[00:00.540 --> 00:01.220]  Thank you.
[00:02.720 --> 00:03.320]  All right.
[00:04.120 --> 00:04.720]  Thank you.
[00:05.400 --> 00:08.280]  Hi, and welcome to our panel on net neutrality.
[00:08.860 --> 00:12.260]  My name is Jeremy Pesner, and I'm so pleased to be working with these accomplished panelists.
[00:12.860 --> 00:19.580]  Just last month, there was a legal decision for the FCC to enforce net neutrality, and it was upheld in the D.C. Circuit.
[00:20.160 --> 00:28.980]  What this means is that we can move away from the question of whether net neutrality should exist and start asking about what it means to turn this from a concept to actual implementation.
[00:29.620 --> 00:35.800]  I'm going to let these panelists introduce themselves briefly and then ask a question or two to get things going, but this is ultimately their panel.
[00:36.020 --> 00:40.220]  I want them to ask each other questions and take this discussion wherever it may go, within reason.
[00:40.620 --> 00:47.220]  I want to invite you, the audience, to participate as well, and I'll invite you to ask questions periodically when or if there's a lull in the conversation.
[00:47.440 --> 00:48.340]  So let's get started.
[00:48.540 --> 00:50.160]  Please take a minute to introduce yourselves each.
[00:50.160 --> 00:50.820]  Okay.
[00:51.080 --> 00:52.080]  Bob Frankston.
[00:52.300 --> 00:58.560]  I've been hacking for 60-some-odd years and build my own things.
[00:58.920 --> 01:04.200]  I resent having a provider from whom I have to ask permission.
[01:05.940 --> 01:09.860]  I'm Alfredo Lopez from Mayfair's People, Inc.
[01:10.120 --> 01:18.960]  We're a membership organization, a politically progressive membership organization, and alternative service provider.
[01:20.980 --> 01:29.820]  And obviously we deal with technology, primarily Internet communications technology, and do all kinds of stuff with it.
[01:29.900 --> 01:36.000]  And we were part of the large coalition that won the net neutrality thing from the FCC.
[01:36.980 --> 01:43.020]  So we have a... besides the obvious interest we have in it, we have an interest in that we did stuff around it.
[01:43.960 --> 01:44.860]  Hey, everyone.
[01:45.160 --> 01:46.760]  My name is Sam Gustin.
[01:46.900 --> 01:47.560]  I'm a journalist.
[01:47.560 --> 01:50.180]  I work at Vice Motherboard.
[01:50.700 --> 01:52.300]  And I cover tech policy.
[01:52.700 --> 01:53.820]  Thank you very much.
[01:54.340 --> 01:55.740]  Hope you guys all read Motherboard.
[01:56.740 --> 01:59.660]  And I cover tech policy and the FCC.
[02:00.160 --> 02:05.360]  And I've been writing about net neutrality for almost a decade now.
[02:05.540 --> 02:06.420]  Thanks for having us.
[02:07.700 --> 02:08.840]  Hi, I'm Kate.
[02:09.020 --> 02:10.460]  Is this thing on?
[02:10.660 --> 02:10.800]  Yeah.
[02:11.080 --> 02:11.140]  Okay.
[02:11.620 --> 02:12.080]  Always.
[02:12.200 --> 02:13.280]  I'm Kate Forscey with Public Knowledge.
[02:13.840 --> 02:18.080]  We were fighting the net neutrality fight since basically its inception.
[02:19.200 --> 02:36.500]  We view it as a preservation of the critical values that underlie, you know, the ability of communications networks for centuries now to preserve egalitarian values, democratic values, and permissionless innovation.
[02:38.520 --> 02:39.620]  I'm Jesse Sowell.
[02:39.800 --> 02:42.780]  I'm the local academic.
[02:43.100 --> 02:48.040]  I just finished up dissertation work at MIT on the political economy of Internet operations.
[02:48.320 --> 02:54.940]  So who are the folks that ensure the, at least for the time being, non-discriminatory Internet continues...
[02:55.440 --> 02:59.640]  that that private set of networks continues to go here into that non-discriminatory common platform?
[03:00.280 --> 03:06.620]  I'll be starting a fellowship at Stanford Cybersecurity Fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
[03:07.140 --> 03:20.860]  My view on network neutrality is I come at it from some of the... from the anti... from the competition policy element of network neutrality that some of the original stuff that Tim Wu and Christopher Yu wrote about.
[03:20.860 --> 03:35.240]  And I'm really interested in distinguishing the non-discriminatory character of the infrastructure from the very diverse public, private, and social goods that are provisioned atop that as a way to evaluate some of these issues we'll be talking about.
[03:36.540 --> 03:36.980]  Great.
[03:37.160 --> 03:37.480]  Thank you.
[03:37.740 --> 03:42.780]  So those last two panelists actually touched on this question a bit, but I'd like to invite the other three to answer.
[03:42.940 --> 03:45.840]  What does net neutrality mean to you as a concept?
[03:48.240 --> 03:55.320]  I see net neutrality as a legacy of the early days of telecommunications which acted like railroads.
[03:55.400 --> 03:57.480]  You have to provide a carrier messages for you.
[03:58.000 --> 04:09.700]  I see in the future it's not enough to really give us the Internet connectivity, whereas it doesn't address the issue of who owns the facilities and how you pay for it.
[04:09.900 --> 04:16.260]  Once you have a carrier that you're dependent upon, you're in the situation of asking yourself permission.
[04:16.560 --> 04:21.720]  The alternative is to start by owning the facilities and only seeing packets.
[04:21.940 --> 04:26.860]  If you separate the content from the packets, you are inherently neutral.
[04:27.680 --> 04:35.900]  So by having a policy that removes sort of somebody, you know, owning a pipe, you get neutrality, but you get a lot more.
[04:37.800 --> 04:38.260]  Great.
[04:40.600 --> 04:44.880]  I mean, net neutrality means a lot of different things for me because I'm a lot of different things.
[04:45.260 --> 05:01.520]  But when involved in the particular net neutrality struggle, it meant doing things like going to lobby and Congress and really, really things that I thought after 50 years of activism I would never, ever, ever have to do in my life.
[05:01.520 --> 05:03.400]  And I had to end up doing them.
[05:03.800 --> 05:21.140]  But the main thing about that struggle that brought home the question of net neutrality to me was the community involvement, which I believe personally, others can disagree, but I believe personally was the tipping point that won us that FCC decision.
[05:22.140 --> 05:28.580]  Massive community involvement, including communities of color, of which I'm part, you may have noticed, as a Puerto Rican man.
[05:29.960 --> 05:33.120]  We don't get to tell our story without an Internet.
[05:34.200 --> 05:43.500]  And unless we get to tell our story, you don't get to hear our story in what is an essentially racially divided society.
[05:44.320 --> 05:53.880]  And in order to combat those divisions, so that we can all take a crack at survival as a human race, we need to tell each other stories.
[05:54.080 --> 05:56.320]  And the Internet is the way that we do that.
[05:56.920 --> 06:13.440]  I remember as a journalist, a commercial journalist in the, whatever it was, late 70s, early 80s, how fragmented and distorted was the coverage that even people like myself would do of communities of color.
[06:13.600 --> 06:14.820]  Well, you don't have that anymore.
[06:14.820 --> 06:20.000]  You don't have to, because now communities of color can speak with their own voices.
[06:20.620 --> 06:22.740]  Net neutrality helps that happen.
[06:23.100 --> 06:26.280]  It doesn't guarantee it, but it helps that happen.
[06:26.280 --> 06:33.960]  And I think that was, in some way, the tipping point that brought these communities into that struggle.
[06:33.960 --> 06:43.880]  Because they realized that with a different level of access to speed and service, they would be buried.
[06:44.340 --> 06:45.580]  Thank you, Alfredo.
[06:45.660 --> 06:46.540]  That's very good.
[06:46.700 --> 06:46.820]  Right.
[06:46.980 --> 06:47.580]  Sam?
[06:48.920 --> 06:56.920]  So, as a journalist, what I would say is that net neutrality is the free speech issue of our time.
[06:57.720 --> 07:03.800]  It is, you know, the principle that allows us to communicate with the public.
[07:04.360 --> 07:09.920]  And it allows groups like Alfredo's to organize.
[07:11.420 --> 07:15.840]  And, obviously, there's a commercial aspect to it as well.
[07:16.520 --> 07:21.700]  But it really, you know, it's easy to take net neutrality for granted.
[07:22.600 --> 07:28.760]  But it is essential to the origins of the Internet.
[07:29.260 --> 07:36.000]  You know, the fathers of the Internet, when they were creating the Internet, they very much had this idea of a neutral network.
[07:36.860 --> 07:47.900]  And so, in many ways, the fight over net neutrality is really a fight to codify the intentions of, you know, the geniuses who invented the Internet.
[07:48.180 --> 07:53.400]  So, I guess, you know, to put it in a sound bite, it's the free speech issue of our time.
[07:54.640 --> 07:55.120]  Great.
[07:55.900 --> 08:07.720]  So, to follow up on this question, now that we've got nowhere you're all coming from, I'll ask, what do we see enshrined in our current system, social, political, and technical, that either promote neutrality or work against it?
[08:10.120 --> 08:17.640]  I think, though, I need to step back because we keep using the word the Internet without really agreeing on what it means.
[08:17.920 --> 08:25.940]  The thing about a word like the Internet, broadband, they're really good because they allow you to talk without communicating, without having a shared meaning.
[08:25.940 --> 08:32.260]  So, I see the technology of the Internet or the technique entirely separate from what we do with it.
[08:32.920 --> 08:42.220]  So, having a means of unfettered communications allows these social goods, allows these activities, and this is wonderful.
[08:42.640 --> 08:45.800]  But we have to step back to understand why.
[08:45.800 --> 08:52.500]  So, I go back to when the Internet sort of was... it wasn't so much invented as discovered.
[08:53.200 --> 08:59.220]  Because we discovered how do you software the program around lack of a provider with packet nets, with ethernets.
[08:59.940 --> 09:05.280]  And the Internet as a technique is really the Internetworking technique to expand these.
[09:05.400 --> 09:12.200]  So, if you have two of your own networks where you just plug in your jack and you're connected, you can interconnect them and they become one.
[09:12.200 --> 09:25.120]  Where it gets confused is that we took the time string tradition where you dial up to a bulletin board system or AOL, and we confuse that with the Internet, even though that was a temporary hack.
[09:25.580 --> 09:29.200]  So, for me, the Internet is a technology where there's nobody to pay.
[09:29.420 --> 09:38.740]  I just communicate like I use roads and sidewalks, and it's not like railroads where I have to buy a ticket and can only go where it's profitable to a railroad.
[09:38.740 --> 09:50.420]  And that's why I'm talking about an approach which removes the need for enforcing neutrality by removing the need to sort of have a provider or railroad in the path.
[09:51.420 --> 10:00.380]  Now, it takes a lot of explaining what that means, but the key thing is if we pay for it in a way like we pay for other infrastructure, we get neutrality a lot more.
[10:00.380 --> 10:07.040]  And I think we need to discuss that level of the unfettered technology apart from the social policies.
[10:07.620 --> 10:08.280]  Very good.
[10:08.560 --> 10:09.800]  Can you repeat the question?
[10:10.020 --> 10:16.740]  Well, I was asking, what do you see enshrined in our social, technical, political systems that either promote neutrality or work against it?
[10:21.080 --> 10:23.420]  Business and profit work against it.
[10:25.560 --> 10:33.880]  And the fundamental need and drive to communicate to improve society and to survive as a human race work for it.
[10:36.100 --> 10:37.360]  Yeah, that's what I think.
[10:37.920 --> 10:45.880]  Yeah, I mean, I would sort of pose a rhetorical question to the audience, which is, how do you guys view the Internet?
[10:46.120 --> 10:48.080]  Is the Internet a luxury for you guys?
[10:48.540 --> 10:58.880]  Or is it an essential tool for commerce, for communicating, for education, for political organizing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
[10:58.880 --> 11:04.060]  So, you know, the question is, you know, how should we view the Internet?
[11:04.360 --> 11:08.000]  Is the Internet, is broadband access a public utility?
[11:08.240 --> 11:11.120]  Should it be a public utility, like electricity or water?
[11:11.860 --> 11:17.160]  Once you start saying it should be a public utility, then we say, okay, are we going to have rate regulation?
[11:17.680 --> 11:25.260]  So, you know, the way we conceptualize the Internet is changing and it's evolving.
[11:25.960 --> 11:31.500]  And I think a lot of the big cable and phone companies would like you to think that it's a luxury, right?
[11:31.640 --> 11:33.320]  You got to pay 150 bucks a month.
[11:34.180 --> 11:35.340]  You know, you don't need the Internet.
[11:35.480 --> 11:42.660]  I remember a year ago I wrote a story when FCC Commissioner Mike O'Reilly, he said, well, you guys don't, people don't need the Internet.
[11:43.040 --> 11:44.100]  You don't need the Internet.
[11:44.320 --> 11:45.440]  You know, it's not a necessity.
[11:45.760 --> 11:50.740]  And then you have people like Tim Berners-Lee who says, no, actually the Internet should be a human right.
[11:51.180 --> 11:54.640]  I mean, do you, you know, do people think the Internet should be a fundamental human right?
[11:56.120 --> 12:09.440]  So, the way we conceptualize the Internet is changing and there's this tension between commercial interests, which would like people to think that it's a luxury, and people like Tim Berners-Lee who say, no, it should be a human right.
[12:09.780 --> 12:15.480]  And, you know, so it's more of a rhetorical question about, you know, how do you guys think of the Internet?
[12:15.480 --> 12:23.120]  And, you know, are you willing to fight to advance, you know, how you think about the Internet?
[12:24.820 --> 12:26.500]  I agree with Sam 100%.
[12:26.500 --> 12:35.940]  I would also go a step further to say that it's pretty much acknowledged by anyone who's not the people that he mentioned, that it is a necessity.
[12:36.160 --> 12:44.920]  I mean, you need the Internet to apply to jobs, to apply for healthcare, you know, to communicate with people, to basically do your jobs, to do homework.
[12:45.100 --> 12:48.860]  There's a big, you know, discussion right now about the homework gap for consumers.
[12:50.640 --> 13:15.280]  From a legal perspective, you know, we viewed the FCC's decision as a huge win for consumers because although it's great to talk about, you know, having sort of this free sidewalks instead of railroads, unfortunately the legal and practical reality we live in right now is that we deregulated for many,
[13:15.360 --> 13:24.200]  many years the way that these private companies work the access component of the Internet.
[13:24.420 --> 13:27.520]  So, you know, you're differentiating between access and content.
[13:27.840 --> 13:30.920]  Access is the only part the Title II applies to versus content.
[13:31.240 --> 13:50.060]  And so it became necessary when you don't have competition and you have these big incumbents like the Comcast and the Time Warner cables of the world, which is now Charter because, of course, we consolidated, you need some kind of cop on the beat to ensure that the incumbents are not starting to creep in and play favorites with the type of content that you access.
[13:50.420 --> 13:59.120]  So prioritizing the ones that they have an interest in or a financial, you know, investment in over the ones that they don't.
[13:59.240 --> 14:09.840]  And that's how you, you know, preserve the values that have underlied all of the types of common carrier communication systems since, you know, the last 200 years.
[14:12.280 --> 14:19.680]  So I'm going to, I'm, as may have become evident, my description of what I do, I'm an infrastructure guy.
[14:19.860 --> 14:24.040]  And I look for interesting, innovative ways to provision infrastructure.
[14:24.240 --> 14:28.100]  So when I think of neutrality, I think of things like the Internet exchanges.
[14:28.360 --> 14:31.500]  In particular, I think of a great example, which is the London Internet Exchange.
[14:31.500 --> 14:37.200]  These guys have enshrined in their institutional fabric the notion of neutrality.
[14:37.320 --> 14:44.780]  They started out with carrier neutrality, where they didn't want to place their interconnection fabric in the facilities of one particular carrier or another.
[14:44.980 --> 15:00.740]  They wanted to ensure that anyone who wanted to interconnect in the London area and later in Britain writ large, that they could, that they could do so, that they could exchange traffic amongst themselves as a community of networks that are, all have a profit motive,
[15:00.740 --> 15:05.460]  but they are working against the large incumbents at the time, the large transit carriers.
[15:05.600 --> 15:09.700]  So you don't have to send your packet all the way across the pond and back just to go up the street in London.
[15:10.560 --> 15:24.520]  That, when we, when we talk about the ethos of where the Internet came from and where this non-discriminatory character came from, I believe that there's a lot of potential for innovation amongst these actors, amongst these, amongst these private actors,
[15:24.920 --> 15:27.980]  that are often vilified as going after just their pure profit.
[15:28.340 --> 15:44.060]  But in many cases, when you, when you go to the network operator conferences, when you go to things like the RER conferences or the Internet exchange providers, they are also speaking directly to how can we improve the infrastructure in our region, be it your local metropolitan region,
[15:44.400 --> 16:02.660]  your sub-region of Western Europe, or parts of Africa, or cabase in Argentina is a fantastic example of an exchange that goes out and gathers villages up and says, hey, let's help you provision infrastructure so that we can both make money doing it, but also expand the,
[16:02.660 --> 16:05.880]  expand the reach of this infrastructure and provide better quality services.
[16:05.880 --> 16:24.280]  So I'm a, I guess when I think of the future of, future of network neutrality, I would like to avoid foreclosing on the potential for private industries innovation that can start to bridge the gap between pure private interest and start serving not only their common good,
[16:24.440 --> 16:28.640]  but also garner some of these collateral public benefits that I've seen these communities create.
[16:28.640 --> 16:30.720]  I just want to comment.
[16:31.000 --> 16:35.800]  Jesse has a good starting point that there's nothing wrong with making profit.
[16:35.960 --> 16:39.160]  It's really a question of how do you align the incentives.
[16:39.640 --> 16:56.160]  And when you have the current model now, which is when we repurposed an infrastructure that was used to deliver television content and phone calls, but left the content providers in control, we have a conflict of interest, an inherent conflict of interest.
[16:56.700 --> 17:10.720]  And I think the way you, sort of an incremental path, in terms of what Kate says, is if you remove that conflict of interest, market forces will actually start to work in the right direction.
[17:10.880 --> 17:22.800]  Because once the companies, and we're going, it's called over the top, but you know, you can now pretty much get anything getting cable TV over IP and Sling.TV is even getting traditional content.
[17:22.800 --> 17:31.900]  Once you've got companies whose only business is carrying packets, it's going to collapse into an inherently neutral infrastructure.
[17:32.400 --> 17:41.160]  And it won't be quite like gas and electricity as a utility, because those costs money to maintain, I mean, electricity costs money to generate, water costs money.
[17:41.800 --> 17:43.860]  Not so much to generate, but to purify.
[17:44.260 --> 17:46.140]  Whereas the Internet is about bits.
[17:46.320 --> 17:47.560]  So we can have a business model.
[17:47.560 --> 17:54.460]  The reason I bring up sidewalks as a metaphor is when we create ourselves, we do our own walks.
[17:54.460 --> 17:55.680]  We create our own content.
[17:56.040 --> 18:00.040]  So you're really discussing how do we pay for copper, radios, fiber.
[18:00.560 --> 18:02.740]  And that is something that we're going to have.
[18:02.860 --> 18:08.220]  That's where the model of passive infrastructure is a better model than utility, because there's nothing to meter.
[18:08.980 --> 18:10.260]  Jeremy, I have a question.
[18:10.260 --> 18:11.020]  May I?
[18:11.260 --> 18:11.840]  Yeah, go ahead.
[18:14.400 --> 18:16.860]  What if net neutrality isn't all that?
[18:19.140 --> 18:23.620]  What if, for example, the major gaps in net neutrality...
[18:23.620 --> 18:24.400]  Not if they were...
[18:24.400 --> 18:25.040]  Let me ask.
[18:25.320 --> 18:26.380]  Are there major gaps...
[18:26.860 --> 18:27.540]  Not if, what if.
[18:27.620 --> 18:32.500]  Are there major gaps in net neutrality that defeat the democratic purpose of net neutrality?
[18:32.680 --> 18:35.260]  For example, we did see this with cell phones, initially.
[18:35.520 --> 18:37.740]  That's been tightened up a little in the recent decision.
[18:37.740 --> 18:38.280]  Can you clarify?
[18:39.160 --> 18:45.600]  That cell phone usage was not heavily covered in the net neutrality, the original net neutrality FCC agreement.
[18:45.620 --> 18:46.740]  You're referring to mobile access?
[18:46.920 --> 18:48.260]  Mobile access, right.
[18:48.500 --> 18:49.080]  The cell phones.
[18:49.240 --> 18:50.840]  Which is what we use.
[18:51.060 --> 18:52.160]  What people of color use.
[18:52.300 --> 18:53.320]  Kids of color, yeah, you know.
[18:53.580 --> 18:57.260]  And I think almost everybody in the whole wide world is using them more and more.
[18:57.520 --> 18:59.380]  Which brings me to the whole wide world.
[19:00.140 --> 19:05.500]  Net neutrality was a decision made by a governing body in the United States of America.
[19:05.500 --> 19:13.520]  The Internet is not, contrary to what some people may think, is not, does not belong to the United States of America.
[19:13.760 --> 19:26.420]  And in a very, very dramatic way, increasingly, other countries, regions, and continents are taking a more and more aggressive role, without necessarily protecting that net neutrality.
[19:26.420 --> 19:29.840]  So is that a problem for us?
[19:29.980 --> 19:33.260]  And if not, then how could it not be a problem?
[19:33.260 --> 19:39.480]  So I think that, just from a legal perspective, we need to keep in mind sort of what the scope of the net neutrality decision was.
[19:41.460 --> 19:46.140]  It specifically applied, and by the way, yes, I agree that it was great that they did apply it to mobile.
[19:46.260 --> 19:55.700]  We pushed really, really hard for that because there were a number of carve-outs in the 2010 order that were not satisfactory from a consumer perspective.
[19:57.420 --> 19:59.900]  And, you know, relating to a lot of the things that Alfredo said.
[20:00.080 --> 20:03.520]  But we need to keep in mind that we're covering access content.
[20:03.520 --> 20:14.040]  The scope of the FCC's authority under Title II, as regulating these as common carriers, really, they don't have the ability to apply that beyond the United States.
[20:14.220 --> 20:23.060]  So even though the Internet is not the property of the United States, they're doing sort of what they can to preserve those values within the scope of their authority.
[20:23.060 --> 20:25.260]  Yeah, I would just make two points.
[20:25.400 --> 20:32.240]  The first is that the comments about the Internet not being the property of the United States are absolutely correct.
[20:32.460 --> 20:47.520]  And literally, as we speak right now, the European telecom regulator is trying to figure out how to implement their candidly problematic net neutrality policy that they approved last spring.
[20:47.520 --> 20:57.600]  And I would encourage everyone, to the extent that you're interested, if you're interested in this issue, get online and kind of get hip to what's going on in Europe, because there are some problems with the European policy.
[20:57.780 --> 20:58.640]  That was my first point.
[20:58.820 --> 20:59.180]  Preach.
[20:59.180 --> 21:20.860]  The second point that I would make, just with respect to capitalism and businesses, is that, you know, I don't think, you know, I think all of us agree that capitalism, you know, is like Winston Churchill said about democracy.
[21:20.860 --> 21:24.900]  It's like it's the least bad form of economic organization.
[21:25.240 --> 21:26.280]  I mean, it's got a lot of problems.
[21:26.660 --> 21:32.420]  But we have a problem in this country, which is a problem of competition or lack thereof.
[21:33.480 --> 21:35.640]  And it's not just in the telecommunications space.
[21:35.780 --> 21:36.560]  It's on Wall Street.
[21:36.700 --> 21:38.240]  It's in the pharmaceutical industry.
[21:39.460 --> 21:41.320]  It's in the airline industry.
[21:41.580 --> 21:43.960]  It's in the, I mean, and on and on and on and on.
[21:44.980 --> 21:51.780]  And so competition is kind of the subtext of all of this discussion.
[21:52.300 --> 21:55.360]  And that's one of the reasons why net neutrality is so important.
[21:55.740 --> 22:12.220]  Because without it, you know, basically, you know, these, a few companies could, you know, basically just turn the, you know, basically turn the Internet into the equivalent of cable TV, right?
[22:12.220 --> 22:16.620]  Where you, you know, you pay for tiers and you pay for different packages and stuff.
[22:18.100 --> 22:29.340]  So, you know, one of the most important things to keep in mind about this discussion is that we have a broader problem of lack of competition across industries in this country that needs to be addressed.
[22:29.340 --> 22:35.340]  And I think next week, if you guys watch the Democratic National Convention, you might see some discussion about this.
[22:37.340 --> 22:44.140]  Because antitrust and competition policy is in the proposed platform for the first time, believe it or not, since 1988.
[22:44.500 --> 22:45.920]  So just keep competition in mind.
[22:46.100 --> 22:46.760]  Thank you, Sam.
[22:47.360 --> 22:49.340]  I'd like to build on that a little bit.
[22:49.440 --> 22:59.280]  And I'd like to kind of throw out the idea of like, when I look at the network operator communities that I've studied, I've had a lot of them mentioned, a lot of the favorite word that they use is coopetition.
[22:59.720 --> 23:05.180]  And I'd like to throw out an example of that, again, using one of the newer Internet exchanges as an example.
[23:05.440 --> 23:14.580]  But also throw that out to see what the panel thinks about this notion of coopetition in the vein of not quite chasing down the evil image of capitalism.
[23:14.580 --> 23:21.200]  So back in about 2008, if I'm remembering my dates correctly, forgive me if I'm wrong because dates are not my thing.
[23:23.240 --> 23:26.640]  Paris, the interconnection scene in Paris was atrocious.
[23:26.800 --> 23:34.200]  There were like 10 or 11 Internet exchanges, many of which were just propped up shells by the local carriers.
[23:34.500 --> 23:37.640]  So Orange and Free and a number of others had the exchanges that were very dysfunctional.
[23:37.640 --> 23:46.780]  They were purely just trying to get people locked into their facilities so that they could garner all the nice rent-seeking aspects of the interconnection business.
[23:47.520 --> 24:02.240]  And what happened was a number of the leadership in the operator community and the RIR community came together and said, they actually sent out a survey to the community and they said, hey, would you guys like to see a rational associational membership,
[24:02.240 --> 24:06.460]  essentially a cooperative style Internet exchange set up in Paris?
[24:06.660 --> 24:09.460]  Would you like it if it were run professionally?
[24:09.660 --> 24:11.960]  And would you actually pay membership fees for it?
[24:12.320 --> 24:14.700]  And the community resoundingly said yes.
[24:15.560 --> 24:26.160]  And the three companies that were driving this forward were Google, Akamai, and Jaguar, and one other company who always jumps out of my head.
[24:26.160 --> 24:34.500]  But you had two international firms, two local French firms coming together to fix a particular market for interconnection.
[24:34.680 --> 24:40.620]  And now what became France IX is now one of the leading Internet exchanges in Europe.
[24:40.740 --> 24:42.860]  And it's a neutral exchange.
[24:42.860 --> 24:47.360]  It is managed, again, by its membership.
[24:47.360 --> 25:00.240]  But to me, that's a fantastic example of private actors creating an innovative, commonly managed firm that essentially fixed the interconnection market in that region.
[25:00.400 --> 25:04.920]  So that is an example of a kind of coopetition that I see the potential for.
[25:05.040 --> 25:11.440]  I see amazing innovation that is somewhere between a cooperative and a commercial firm.
[25:11.440 --> 25:20.760]  You've taken the best elements of both of those to make something that's sufficiently dynamic to keep pace with the evolution of applications and provide the infrastructure necessary to support those.
[25:20.960 --> 25:31.460]  But also have these norms of neutrality that means no singular large incumbent that may be a participant in that firm can take control of it.
[25:31.580 --> 25:34.520]  And I can elaborate on how they did that in their governance documents.
[25:34.520 --> 25:44.200]  But that's an element of coopetition that I think should be encouraged rather than chasing down these kind of...
[25:44.200 --> 25:47.440]  And I'm not accusing you of saying the evil empire of capitalism.
[25:47.620 --> 25:54.840]  But I'd love to hear what the panel has to say about that notion of coopetition and the potential for that within either the U.S. or other regions.
[25:56.260 --> 26:02.340]  Well, I would just say that I'm not a capitalism hater.
[26:02.560 --> 26:03.660]  I'm not a communist.
[26:04.380 --> 26:06.040]  Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[26:07.040 --> 26:08.100]  Look how far we've come.
[26:08.260 --> 26:21.860]  But what I would say is that in order for capitalism to function, markets need to work.
[26:21.860 --> 26:31.960]  And in order for markets to work, there needs to be some sort of effective regulatory authority and regulatory oversight.
[26:32.160 --> 26:36.620]  Okay, I think this is pretty sort of basic tenets of how markets function.
[26:37.440 --> 26:47.660]  The problem with the United States telecom regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, historically has been something that we refer to as regulatory capture.
[26:47.660 --> 26:52.260]  And a revolving door between the agency and private business.
[26:52.680 --> 27:04.140]  Many of you will recall when Meredith Atwell Baxter left the FCC, Baker, excuse me, Baker, and proceeded to go straight to Comcast and become a lobbyist for Comcast.
[27:04.320 --> 27:05.880]  So this is a problem.
[27:07.060 --> 27:08.740]  We're talking about regulatory capture.
[27:08.740 --> 27:11.760]  I would even suggest the term legislative capture.
[27:12.060 --> 27:15.380]  Because you have members, literally, you know, you can call me cynical.
[27:15.820 --> 27:24.500]  But you have members of Congress, you know, and I'm just going to come out and say it, who basically are effectively on the payroll of cable and phone companies.
[27:25.300 --> 27:28.680]  And this gets to problems with our campaign finance system, et cetera.
[27:28.680 --> 27:31.800]  So the only point I'm trying to make is that I'm not trying to hate on capitalism.
[27:32.020 --> 27:35.100]  But in order for capitalism to work, markets need to work.
[27:35.160 --> 27:39.800]  And in order for markets to work, you need an effective and independent regulator.
[27:39.980 --> 27:40.220]  Okay.
[27:40.340 --> 27:54.600]  Let me respond to that because I think the current regulatory system is a product of basically sort of a legacy view of, you know, what telecommunication and the Internet are.
[27:54.600 --> 27:58.920]  That you need regulations when you don't have a good market-based solution.
[27:59.440 --> 28:02.960]  And the reason I believe a solution we could start out in the U.S. will go to the world.
[28:04.960 --> 28:11.340]  Like when we first got divestiture in the U.S., it started here and basically the PT and T's broke up.
[28:12.120 --> 28:18.160]  I want an effective marketplace that removes much of the need for regulation.
[28:18.160 --> 28:19.680]  I'm not saying deregulate.
[28:19.680 --> 28:25.020]  I'm saying address the marketplace dysfunction that leads to regulation.
[28:25.600 --> 28:30.080]  And then marketplace dysfunction is what I said before.
[28:30.300 --> 28:36.520]  Companies in the business of providing content own the facilities that the competition must use.
[28:36.600 --> 28:40.120]  And that's a sort of vertical antitrust or silo.
[28:40.120 --> 28:46.300]  If we said you've either got in the business of using connectivity or a business of...
[28:46.300 --> 28:50.220]  I won't use the word providing when you're being careful of supporting connectivity.
[28:50.560 --> 28:51.740]  Those two are separate.
[28:52.140 --> 28:53.900]  We would then have a marketplace.
[28:53.900 --> 28:57.220]  We get a lot of competition for who best serves a community.
[28:58.080 --> 29:01.300]  Separate for competition who provides the best content.
[29:02.020 --> 29:04.080]  And there will be a strong...
[29:04.080 --> 29:06.880]  Right now we have a system where you make money by scarcity.
[29:07.580 --> 29:10.260]  The less connectivity, the more value there is.
[29:10.380 --> 29:12.540]  Turns out we're going to get gigabits.
[29:12.680 --> 29:16.000]  We could have gotten current fiber infrastructure capacity over copper.
[29:16.260 --> 29:17.500]  There's no need to go to fiber.
[29:17.680 --> 29:20.540]  We did that for regulatory reasons, not for technical reasons.
[29:20.940 --> 29:28.240]  So once you have a functioning marketplace, we're going to see a lot of sort of implicit neutrality.
[29:28.240 --> 29:29.860]  So just one example.
[29:30.060 --> 29:31.300]  Cable companies right now.
[29:31.540 --> 29:41.080]  They can be 100% network neutral and keep 90% of the capacity for their own content just because accidentally doesn't go over IP.
[29:42.940 --> 29:44.780]  So it shouldn't be...
[29:44.780 --> 29:49.020]  So if we have a market basically that functions, we'll need a little regulation, not much.
[29:49.220 --> 29:55.400]  And I think we'll get an incentive, capitalistic incentive, to adopt the approach throughout the world.
[29:55.400 --> 29:58.940]  Yeah, I agree that that's a great utopian vision.
[29:59.260 --> 30:12.360]  But unfortunately, the reality that we're living with right now is that Comcast and Charter, not to put anyone on blast or anything, they basically collude with one another to avoid competing in various marketplaces.
[30:12.360 --> 30:19.540]  So there's a great quote from, you know, when we were working on the Charter Time Warner Cable merger.
[30:22.200 --> 30:27.340]  One of the heads of the companies was asked, what would you do if the Department of Justice weren't looking?
[30:27.500 --> 30:32.160]  And the first answer, what you should say is, well, I'd follow the regulations anyway.
[30:32.280 --> 30:34.660]  What he said was, I would call Comcast.
[30:35.660 --> 30:39.820]  I mean, that's the kind of anti-competitive situation we're dealing with.
[30:39.820 --> 30:44.220]  And maybe it's because I'm a native Washingtonian, and so I'm born cynical.
[30:44.700 --> 31:04.040]  But I think that, you know, until we get to a situation where you're not dealing with that in sort of every system the way that Sam described it, then you need someone like the FCC to step in and say, okay, you guys are common carriers, and we're going to be the cop on the beat until you start figuring out how to actually compete with one another.
[31:04.040 --> 31:06.960]  I just want to say, okay, this is a hackers conference.
[31:07.840 --> 31:12.120]  That, you know, you use the word utopian as if we're helpless.
[31:12.800 --> 31:15.620]  And as hackers, you can do this.
[31:15.780 --> 31:17.860]  You can bankrupt these companies.
[31:18.520 --> 31:26.940]  Comcast knows it's coming, which is why it bought NBC Universal and keeps a legacy cable business as long as we accept that.
[31:27.620 --> 31:36.000]  Now, one thing I did when I was at Microsoft in the 1990s, you were going to have to pay for each PC you had, just like you paid for each phone line.
[31:36.140 --> 31:39.020]  If you want an IP printer, you'd have to pay for that.
[31:39.860 --> 31:41.680]  So that was the way the market worked.
[31:41.900 --> 31:46.600]  As a hacker, I put the net, when I was at Microsoft, I put what we call the home router now.
[31:46.600 --> 31:50.780]  I put the net between the phone companies or the providers and the house.
[31:51.080 --> 31:54.560]  And suddenly, they could no longer charge you for each service.
[31:55.000 --> 31:59.440]  And as a direct result, AT&T, you happen to say, is not AT&T.
[31:59.560 --> 32:01.960]  The AT&T of those days went bankrupt.
[32:02.120 --> 32:04.660]  And today's AT&T is SBC.
[32:05.120 --> 32:10.800]  And this is in the spirit that gave us the Internet, interconnecting locally owned facilities.
[32:10.800 --> 32:15.260]  Yes, we did a make-buy decision to buy a tunnel through these carriers.
[32:17.000 --> 32:18.380]  But instead of...
[32:18.380 --> 32:23.200]  In other words, if you've got a pipe, a consumer service, you're sharing that with 100 people.
[32:23.420 --> 32:25.880]  They'll say you have, you know, 50 megabit service.
[32:26.160 --> 32:28.360]  Well, you and your friends are sharing the same pipe.
[32:28.560 --> 32:37.080]  But if you and your friends got together and you pooled your resources to buy that pipe, then they would not be getting the 98% profit anymore.
[32:37.080 --> 32:46.680]  And if you start the edge, you start an inexorable market process, the same one that bankrupted AT&T, despite the protection of the FCC, you will get change.
[32:46.920 --> 32:47.940]  This is not utopian.
[32:48.100 --> 32:48.780]  It's very pragmatic.
[32:49.200 --> 32:50.060]  Thank you, Bob.
[32:50.280 --> 32:51.720]  I'll ask you the same question.
[32:51.820 --> 32:53.680]  I'll ask you the same question I ask you outside.
[32:53.960 --> 33:04.760]  I mean, I have a very, very strong belief in the ability for people to invest their intellectual capacity in doing all kinds of fabulous things.
[33:04.760 --> 33:06.500]  You see the makers' communities.
[33:06.540 --> 33:11.500]  You see all these amazing things that emerge when people have the information and knowledge to do something.
[33:11.680 --> 33:24.000]  But maintaining an infrastructure of the caliber of the Internet and at the speed of innovation of the Internet, I just have to ask, how are these communities going to do that?
[33:24.100 --> 33:28.980]  I mean, most of these communities don't have the knowledge base or the capacity to build that kind of stuff and to manage it.
[33:28.980 --> 33:34.020]  And so what would you... how do you plan on paying for that?
[33:34.200 --> 33:35.440]  I mean, how do you plan on maintaining it?
[33:35.660 --> 33:37.980]  I would say that one option...
[33:38.640 --> 33:39.220]  Sorry, go ahead.
[33:39.620 --> 33:42.800]  I was going to say, how many... I can't see hands here.
[33:43.040 --> 33:46.280]  How many of you can maintain the sewer systems in your community?
[33:46.280 --> 33:47.580]  You can't see hands.
[33:47.800 --> 33:48.620]  So why you ask the question?
[33:48.740 --> 33:50.400]  I'm going to just give a close applause or something?
[33:50.940 --> 33:51.320]  I'm...
[33:51.320 --> 33:51.980]  Applause for sewers?
[33:52.300 --> 33:53.560]  That is utopian shit.
[33:53.560 --> 33:54.480]  I'm allowed to ask...
[33:54.480 --> 33:54.800]  No.
[33:55.060 --> 33:57.040]  I can imagine the results.
[33:57.360 --> 33:58.520]  Raise your glowing devices.
[33:58.700 --> 33:58.860]  Right.
[33:59.420 --> 33:59.800]  Yes.
[34:00.280 --> 34:00.700]  Raise your...
[34:01.280 --> 34:02.900]  Raise your portable flashlights.
[34:04.120 --> 34:05.340]  I'm guessing the answer is not many.
[34:05.420 --> 34:05.740]  No.
[34:05.880 --> 34:07.160]  I don't respect any of you.
[34:07.220 --> 34:11.220]  A friend of mine was a sewer commissioner in Trumansburg, New York.
[34:11.820 --> 34:12.820]  Doesn't have anything about sewers.
[34:12.820 --> 34:13.980]  But you can hire people to do it.
[34:14.100 --> 34:15.500]  He also runs my zone file.
[34:15.880 --> 34:17.140]  And that he knows how to do.
[34:19.540 --> 34:21.260]  So, basically, you can hire people to do it.
[34:21.320 --> 34:25.840]  But I ran to the same thing in 1995, when he said, people are going to run their own home networks.
[34:26.500 --> 34:27.680]  They're told, it's impossible.
[34:27.880 --> 34:28.800]  It's too complicated.
[34:29.060 --> 34:30.600]  I just removed what's complicated.
[34:30.880 --> 34:35.680]  And if you hire people, it's a combination of, first, make it simpler, but also hiring people.
[34:36.060 --> 34:39.020]  How many people here would love a job maintaining community network?
[34:39.240 --> 34:40.480]  So you hire those people.
[34:40.660 --> 34:42.720]  That I would actually like to see some glowing device responses.
[34:43.820 --> 34:44.260]  for?
[34:44.360 --> 34:45.360]  You know, it's a job.
[34:45.540 --> 34:46.120]  It's for you people.
[34:47.240 --> 34:47.680]  Okay.
[34:48.020 --> 34:53.380]  In any case, what I'm saying is, yeah, you hire people to do sidewalks, which are complicated, so it's all these systems.
[34:53.540 --> 34:54.400]  That's not a problem.
[34:55.160 --> 34:58.920]  What's missing is an understanding that there's...
[34:58.920 --> 35:01.600]  First, physically, there's no intent, but the technique is easy.
[35:01.940 --> 35:05.360]  That once you understand how to do it, you're empowered.
[35:05.360 --> 35:08.740]  You don't have to recycle a phone company.
[35:08.960 --> 35:16.160]  And remember, the danger in getting a recycled phone company providing the Internet today, is they do not know how to operate it.
[35:16.460 --> 35:18.480]  I know how many of you know about buffer bloat?
[35:18.880 --> 35:25.880]  That's because you let phone engineers design an Internet work, and they basically make some fundamental errors.
[35:27.200 --> 35:33.940]  So, definitely, you can hire people locally, start in your community, and you don't have to run a fiber across the country.
[35:34.080 --> 35:36.180]  You buy it from an existing provider.
[35:36.440 --> 35:49.360]  And because you have bargaining power, you will basically drive them further and further away, and eventually, an infrastructure model take over, simply because, in a capitalistic sense, it's far more cost-effective.
[35:49.720 --> 36:05.660]  You just have to make sure that you rely on the profit to support and maintaining infrastructure, rather than profit coming from rent, seeking rent, basically limiting people's ability to communicate, and profit coming from having an advantage in owning the wires for selling content.
[36:05.880 --> 36:17.780]  So, I have a question for Bob, which is, let's say, a municipality, or a community, town, city, wanted to build its own municipal network.
[36:18.540 --> 36:23.320]  But, unfortunately, there's a state law that prohibits the town from doing so.
[36:23.500 --> 36:24.720]  What do you do then?
[36:24.900 --> 36:26.700]  Okay, there are a couple of answers.
[36:27.340 --> 36:32.700]  One thing is, you take the long view, and as a guerrilla, you go where you can get the job done.
[36:32.840 --> 36:33.780]  And Google did this.
[36:33.940 --> 36:40.020]  Google chose Kansas City because it was the least regulatory problems they'd run into.
[36:40.020 --> 36:44.060]  That was a primary reason for choosing Kansas City for Google Fiber.
[36:44.160 --> 36:47.220]  Okay, I'm not talking about a company like Google.
[36:47.340 --> 36:48.120]  I'm talking about a municipality.
[36:48.460 --> 36:48.980]  No, let me...
[36:48.980 --> 36:49.200]  Okay.
[36:49.320 --> 36:50.100]  So, that was an example.
[36:50.300 --> 36:50.700]  Okay.
[36:50.700 --> 36:53.880]  So, you need to find...so, one thing is you need to find examples.
[36:54.040 --> 37:00.460]  In other words, and this is also why I'm starting the private sector, the apartment house, and things like that, where I could have the most influence.
[37:00.460 --> 37:02.860]  So, sometimes patience is the answer.
[37:03.060 --> 37:12.460]  Now, there's a legal question, which is, if a city put in fiber but did not provide services, they're not doing telecommunications.
[37:13.320 --> 37:13.840]  So...
[37:13.840 --> 37:14.400]  So...
[37:14.400 --> 37:15.080]  So...
[37:15.080 --> 37:26.620]  Right now, we have a legal problem, one that Sam just alluded to, that is actually ongoing, which is, you want municipal broadband, two cities, Chattanooga and the other one...
[37:26.620 --> 37:26.940]  Wilson.
[37:26.940 --> 37:27.360]  Is eluding me.
[37:27.480 --> 37:27.860]  Wilson, yeah.
[37:28.100 --> 37:28.860]  Wilson, North Carolina.
[37:29.020 --> 37:29.140]  Yes.
[37:29.300 --> 37:31.180]  Tried to build municipal broadband.
[37:31.360 --> 37:45.480]  They were preempted, and there's now an ongoing lawsuit preventing these cities from trying to build their own broadband network, specifically because of the fact that AT&T went and lobbied the state legislatures to put in a whole bunch of secret laws so that they couldn't build these out.
[37:46.300 --> 37:46.780]  Yeah.
[37:46.920 --> 37:47.980]  And it's actually more than that.
[37:48.080 --> 37:52.860]  How many of you guys are familiar with something called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, right?
[37:53.240 --> 37:53.480]  No.
[37:53.560 --> 37:53.700]  Right.
[37:54.020 --> 37:54.460]  Which is...
[37:55.580 --> 38:04.640]  It's basically an incubator for essentially Koch-backed state laws across the country, oftentimes at the behest of industries.
[38:04.640 --> 38:15.040]  In this particular case, the telecommunications industry, where they just went state by state by state by state and rammed through these laws, and I think, what, it's about 25 states now?
[38:15.040 --> 38:15.840]  It's...
[38:15.840 --> 38:16.500]  That's a pre...
[38:16.840 --> 38:17.920]  Let's keep it network focused.
[38:18.340 --> 38:18.700]  Sorry.
[38:19.300 --> 38:19.600]  Well...
[38:19.600 --> 38:27.600]  But anyway, the point is, so for those municipalities that want to do what Bob is talking about, unfortunately, there are non-trivial legal barriers to doing that.
[38:28.080 --> 38:29.500]  But that's what a struggle is.
[38:29.540 --> 38:30.440]  Call your congressman.
[38:31.160 --> 38:31.240]  But...
[38:31.240 --> 38:31.680]  Wait, just want to say...
[38:31.680 --> 38:32.860]  That's what a struggle is.
[38:33.040 --> 38:33.080]  Yes.
[38:33.080 --> 38:36.000]  You look at the gay marriage issue...
[38:36.000 --> 38:39.460]  Look at bilingualism, my ability to speak Spanish in a school.
[38:39.800 --> 38:40.960]  We had to fight for that.
[38:41.160 --> 38:41.980]  You fight for it.
[38:42.040 --> 38:42.100]  Right.
[38:42.100 --> 38:43.800]  Because it's an oppressive society.
[38:44.040 --> 38:44.420]  Right.
[38:44.660 --> 38:45.060]  But...
[38:45.060 --> 38:46.720]  I mean, that's what the situation is.
[38:46.780 --> 38:47.500]  Excuse me for one thing.
[38:47.920 --> 38:48.360]  Let me just...
[38:48.360 --> 38:51.400]  Let me just background this so that people don't say you're talking too much.
[38:52.380 --> 38:52.780]  The...
[38:52.780 --> 38:53.480]  And then you can...
[38:53.940 --> 38:54.960]  Okay, talk a lot.
[38:55.120 --> 38:55.540]  No, no, no.
[38:55.560 --> 38:56.240]  Talk a lot, yeah.
[38:56.480 --> 38:59.220]  But you can come in when I just say something.
[38:59.960 --> 39:03.880]  You know, you can't talk about net neutrality as a cure to anything.
[39:03.880 --> 39:05.120]  That's what I mean.
[39:05.280 --> 39:06.260]  Because it's not worldwide.
[39:07.220 --> 39:08.480]  The Internet is worldwide.
[39:08.720 --> 39:09.780]  Neutrality is not.
[39:10.220 --> 39:15.880]  What it is fundamentally is a possible model for how to arrange communication.
[39:16.660 --> 39:21.040]  And that model can be enacted in a bunch of different ways.
[39:21.740 --> 39:22.340]  Including...
[39:22.340 --> 39:32.680]  Some people are insisting that capitalism, a system that I think basically became outmoded about 20 years ago, is still a vibrant system that you could talk about, etc.
[39:33.000 --> 39:34.620]  I'm not going to get into any of that.
[39:34.740 --> 39:41.200]  What I'm going to say is that there are many models, including what you're talking about, that stem from net neutrality.
[39:41.380 --> 39:43.120]  But you've got to act on them.
[39:43.260 --> 39:44.720]  And you've got to continue struggling.
[39:45.100 --> 39:48.980]  You can't just sit down and then log on and say, oh, wow, we won this.
[39:49.160 --> 39:50.320]  Because you ain't won nothing.
[39:51.080 --> 39:55.520]  We won FCC decision in one country of an entire world.
[39:55.800 --> 40:01.260]  And that FCC decision is not applicable, as you're saying, to the localities.
[40:01.740 --> 40:09.460]  So, of course, AT&T, that's what they hire all their people for, to go behind your back and to mess up the gains that you made.
[40:09.640 --> 40:10.620]  So you've got to fight.
[40:10.940 --> 40:14.460]  And, you know, that's what we continue to say.
[40:14.880 --> 40:19.640]  You know, you have to build a movement that defends this stuff.
[40:20.080 --> 40:22.500]  Otherwise, hacking is not going to mean anything.
[40:22.500 --> 40:23.640]  It's going to be a hobby.
[40:24.140 --> 40:25.520]  You've got to build a movement.
[40:25.680 --> 40:25.920]  Go ahead.
[40:26.120 --> 40:26.440]  Okay.
[40:26.740 --> 40:32.480]  I agree a lot, except that you could also use hacking as a tool.
[40:32.680 --> 40:33.200]  Oh, sure.
[40:33.200 --> 40:36.920]  That, you know, one example of the negative example of yours is Utah.
[40:37.520 --> 40:40.640]  Utah had a thing called utopia, which wanted to be more of infrastructure.
[40:41.580 --> 40:44.340]  And basically, they were resisted by the legislature.
[40:44.460 --> 40:45.260]  But there were two problems they had.
[40:45.500 --> 40:46.760]  One, these kind of laws.
[40:47.180 --> 40:55.280]  But the other problem is you had people put it, you know, who forced it into the mold of, quote, broadband.
[40:55.500 --> 40:59.960]  Broadband is a business model for owning a pipe and selling services on it.
[40:59.960 --> 41:01.120]  So that was the residence gateway.
[41:01.920 --> 41:03.540]  So you've got two battles.
[41:03.680 --> 41:06.880]  You've got one of legislation, which says you can't compete on broadband.
[41:07.100 --> 41:11.400]  But the other thing is the framing your infrastructure in terms of old broadband.
[41:12.020 --> 41:21.400]  So one of the...so, you know, so the gay marriage thing, as an example, if you work nationally, you can, you know, the end runs around the local community, but it takes time.
[41:21.560 --> 41:22.500]  You've got...it's a long game.
[41:22.500 --> 41:30.660]  But the other thing...the question is if you don't model your infrastructure as broadband, but you say Stockholm, you're just putting...I'm putting passive fiber in the streets.
[41:30.800 --> 41:31.600]  I'm not doing anything.
[41:31.700 --> 41:32.840]  Not saying how it's lit up.
[41:33.260 --> 41:35.820]  And then you can allow other people to light it up.
[41:35.960 --> 41:38.320]  Are there creative other ways to work around it?
[41:38.500 --> 41:46.520]  Because trying to educate legislatures on these issues is expensive, which is why the people who teach them are the people with the most money.
[41:46.520 --> 41:51.220]  So you need more guerrilla workarounds to redefine the problem, to set examples.
[41:51.600 --> 42:00.640]  And I think most important to remove the economic benefit of owning the facilities, which is why I mentioned the example of the simple thing, a NAT.
[42:01.300 --> 42:10.200]  The Network Address Translator essentially, I argue, is what bankrupted AT&T, because their business was monetizing services.
[42:10.560 --> 42:13.140]  Once all they saw packets, that went away.
[42:13.580 --> 42:20.640]  And if you have multiple pipes in the cities and you separate the content from the bits, the profit goes away.
[42:21.020 --> 42:21.380]  Great.
[42:21.640 --> 42:22.480]  I'm going to cut in here.
[42:22.760 --> 42:29.600]  I'm going to ask the panelists one last question, but I'd also encourage the audience members to start lining up at the mic for your own questions.
[42:29.780 --> 42:30.900]  Just don't trip over anything.
[42:32.420 --> 42:32.780]  So...
[42:32.780 --> 42:33.600]  Can we give them light?
[42:34.620 --> 42:34.980]  Certainly.
[42:35.100 --> 42:37.720]  Can we turn up the lights a little bit so that the panelists can see them?
[42:39.480 --> 42:39.840]  Great.
[42:40.380 --> 42:46.140]  So one last question, and then we're going to get to the audience, which is I've been hearing a lot of clear themes from all of you here.
[42:46.440 --> 42:51.500]  Namely, it sounds like there's an inherent sort of conflict of interest.
[42:51.680 --> 42:56.280]  That's what I'm hearing a lot in terms of whose interests are at stake and which ones are sort of driving the bus here.
[42:57.600 --> 43:02.240]  Before we go forward, I'm going to take a minute to go backwards, which is sort of the question, how did we get here?
[43:02.240 --> 43:09.840]  You know, when the network, when the Internet was first created or whatever, when the network or device was first created, it was in the hands of governments and academics.
[43:10.280 --> 43:12.640]  And, you know, it was definitely an inclusive model.
[43:12.940 --> 43:17.520]  What sort of translate... what happened to get us to this point where...
[43:17.520 --> 43:20.240]  And sort of where do you think... what were the key moments of that?
[43:20.440 --> 43:23.180]  And that's going to sort of help us suggest where we need to go in the future.
[43:25.400 --> 43:33.140]  I mean, this is a very long thing, so let me give you the short version, is that we use words like telecommunications and all these things.
[43:33.280 --> 43:34.280]  We fit things into old models.
[43:34.400 --> 43:34.920]  That's normal.
[43:35.860 --> 43:39.340]  So we accept... we basically fit the...
[43:39.340 --> 43:43.340]  We use words like access and everything to make it look like a time shrink system.
[43:43.520 --> 43:45.020]  It's another version of AOL.
[43:45.160 --> 43:46.460]  It's another television channel.
[43:47.580 --> 43:49.780]  And, you know, we look at the content.
[43:49.900 --> 43:50.520]  We look at the web.
[43:50.520 --> 43:52.380]  So we have a lot of confusion.
[43:53.200 --> 44:00.100]  And, you know, back when I was a kid and we were first doing this, you know, it was just totally apart from it.
[44:00.100 --> 44:01.320]  You had the academic things.
[44:01.540 --> 44:03.960]  And, basically, things got lost in translation.
[44:04.300 --> 44:07.360]  I mean, that... if you want a long answer, I can give it, but that's bad.
[44:07.640 --> 44:07.920]  Okay.
[44:10.060 --> 44:14.280]  I would say, you know, again, so I come at it from a legal perspective.
[44:14.280 --> 44:20.220]  There was a vast sort of deregulatory pro company...
[44:21.560 --> 44:25.280]  Not movement, but evolution over the course of...
[44:25.940 --> 44:29.100]  I would... conservatively, I would say, 20 years since the 96 Act.
[44:29.240 --> 44:32.020]  But, really, it was more since the Computer 1 and Computer 2 decisions.
[44:33.180 --> 44:52.220]  Where you had this sort of increasing consolidation into the hands of a few private companies that was just sort of enabled by an administration that was very pro company and didn't really take into account the implications of the fact that the network was supposed to really belong to all of us.
[44:52.360 --> 45:07.360]  Yeah, I mean, I would just say that... and we should get to questions, but, really, the origins of corporate consolidation actually go back to the 70s and Robert Bork and the so-called Chicago School of Antitrust Policy when, basically, this philosophy of antitrust policy said,
[45:07.420 --> 45:14.340]  you know, we should only enforce antitrust laws in a kind of econometric...
[45:14.340 --> 45:16.340]  with an econometric rationale.
[45:16.860 --> 45:26.000]  And that laid the foundation for the deregulation that started in the 1980s and that is what sort of brought us to where we are, to the unfortunate place that we are right now.
[45:27.760 --> 45:28.720]  All right.
[45:29.220 --> 45:31.220]  Sounds like it's time for audience questions.
[45:31.220 --> 45:33.440]  So, in the interest of time...
[45:33.440 --> 45:35.160]  Yeah, we'll keep our answers short.
[45:35.520 --> 45:36.000]  Please?
[45:36.580 --> 45:37.160]  If we can.
[45:37.420 --> 45:37.920]  If we can.
[45:38.040 --> 45:38.540]  Yes or no.
[45:39.160 --> 45:41.220]  With some element of virtue or...
[45:42.300 --> 45:43.360]  Okay, it's on now.
[45:46.140 --> 45:48.720]  Okay, so I want to ask about the practice of zero rating.
[45:49.040 --> 45:53.300]  Zero rating is the practice for ISPs that are essentially charging by the bit.
[45:53.440 --> 46:02.040]  Zero rating is cutting agreements with certain service providers and excluding them from the per-bit charges.
[46:03.220 --> 46:16.440]  And so, I guess my question is getting back to the zero rating itself, whether that should be split off from the rest of the net neutrality debate or whether it should be part of it.
[46:16.500 --> 46:24.640]  I mean, we've had situations where, in the past, in the past an ISP that was providing VOIP services was blocking...
[46:24.640 --> 46:24.680]  Okay, thank you.
[46:24.740 --> 46:26.340]  I think we get the concept.
[46:26.600 --> 46:26.820]  Thank you.
[46:26.820 --> 46:29.420]  You know, I'll take a crack at zero rating.
[46:29.560 --> 46:37.780]  Zero rating is... a lot of people think it's the kind of crucial battle that we're fighting right now in the FCC's open Internet order.
[46:38.480 --> 46:41.240]  Is everyone familiar with what zero rating is for the most part?
[46:41.340 --> 46:47.840]  Zero rating is when your wireless company exempts a certain service from data caps, right?
[46:47.840 --> 46:53.480]  So, the FCC is taking a case-by-case approach to zero rating.
[46:53.720 --> 47:01.980]  But the problem with zero rating is that it creates an economic incentive for consumers to choose a particular service over another service.
[47:01.980 --> 47:08.520]  And that has the result of creating the kind of discriminatory environment that the open Internet rules were designed to prevent.
[47:08.520 --> 47:16.140]  So, you know, it's an ongoing investigation right now at the FCC.
[47:16.480 --> 47:17.760]  We'll see how it plays out.
[47:17.860 --> 47:24.560]  But there are a lot of people who believe that the FCC should take a more proactive and aggressive stance to crack down on this practice.
[47:24.560 --> 47:29.920]  Because, again, it could create the kind of discriminatory environment that the rules were designed to prevent.
[47:29.920 --> 47:42.100]  I would say, just to jump on Sam's point, you also have certain cases, certain business practices that basically underlie zero rating that are more problematic than others.
[47:43.300 --> 48:04.380]  So, for example, we filed a complaint, Public Knowledge did, on Comcast's Stream TV, which is not zero rating per se, but they were basically creating false scarcity in the network, and then exempting their own services, thereby incentivizing the consumers to use those.
[48:04.500 --> 48:12.420]  So those are the types of really problematic practices that you're starting to see that kind of circumvent net neutrality without necessarily running specifically afoul of the rule.
[48:12.580 --> 48:13.720]  Well, we have five minutes left.
[48:13.840 --> 48:14.380]  Yeah, we got to...
[48:14.380 --> 48:16.380]  Just one very brief thing on zero rating.
[48:17.180 --> 48:22.460]  There's no difference between zero rating, in my mind, and cable content, just because it goes over IP.
[48:22.780 --> 48:25.020]  So why fight that battle versus the larger...
[48:25.020 --> 48:27.160]  It's really important that these people ask these questions.
[48:27.380 --> 48:29.460]  By the way, all you ain't gonna be able to ask them.
[48:29.460 --> 48:29.920]  Yes, next.
[48:30.340 --> 48:30.620]  Hi.
[48:31.140 --> 48:35.560]  I'm an activist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to bring municipal broadband to the city.
[48:35.740 --> 48:38.040]  And we're sort of best case in that we don't...
[48:38.040 --> 48:41.360]  Massachusetts law is liberal and explicitly let cities do this.
[48:42.060 --> 48:44.380]  We have a ridiculous amount of money.
[48:44.600 --> 48:49.680]  We have a receptive city government, and a population that wants to do it.
[48:50.520 --> 48:58.800]  I'm with, you know, Bob on the dark fiber and compete on the level, but the most powerful argument we're getting against this is 5G.
[48:59.020 --> 49:00.320]  Talk to me afterwards.
[49:00.540 --> 49:00.800]  Okay.
[49:01.480 --> 49:06.460]  You know, we don't have to do any of this because 5G is coming, which...
[49:10.260 --> 49:10.860]  Okay.
[49:11.400 --> 49:12.780]  Do you have a question?
[49:13.220 --> 49:13.540]  Yes.
[49:14.020 --> 49:15.340]  What's the counter argument?
[49:15.340 --> 49:17.260]  And also, you have better...
[49:18.060 --> 49:20.820]  What should I be watching for to keep this network neutral?
[49:22.620 --> 49:23.540]  Again, this is a long thing.
[49:23.680 --> 49:28.200]  5G, basically, the telco is just trying to keep the business model alive past the point of death.
[49:29.480 --> 49:29.860]  Yeah.
[49:30.000 --> 49:35.020]  I mean, I don't know who's making that argument, but 5G is not even gonna be here until, you know...
[49:35.020 --> 49:35.800]  It's not gonna be here.
[49:36.000 --> 49:37.420]  Like, for four years.
[49:37.600 --> 49:43.380]  So, you know, as we often say, wireless is not a substitute for wired access.
[49:43.380 --> 49:44.740]  That's what I would say.
[49:45.320 --> 49:46.100]  Thank you.
[49:48.940 --> 49:50.060]  You were...
[49:50.060 --> 49:57.440]  When you're talking about capitalist solutions, there are two things that I really didn't understand about what you were saying.
[49:57.840 --> 50:04.700]  First, it seemed like you had this idea that people could pull together and buy pipes.
[50:06.780 --> 50:08.220]  And it seems like...
[50:08.220 --> 50:09.740]  Is this a question just for Bob or for the entire panel?
[50:10.820 --> 50:13.320]  I'll go to my second part, which is more to the entire panel.
[50:14.540 --> 50:14.940]  Okay.
[50:14.940 --> 50:17.460]  One of the prerequisites for capitalism is that you have a free market.
[50:17.580 --> 50:24.440]  And one of the prerequisites of a free market is that competitors can easily enter and exit the market.
[50:24.440 --> 50:43.480]  With infrastructure, this is physically impossible for a lot of reasons, ranging from we don't want 3,000 fiber wires going through our cities with constant road work tearing them up or putting them on poles, to the fact that they are expensive to put in.
[50:44.460 --> 50:52.520]  So when you advocate a free market solution and the market you're talking about literally cannot be free, how does that work?
[50:52.720 --> 50:56.880]  Well, we don't need a lot of fiber, you know, multiple fiber lines.
[50:57.000 --> 51:01.520]  First of all, everyone should support dig once policies, where you dig the street up once, you lay the fiber.
[51:01.520 --> 51:13.280]  And then maybe let's think about a wholesale model, where the fiber is, you know, essentially sold off or leased on a wholesale basis to, you know, market entrance.
[51:13.280 --> 51:15.500]  It's not owned by the cable company anymore.
[51:15.600 --> 51:17.560]  The quick thing is we don't have competing sidewalks.
[51:18.100 --> 51:20.680]  We have a way of getting competition from providing sidewalks.
[51:20.680 --> 51:20.940]  Okay.
[51:21.340 --> 51:22.520]  We've got two minutes left, so...
[51:23.100 --> 51:23.460]  Great.
[51:23.520 --> 51:24.340]  I'll make this really quick.
[51:24.340 --> 51:32.940]  In 10 seconds or less per person, please tell me what you think is the most hopeful and the most scary outcome of the way things are going on their current trajectory.
[51:33.020 --> 51:34.200]  Most hopeful and most scary.
[51:34.480 --> 51:35.920]  On the trajectory of what?
[51:36.020 --> 51:36.820]  Net neutrality?
[51:37.660 --> 51:37.680]  Yeah.
[51:37.920 --> 51:39.260]  Hackers will discover the power.
[51:39.460 --> 51:40.940]  Hackers will discover the power.
[51:42.060 --> 51:42.420]  Yeah.
[51:42.780 --> 51:43.600]  Of what they can do themselves.
[51:43.980 --> 51:44.460]  Propos.
[51:45.360 --> 51:45.580]  What?
[51:46.380 --> 51:57.580]  Most hopeful is that we have had a chairman and a commission over the last several years that has actually finally increased competition and preserved the net neutrality.
[51:59.360 --> 52:07.240]  Most hopeful is the involvement of people of color in the net neutrality struggle, the first time they've been involved in an FCC struggle.
[52:08.020 --> 52:16.700]  And the scariest is we ain't got net neutrality internationally, and they keep coming at us in all different kinds of ways, so...
[52:16.700 --> 52:26.620]  I guess if I were to say the most hopeful, I've kind of already said it, is that private actors can recognize that the public good is in their benefit and is in their economic interest.
[52:27.000 --> 52:41.320]  The scariest thing is Title II becoming one of the instances where the FCC decides to stop forbearing and start to really exercising the broad arsenal of mechanisms it has at its disposal but has chosen to forbear on.
[52:41.760 --> 52:43.180]  All right, we've got two questions left.
[52:44.160 --> 52:45.140]  Mr. Frankston, hi.
[52:45.620 --> 52:45.740]  Yeah, man.
[52:45.740 --> 52:47.480]  If this is just for him, I might ask to do it afterwards.
[52:47.760 --> 52:48.300]  Okay, that's fine.
[52:48.720 --> 52:55.380]  I guess we could discuss around the Comcast NBC Universal statement you said in regards to the content, why it's pro or con.
[52:56.200 --> 53:00.020]  I'm just saying the fact that they separate the two businesses out and the...
[53:00.020 --> 53:00.200]  That's zero.
[53:00.360 --> 53:00.800]  You see that statement?
[53:01.260 --> 53:01.540]  All right.
[53:01.960 --> 53:03.100]  Can we let this last person go?
[53:03.420 --> 53:03.600]  Zero.
[53:03.600 --> 53:03.920]  Yes.
[53:04.200 --> 53:14.900]  For all of you, do you think that preventing vertical integration more aggressively could help solve some of these problems with...
[53:14.900 --> 53:21.940]  On multiple levels of the content creation, the content distribution, and the hardware?
[53:22.540 --> 53:30.220]  Whereas, like, say, Google owns both YouTube and YouTube's CDN, so they can control both the search results...
[53:30.220 --> 53:30.240]  Yes.
[53:30.240 --> 53:31.480]  Yeah, the short answer is yes.
[53:31.740 --> 53:42.800]  And I think you're going to see in the next administration, depending on which political party is in the house, you're going to see more enforcement on vertical antitrust issues, for sure.
[53:43.760 --> 53:44.220]  God willing.
[53:44.400 --> 53:45.560]  Let's have a round for our panelists.
[53:48.020 --> 53:49.180]  We can talk about this.
[53:50.560 --> 53:51.220]  Go ahead.
[53:51.760 --> 53:54.840]  We can stick around maybe for the next five minutes or so in the back.
[53:56.460 --> 53:57.820]  Who is the Budapest Room?
[54:06.490 --> 54:09.150]  Speakers, the Budapest Room is available as well.
[54:09.150 --> 54:12.150]  Well, sixth floor for a continued discussion post-talk.