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 w