishable from if the government was running it. That does not the problem the rules are intended to address. If thats a problem you see, we should talk about it differently. I do not agree with the premises here, i think it is a real problem going from those premises to title 2, carrier for the benefit of the problem or benefit of solving the supposed problems we have in the Net Neutrality debate. Idea of thehave an amount of regulation and less to do with competition. 15 or been involved for more years now and i the waiting and waiting for the market entry of five or six to make a rigorous and competitive market for delivering cable and Internet Service. Built in someizon high expensive neighborhoods in google has wired 2 cities. Overall, the state of competition is poor. When you wait and wait, as opposed to sitting there is saying one day competition will come so we should not say anything because competition will be coming. We need to ask a restraining act and restrain what are you have to act on the facts. Comcast is acting like a monopoly. They have raised their price. Trillions in infrastructure and every year increasing speeds. Wouldnt take account of the government subsidies other offered in other countries, the services are not necessarily more better and cost more. It is easy to criticize what we have, but it is not at all clear what we have is worse than what others have. More relevant to the neutrality costs we, what are the are bearing of this . If our service is not as good as south koreas and perhaps that is one or two countries where it is true, what are we losing and how much are we willing cost and burden are willing to there to correct this potentially very small actual costs . Net neutrality, the internet has been an economic golden goose thatyed has laid some golden eggs. Asking if the United States was finished as a technological power. Theres little question when look at the worlds top 10 companies, they are almost all american. Being the home of the internet, and open internet, a neutral internet has a lot to do with it. You said startups would do better on a pay to play internet. That is just a mythology. If you ask the startups themselves, they do not want to start their business negotiating with comcast or verizon for a next or payment when we have no money compared to our director competition which would be google or an established company who has a lot more money. It is clear that nonneutral incumbent, not just google in favor. Would you look at comments, it is new york tech companies, spotify, that when you look at panies, it is new york when you look at companies, it is new york companies, spotify. They will not be distorted i want to pursue this point. The question of what the absent of Net Neutrality would likely look like . One example, it is not Broadband Access to the wireless carriers are verizon, offering certain content with no data charges. Of notmes in the form directly translatable. That turned out to be very appellant. You will not run of data charges if you are reading certain things. Of realisticind version of what happens if the fcc does not mandate Going Forward . You get more of those things good or bad our media will look more Like Television again. Chris how do you mean . And onlysion is free to the extent it is paid by advertisers. If you are someone that attracts a lot of advertising you are describing jacob, it is already existing in parts of the third world. What facebook is doing in africa and asia is saying, everybody wants facebook, we will let you. Undle with your phone if people open the phone to get on facebook, there will not be data charges. From the point of the view of the user, they are getting facebook for free but today are not logged onto the internet at all. They may actually know that. It is the height of first world humorous to say screw you, you want facebook, but you cannot have it because i know something that will be that are for you. Have a value difference. An open system is better than a closed system. Means non system internet at a closed system is at least i get facebook, i would take a closed system. That maybe the relevant choice for many people. How do i think things would look . I do not think the walls would fall down. I think it would be a considerably different world for people starting to think of new things. Magazineut slate started in the 1990s. You have an idea and you put it out there and you see whether it works or not. So many startups, thats how they start. They take off or they do not. You start the position you need to negotiate a deal and if you do not have a deal with verizon or comcast, it starts becoming a permission driven system. The internet become something where it is all about what the better deal as opposed to meritocratic. It looks more like cable television. The internet follows the path of cable. And thee been different comes much more commercial. The final thing is probably the generation. Quiet is relatively except and they know that in a nonneutral world, they have the money to pay to get access over their competitors as they could destroy any serious competitors. It locks in the incumbents. Google and amazon are quite, the real debate is over title 2, whether we have common carrier rules. Those companies are all in favor of Net Neutrality and in private conversation, probably opposed to paid privatization. There is no evidence, no reason to think those roles were not apply to them as well. Is another danger of the imposition of this massive regulatory apparatus that be careful what you wish for because you may end up hamstringing the very heart of the ecosystem. Tim, i think your vision of what the world is going to look like its too pessimistic. I do not think there is anything to suggest that it is likely to be the case in large part because we do not have any rules prohibiting private forward as a shim. Prioritization. It is not beneficial to the Internet Service providers either. We may disagree on exactly where they would fall and what amount of unfettered content is in their best interests, but it is clear an example as much of the news. Netflix and comcast are not simply at odds with each other. People pay for comcast because they can get net flicks. You have to be aware there is that synergy. Sufficient own content to attract people to the internet and have to make sure they are offering content. Or they can offer Great Service which they do not. You still need to the content. Margins is i can see of which the Internet Service deter or impede some content providers. In general, they have a very strong interest in people getting access because thats what people are willing to pay for broadband. Vision of the small garage start up not being able to get access. Comcast does not care about him. They could care less if the small startup has is clogging its pipes. , itppears about netflix really imposes difficult engineering problems on comcast networks. It is not made up. They really do. The small startup until they get to the size of netflix, comcast is not know they exist. You could create a scenario, a world in which some evil person comes to comcast and say i hate these people and is run by jews as lets stop them. You can constructed that is not likely how it will work out. Netflix is going to have to pay comcast and its next competitor will go through because these are forprofit companies. Evil,ot think they are but today favor with has more money. They favor who has more money. Long way there. There are a few spaces in American Society where smaller speaker to have a decent chance. Cares,t think comcast but cares about the paste it. It is clear to me that speakers with money will get priority and you will see the speakers with less money like wikipedia, which is always struggling for money and does not run ads. Space will get worse. In order to pay comcast, wikipedia will have to say we have to start writing ads. The consumer will pay in the end. Wikipedia has zero which is content the kind of that is not neutral. They have no good a model but people rely on it is the kind of comcast lethy would that im going to open it up for questions in a minute. Wikipedia, you said. Question for any of you. You see amazon dispute relevant here. You have a company with market power discriminating against specific content at down to the level of individual authors. They gave paul ryan a pass. Commercial dispute but that they now have the power to to the typent harm of people you are talking about. There is no Net Neutrality that applies to amazon. Is that the kind of thing you are worried about here . We need to be worrying about the new concentrations of power and if they are using their platforms in a neutral way or not. We can extend the logic that tim gave us talk about the net is a mutual platform. You talk about amazons role here and that is worrisome. Not saying we have to dissent the old publishing model and playingrything, but favorites in the way amazon seems to be doing is very troubling. Jeffrey, are you cool with what amazon is doing . Yeah, but i will take the devil after its role devil advocate role and point out that as you said, Net Neutrality applies only to the Internet Service provider and not to any of the other alleged gatekeepers that tim has written about. It is really worth thinking through what happens when you mandate neutrality on one part of one level of this ecosystem, but cant or dont on others. Twocent dispute between you and independent art you to an youtb andt independent artists who do not get playedue unless they pay. There are any number. If comcast is a gatekeeper for an off her and and author. Cansands of examples you think of thousands of examples like that. Hand, it means that, if blog,mention bo they wanted to stop it, it would be easy. And what is his name . Arrested development whatever. That is not the point. If it is standing on its own and it is wordpress. Adele versus comcast. It is important to bear in mind, a lot of the independent as , theirrtists as craters access come through Aggregation Services that may have problems we can discuss. They help to counteract the perceived problem of having an isp as a gatekeeper. Google versus comcast which is a much fair fight. Many of them are notforprofit. Them reallyof matter and are successful. Wikipedia is one of a very few examples. I am not saying it is across the board in happens everywhere. Thing about the fact that dynamic exists and helps to moderate some of the perceived problems because there are very powerful entities who are potential he threatened by this room preciousness repatr iciousness. Amazon,ell the comcast, google, whoever has paid intermediary to you are increasing their power. You have shifted the locus of any problem from comcast to google or youtube. In Net Neutrality debate about i am doing devil advocate a you are right about everything in respect to amazon are we better off if amazon has unfettered ability, no potential impediment to doing whatever it wants digital from isp direction . I do not understand how comcast is serving a check on amazon. And is acting grabbing all types of rent money out of the company a random money out of the company and that is bad. Amazon is doing Something Else that is bad and some bad. The problem with youtbue. Over here, dont you need to solve both of the problems . I want to take a few questions. You can keep talking but let me see if there are any hints. If you have a question, tell us your name and one quick question. And i was is melissa a Fellowship Program called since makers and we are the consents of information on the internet. I used to do investigative reporting for all of the shelves. I am finding you cannot have the same effect where you get somebody out of her prison or a new vaccine on the internet. It does not happen. The public good. The internets most out in his own fashion very slowly compared to have everybody look at a topic. See the internet having the same effect . If i understand your question correctly, what you are saying is basically back in the good old days, a program that 60 minutes for a network news show could focus our attention on a problem and that would often lead to some fix. And today, we have a new kind of problem which is we have an oversupply of information, if anything the internet has made it too easy for us to speak. Thats a topic i take up in my new book. What do we do about this . How do we refocus . Yes . I would say the reasons why there are many reasons why in the United States why it seems as though our political and governmental system is dysfunctional, they get the blame, it it gets pointed back and forth. I would just suggest that part of the problem is our attention wanders to quickly now. Ando from crisis to crisis the system they used to then respond it immediately on to Something Else. The internet is causing a societal attention Deficit Disorder and we often would personally and our need to check for the latest email, latest tweet instead of sticking on things. I think this may be something we can grow ourselves out of as we learn to better filter the media we are being surrounded with now. That is an open question. I am hopeful we can do that. I think youre absolutely right. It is a problem today. Other questions . If not, we can continue the argument we are having. Yes . Hi. Internet stopped working and i have time warner. It turned that is the end question underlying question. If other people maybe this happens to them. They were offering me a better modem. The way they got my attention to offer that was to shut off my service. I do not think that was an isolated example. Not only is that not an isolated example. The precise thing happen to me. That is a monopoly. Start tellingg to time warner or stories, we are that is part of leaving things as they are. I believe the merger should be blocked. I think we have a problem with unresponsive power in the cable sector. Not some of the new neutrality things have been implicated. Price is the thing that bothers me. The average bill for time warner since 1992 is between 12 and 20. Over 100. N to 155verage comcast bill is per customer. Getting thexceeds money out of new yorkers that he got out of everyone else, 1. 6 , Cable Companies are making enough money as it is. The merger should be stopped. Everything they say are these cap it, empty statements. When they try to back it up, they are just competitors for Internet Services. Merger there is nothing about the merger i have red that is in the public interest. People lookedwhen at this problem of over concentration, they felt we should not allow these kind of mergers that are not in the public interest. Comcast has yet to be the burden of proof. They dont bear burden of proof in an antitrust matter. Not as a matter of antitrust. You have had an enormous amount of economics since 2010 that have developed since then. We have learned that concentration does not translate into monopoly power effects. It would replace time warner with comcast in new york. An economic matter, you have to make out a case why replacing one month ill blessed with another one monopolist with has outcomes that are relevant to the merger. A fact of the matter is, there are not any. Exist, and they exist in different markets, with different products. Im pretty sure comcast would say that their services better. We give you something more. We charge you more for it. They have to do a quality adjustment to the data you are throwing around. I do think you can say that they will simply replace the exact same internet that was costing you 105 with something for 155. They might. Last question right here. Hopefully it will give you each a chance for a brief last word. I am a lay person. I do not see where there is an antitrust system working in this country where we have the concept of too big to fail. With hyper banks and other institutions i wish you would enlighten me with where this is actually working, because that is why we have this huge concentration of wealth and whole countries being run out. That whatevernk the staters are standards are applied to comcast. There may be issues in the financial markets, and i suspect that if you want to look for blame there, i would not look at the antitrust economics or even the antitrust enforcement agents these, i would look alike higher up the chain to the white house and federal reserve. There are a lot of people with a lot of interest in treating those banks very differently than perhaps the antitrust authorities would. I dont know that they would have found it to be some actual economic basis for breaking up a banks, but i can guarantee you that there were a lot of political reasons why they didnt. This is not an antitrust problem. A lot of the debates that are going on in Society Today are on the divide the more to whether level as businesses usual, the system we had an antitrust him in antitelecom regulation, where we had something to do place regulation. We are not really worried about monopoly. We, flaccid enforcement ever since the reagan administration. Everything has been great. We should continue that. Maybe i am exaggerating. People like me think that there is time for change. We have a serious problem with inequality in this country exacerbated by the failure of the government to take serious action in antitrust, to restrain cable monopolies. To start thinking about what our the daytoday costs that americans are facing. How is this economy working for normal middleclass people . Our existing system has done some good things, has created some wealth, but has failed the middle class. Therefore, we need to reexamine from the bottom up rings like how we regulate the largest carriers and how we enforce antitrust law. I have very strong feelings about the theory that. I do agree with him. Let me just see that the internet has gone from being a lucky accident to the network that connects all the networks. It is the functional equivalent of the dialtone of the 21st century. Right now there is a kid sitting on the stoop of a Public Library branch somewhere in upper manhattan who cannot afford Internet Access at home and is sitting there because they are getting free wifi. People cannot even apply for jobs today if they dont have a way of getting online. When people go to public libraries, the first major use in the library, when somebody signs up to use the computer, is to figure out how to put in their resume and apply for a job. This is essential to our economic lifeblood. The idea that we should take a blase hands off, let the big boys handle it approach is not one that we can afford. A this was not billed as debate. This was a very good one. I want to thank you all for participating. [applause] next, a form on internet privacy. Glenn greenwald talks about security and government surveillance. After that, another chance to see a discussion on internet regulations between content providers and service providers. On the next washington journal, Washington Post polling manager looks at the demographics and attitudes that shake theirs years that shake this years election results. He examines how a divided government can work. We will mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall with Georgetown University professor and a look at u. S. German relations and the impact of a unified germany. As always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Washington journal, live at 7 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Cspan veterans day coverage begins Tuesday Morning at a 30 eastern at a 30 eastern. At 10 00, the annual uso gala featuring joint chief of staff chairman martin didnt say. At arlingtont 11 National Cemetery for the traditional wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the unknowns. Afternoon, a discussion on Veterans Metal Health Issues and selections from this years white house middle of metal medal of honor ceremonies. Jennifer lawrence recently stated that the exposure of a personal nude photo on the internet should be considered a sex crime. Thursday on capitol hill, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee examined sexual privacy concerns and the legal ratifications of hacking private photos in socalled revenge