Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are here? So several years ago, during the Trump administration
Speaker 1: here in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,
Speaker 1: held a vote to repeal an earlier set of rules
Speaker 1: called the Open Internet Order. The board of the FCC,
Speaker 1: made up of five appointees, voted three to two to
Speaker 1: repeal those rules, despite the fact that there were concerns
Speaker 1: there was hanky panky going on when the FCC sought
Speaker 1: out public opinion on the matter. Currently, the Attorney General
Speaker 1: for the state of New York is composing fines on
Speaker 1: several companies found to have been guilty of essentially stuffing
Speaker 1: the ballot boxes. As it were, These companies apparently impersonated
Speaker 1: more than a million US citizens posting fake comments to
Speaker 1: the FCC that were in favor of the repeal of
Speaker 1: these rules. Considering that the FCC justified its vote on
Speaker 1: the matter at least partly and it being a reflection
Speaker 1: of the will of the people, this is bad and hey,
Speaker 1: if you have to rig a system in order to win.
Speaker 1: Then by definition, you're really a loser. So I thought
Speaker 1: maybe we'd look back on what net neutrality is. What
Speaker 1: is that concept? Why is there a debate about net neutrality?
Speaker 1: Because there is, And while I am firmly in the
Speaker 1: net neutrality camp, I acknowledge there are points being made
Speaker 1: by people who are against net neutrality that you can't
Speaker 1: just wave off. There are some valid points on the
Speaker 1: other side. But what do the difference have to say
Speaker 1: about net neutrality? Why is it tricky for the FCC
Speaker 1: to enforce net neutrality? And how does the presence or
Speaker 1: absence of net neutrality affect people like you and me? Now,
Speaker 1: when I say you and me, I mainly mean people
Speaker 1: here in the United States for this specific case, but
Speaker 1: there are other places where this is an issue too.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there are places in the world where
Speaker 1: the government takes a much more active role in what
Speaker 1: people can or cannot access on the internet. Here in
Speaker 1: the US, Ideally you're supposed to be able to access
Speaker 1: pretty much anything, but that's not necessarily how it turns out.
Speaker 1: So first, let's define net neutrality. When you boil it down,
Speaker 1: net neutrality is all about treating the ones and zeros
Speaker 1: that are zipping across the Internet as if they're all
Speaker 1: the same, which, by the way, some of the founders
Speaker 1: of the or you know, people who created the protocols
Speaker 1: of the Internet, say was never their intent. Vince Surf
Speaker 1: and Bob conn have both said that they never intended
Speaker 1: for all packets to necessarily be treated the same when
Speaker 1: they were building out TCPIP protocols, which is interesting. Net
Speaker 1: neutrality means that the various entities that own the infrastructure
Speaker 1: or the pipes if you are a series of tubes,
Speaker 1: if you like. If we're going to go way back
Speaker 1: into the analogies of the Internet anyway, net neutrality says
Speaker 1: that the companies that own that infrastructure should allow traffic
Speaker 1: to flow through those pipes no matter where that traffic
Speaker 1: originated from. So there should be no preferential treatment. There
Speaker 1: should be no slowing of someone else's zeros and ones,
Speaker 1: there should be no blocking a competitor from accessing your infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It's meant to keep the Internet a machine that lets
Speaker 1: information go to wherever it needs to go to without
Speaker 1: being hindered along the way. This definition has actually expanded
Speaker 1: a little bit over the years. Back when folks were
Speaker 1: first starting to talk about net neutrality. Really, the only
Speaker 1: way you could access the Internet was by computer, the
Speaker 1: only meaningful way that most people could access was by computer. However,
Speaker 1: since then, we've had a revolution of devices that can
Speaker 1: tap into the network of networks that include smartphones and
Speaker 1: tablets and Internet of Things devices, even some vehicles or
Speaker 1: accessing information on the Internet. So another element of the
Speaker 1: concept of net neutrality tends to be that you should
Speaker 1: be able to access information on the Internet no matter
Speaker 1: what device you are using to do so. So, if
Speaker 1: a company happens to own some of the infrastructure of
Speaker 1: the Internet, and also happens to be involved in the
Speaker 1: creation of hardware, it would be against the principles of
Speaker 1: net neutrality for that company to allow its own devices
Speaker 1: access to its pipes. But did I entry to anyone else.
Speaker 1: So in other words, let's say that you have an
Speaker 1: ISP and the ISP is offering to lease you a
Speaker 1: modemen router. So as part of your service, you can
Speaker 1: essentially rent a mode and a router from this company,
Speaker 1: which means that you are adding to your monthly bill. However,
Speaker 1: you could just go out and buy a modem and
Speaker 1: a router and then have that connected to your service,
Speaker 1: which might require some extra steps to get it activated
Speaker 1: because it's not part of the proprietary system, but it
Speaker 1: should be fine. The ISP should not block you from
Speaker 1: using some other motiven router just because it doesn't come
Speaker 1: from them, and that would in turn mean you would
Speaker 1: spend less on your monthly ISP bill because you're not
Speaker 1: renting from them. One then neutrality says is that such
Speaker 1: an ISP couldn't come out and say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you have to use our stuff or you can't use
Speaker 1: anything else. These ideas are not just abstract concepts. Many
Speaker 1: companies involved in at least some part of the Internet
Speaker 1: infrastructure are also content providers. In other words, they don't
Speaker 1: just own the pipes that stuff is moving through, they
Speaker 1: create some of the stuff that's going through those pipes.
Speaker 1: So one of the big examples centering around net neutrality
Speaker 1: for years was that a company like Comcast, the largest
Speaker 1: telecommunications company in the world, which has its own online
Speaker 1: content products that's putting it lightly because they own NBC Universal,
Speaker 1: they might purposefully slow down or block traffic coming from
Speaker 1: some other content service like Netflix, And so that would
Speaker 1: mean if you're a Comcast customer, and you're trying to
Speaker 1: connect to Netflix, you might end up hitting some some
Speaker 1: traffic slowdown, like things might take a while to buffer
Speaker 1: before you can watch them. But curiously, if you were
Speaker 1: to switch to Comcasts owned and operated streaming services, there's
Speaker 1: no such slowdown. It just loads super fast and you
Speaker 1: can watch without problems. So potentially that could drive customers
Speaker 1: to subscribe to Comcast's own services and to not subscribe
Speaker 1: to competitors, which seems to be a little bit anti competitive, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, why make a better product if you can
Speaker 1: just block your customers from getting to a competitor, Right,
Speaker 1: You don't need to make anything great if you can
Speaker 1: just prevent anyone from having a choice. If you're the
Speaker 1: only game in town, you don't have to make your
Speaker 1: game better. And you might think, hey, that does sound
Speaker 1: kind of anti competitive, and you're absolutely right it is.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that here in the United States,
Speaker 1: many people have very few options when it comes to ISPs. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I live in an area. I am in
Speaker 1: the city of Atlanta, not just like in metro Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I'm in the city and I have precisely one option
Speaker 1: when it comes to a provider that can give me
Speaker 1: speeds higher than one hundred and fifty megabits per second.
Speaker 1: So one option is not an option, right, That's it.
Speaker 1: That's all I've got. The other quote unquote options are
Speaker 1: for significantly slower speeds. So I could go with a competitor,
Speaker 1: but one and I would not be paying significantly less,
Speaker 1: and two, I would be getting a service that is
Speaker 1: significantly slower. So if I go to a site by
Speaker 1: the way that checks for providers based on my ZIP code,
Speaker 1: I get tons of options for insanely fast connectivity, like
Speaker 1: way faster than what I actually have. But if I
Speaker 1: actually go through the steps to get to a point
Speaker 1: where I would order such a service, by the time
Speaker 1: you get to the last step, you get a message
Speaker 1: that essentially says we're sorry that service isn't available at
Speaker 1: your location or something like that, which just shows that
Speaker 1: I am in that position where that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are in in the United States where you do
Speaker 1: not have options when it comes to your choice or provider,
Speaker 1: so there is no competition in your particular area and
Speaker 1: you're left with whatever is there. And that means that
Speaker 1: you know, if I don't have a choice in provider,
Speaker 1: if I want a good broadband speed, and if that
Speaker 1: provider were to decide to discriminate against other competes editors,
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't be able to get that content, or
Speaker 1: at least it would be a real hassle for me
Speaker 1: to get that content. I wouldn't have an option to
Speaker 1: view that in any other way. Even if I wanted
Speaker 1: to subscribe and I wanted to be a paying customer,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to see, say, the stuff on
Speaker 1: Netflix if Comcast decided, no, we're going to block Netflix's content.
Speaker 1: So net neutrality is meant to make sure that doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: where you don't have a fractured internet where depending upon
Speaker 1: your ISP you can access certain columns of content but
Speaker 1: not others. And if you're on a different ISPs, it's
Speaker 1: a totally different shakedown of what you can and can't access.
Speaker 1: It becomes a less useful tool, right, the Internet becomes
Speaker 1: broken at that point. If you and another person are
Speaker 1: on two different services, you have two totally different experiences
Speaker 1: of what the Internet is because of those restrictions. That's
Speaker 1: what net neutrality is supposed to prevent. Now let's get
Speaker 1: into the complicated legal quagm around net neutrality. So here
Speaker 1: in the US, we've got ourselves a handy dandy law
Speaker 1: called the Communications Act of nineteen thirty four. And yes,
Speaker 1: in order to understand net neutrality in its path through
Speaker 1: the US, we have to start nearly a century ago.
Speaker 1: In fact, technically we could go back even further and
Speaker 1: go back beyond a century to talk about stuff like railroads,
Speaker 1: which I guess you could say laid the track for
Speaker 1: some of the concepts around net neutrality. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to be kind, I'm not going to go back quite
Speaker 1: that far. So the Communications Act of nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: set a whole bunch of ground rules to try and
Speaker 1: untangle the chaotic mess that was threatening to make communication
Speaker 1: an unfair and uneven landscape. The Act sets out rules
Speaker 1: for assigning frequencies for broadcasts and coming up with rules
Speaker 1: for stuff like commercials and setting various standards. And it
Speaker 1: also established the Federal Communications Commission or f c C, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, in its rule states that at least
Speaker 1: one member must be of a different party, So you
Speaker 1: can't have an FCC that's made up entirely of Democrats
Speaker 1: or Republicans or whatever. It has to have a balance,
Speaker 1: and by balance I mean at least one member has
Speaker 1: to be the opposing party. That Act largely classified communications
Speaker 1: companies as common carriers, that is, they fall under a
Speaker 1: regulatory body, in this case, the FCC that enforces rules
Speaker 1: to ensure that these carriers treat everyone fairly. A common
Speaker 1: carrier can't deny service on the grounds of discrimination. For example,
Speaker 1: it can't be that two people show up and one
Speaker 1: person is allowed to use the service and the other
Speaker 1: one isn't, and there's no legal reason for the discrimination.
Speaker 1: This concept goes all the way back to the railroads.
Speaker 1: So for communications networks, it helped create an environment in
Speaker 1: which telephone companies couldn't deny access to their own lines
Speaker 1: to other companies. And that's good because you didn't want
Speaker 1: a situation where the only folks you could talk to
Speaker 1: on the phone would be fellow customers of the same
Speaker 1: phone company you belong to. The Communications Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four set out these common carriage rules in the
Speaker 1: section called Title iiO. Now, there were seven sections or
Speaker 1: titles in the nineteen thirty four Act, and Title two
Speaker 1: are the ones that are subject to regulation under the
Speaker 1: authority of FCC. However, a bunch of other communications services
Speaker 1: were deemed different enough from these to fall under Title I,
Speaker 1: which did not allow the FCC the authority to regulate them.
Speaker 1: So certain services were considered immune to this like they
Speaker 1: were exceptions to regulation. And largely the thought was that
Speaker 1: regulation could potentially inhibit growth and innovation, and therefore these
Speaker 1: younger forms of communication should not be stifled by regulation.
Speaker 1: And then Title II was a different story. Now, over
Speaker 1: the years, some of the measures of the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four Act had unintended consequences. For example, it helped the
Speaker 1: rise of monopolies, namely AT and T, which essentially had
Speaker 1: a total monopoly on the phone industry in the United
Speaker 1: States until it was forced to break up into several
Speaker 1: other companies in the nineteen eighties. That story is its own,
Speaker 1: super complicated mess, and it goes beyond what we'll talk
Speaker 1: about here. Things got more complicated with the invention of
Speaker 1: cable television and other innovations, and you had weird rules
Speaker 1: that would allow phone companies to do one thing and
Speaker 1: cable companies to do something else. And we were rushing
Speaker 1: toward an era where everybody was essentially allowing digital information
Speaker 1: to pass over their networks, and yet there were different
Speaker 1: rules in place as to which companies could do what.
Speaker 1: So things were getting messy, so the government would try
Speaker 1: to fix it, and it got messier. I'll explain more
Speaker 1: after we come back from this quick break, Okay. So
Speaker 1: cable companies first emerged in the late forties and really
Speaker 1: grew in like the seventies and eighties, and there were
Speaker 1: some amendments to the Communications Act that changed things a
Speaker 1: little bit, but what was really needed was a new
Speaker 1: approach to telecommunications and that's when we got the Telecommunications
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen ninety six. So this was the first
Speaker 1: major rewrite of communication law in more than sixty years.
Speaker 1: This Act was meant to ease off on some regulations
Speaker 1: in an effort to encourage more competition in the industry.
Speaker 1: And it gets way more complicated from there. And a
Speaker 1: full disclosure, I am not a lawyer. Waiting through the
Speaker 1: mountains of documents to get a firm handle on these
Speaker 1: various designations would take me ages. So I'm actually relying
Speaker 1: heavily on the work of other people here, and trust me,
Speaker 1: like I was following up and trying to go down
Speaker 1: to other rabbit holes and find, you know, things that
Speaker 1: I could specifically cite. And it got hard. A lot
Speaker 1: of sources out there make some pretty general claims that
Speaker 1: I think mostly are correct, but they get details wrong.
Speaker 1: And that's infuriating because I don't have a month to
Speaker 1: just read legal documents to figure out what's the best
Speaker 1: way to communicate this is. So I'm going to be
Speaker 1: painting in some pretty broad strokes. But in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the Internet was still a pretty young entity, at least
Speaker 1: to the general public. I mean, most of the general
Speaker 1: public had no idea what the Internet was before the
Speaker 1: World Wide Web started to take shape, and even then,
Speaker 1: the web was a pretty niche interest area, mostly like
Speaker 1: students and some businesses and government agencies. So we're ignoring
Speaker 1: the fact that you folks had been working on the
Speaker 1: network of networks for a couple of decades at this point.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Internet wasn't like it was brand new, period.
Speaker 1: It was just something that for a lot of people
Speaker 1: was an unknown entity until really the nineties. We were
Speaker 1: just starting to gear up toward the fervor that would
Speaker 1: lead to the dot com bubble in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: and so there was kind of a need to address things.
Speaker 1: The nineteen ninety six Act made a lot of changes.
Speaker 1: It made it okay for different types of companies to
Speaker 1: jump into the business that was usually restrained for other industries.
Speaker 1: So what this really meant was that two giant industries
Speaker 1: were able to suddenly compete against one another. So you
Speaker 1: had telephone companies which normally just offered telephone services, but
Speaker 1: now because of the way that information could travel, could
Speaker 1: actually also offer up video channels to subscribers. Then you
Speaker 1: had cable companies that said, hang on, we can offer
Speaker 1: telephone services to our customers. Dogs and cats living together,
Speaker 1: mass hysteria. And it was not clear at first whether
Speaker 1: or not it would be legal for these industries to
Speaker 1: kind of branch out and to start to incorporate the
Speaker 1: services of other industries into their own. This was a
Speaker 1: muddy ground. The Act also defined, and I use the
Speaker 1: term loosely, the concept of information services. So these are
Speaker 1: services that are all about sending, retrieving, storing information across
Speaker 1: telecommunications services. So they're all the companies that facilitate information
Speaker 1: moving from one point to another along various communication lines.
Speaker 1: By the way, communication lines aren't always physical lines because
Speaker 1: they this can include stuff like radio signals and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Now, information services would fall under Title
Speaker 1: one services. That would mean the FCC would not have
Speaker 1: the legal authority to regulate any business that was classified
Speaker 1: as Title one. So if a business were deemed to
Speaker 1: be about information services, about the facilitating of information moving
Speaker 1: across networks, they'd be Title one and the FCC couldn't
Speaker 1: burst in and tell them how to do stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: putting aside the complicating factor that a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that facilitate the movement of information also own the infrastructure
Speaker 1: that the information is moving across, that they are a
Speaker 1: telecommunications company, it would mean that if they were deemed
Speaker 1: an information services company, the FCC would not be able
Speaker 1: to weigh in on their business, even though they also
Speaker 1: would perform as a telecommunications company. At least the FCC
Speaker 1: couldn't do so with any actual authority. The FCC could try,
Speaker 1: but then the company could sue the FCC, take it
Speaker 1: to the courts, and the courts would determine whether or
Speaker 1: not the FCC actually had the authority to regulate, and
Speaker 1: this began to raise concerns in the field of network communications.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind that back in the nineties and
Speaker 1: even into the early two thousands, folks weren't too concerned
Speaker 1: about where the Internet was going yet, because it was
Speaker 1: still fairly primitive, websites weren't particularly sophisticated. We had only
Speaker 1: seen hints at what would become the uses that would
Speaker 1: demand increasing amounts of bandwidth. So you weren't going to
Speaker 1: be able to watch an ultra high definition movie on
Speaker 1: streaming back in two thousand. For example, services like YouTube
Speaker 1: wouldn't come along until the mid two thousands. But even
Speaker 1: though most uses of the Web and the Internet weren't
Speaker 1: super bandwidth heavy, some people were starting to get a
Speaker 1: little concerned about the lack of rules and regulations for
Speaker 1: ISPs to follow. So they could see the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall, ISPs would have an incentive to manage demand
Speaker 1: on their networks. Now you can manage demand a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways. You could do is you could try
Speaker 1: and build out your infrastructure so it can handle more traffic,
Speaker 1: but that requires a huge investment to do. Another thing
Speaker 1: you could do is you could insert impediments to heavy
Speaker 1: duty users of the Internet. You know, maybe slow down
Speaker 1: stuff that would have a really heavy demand on the
Speaker 1: bandwidth of your network, just throttle it so that way
Speaker 1: everybody else can still use your network without having their
Speaker 1: experience impacted as a result. Heck, maybe you identify something
Speaker 1: that's causing huge spikes and Internet traffic across your network
Speaker 1: and you just block it entirely. It's not like the
Speaker 1: FCC could do anything about it because your title one service. Baby.
Speaker 1: They would come down and say, hey, you can't block
Speaker 1: this content, and you'd just say, yeah, I can, because
Speaker 1: you can't stop me. You don't have the authority to
Speaker 1: do it. Also, keep in mind this was the time
Speaker 1: when peer to peer networks and piracy were starting to
Speaker 1: go banana. That complicates things because not only did those
Speaker 1: activities boost network activity right you started to see spikes
Speaker 1: in network traffic, you also had these massive entertainment studios,
Speaker 1: some of which would end up merging with these ISPs
Speaker 1: that were threatening to bring down the hammer of thor
Speaker 1: on anyone who facilitated the illegal sharing of intellectual property.
Speaker 1: So you had the internal pressure of wanting to keep
Speaker 1: your network moving smoothly. You had external pressures saying, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of illegal activity going across your network
Speaker 1: and if you don't do something about it, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a problem. And it all led to concerns
Speaker 1: that again, the entire landscape of Internet access in the
Speaker 1: United States could become unfair, uneven, fractured. Even so, tons
Speaker 1: of cable companies really pushed the FCC to classify their
Speaker 1: services as Title I, as information services in other words,
Speaker 1: rather than Title two, which would mean they would be
Speaker 1: a carrier service or a cable provider as defined under
Speaker 1: the rarely mentioned Title three. So Title two common carriers
Speaker 1: essentially Title III cable provider. The cable companies were saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're not cable providers. We're information services. That's really what
Speaker 1: we are. Yeah, some of us, some of our customers
Speaker 1: are using our services to watch cable, but we're just
Speaker 1: information services. We fall under Title I, and that would
Speaker 1: mean that these cable companies could operate under less regulation, which,
Speaker 1: to be fair, meant they could get away with a
Speaker 1: whole lot more shenanigans than if they were forced to
Speaker 1: play by a more strict set of rules. Now, some
Speaker 1: would argue the looser regulations would give companies the chance
Speaker 1: to create better services for customers, and that it could
Speaker 1: lead to greater competition between providers in an effort to
Speaker 1: find the best strategy to make a profit. It just
Speaker 1: didn't turn out to do that. But yeah, this is
Speaker 1: often an argument you will hear against regulation, the fear
Speaker 1: that regulation will stifle competition and innovation, and as a result,
Speaker 1: none of us get the really cool new stuff that
Speaker 1: we would get if the government would just back the
Speaker 1: heck off. Problem is, when the government does back the
Speaker 1: heck off, often what we see as one company start
Speaker 1: to dominate an industry, and then there's no incentive for
Speaker 1: the company to innovate because that company already has all
Speaker 1: the customers, Like, you don't need to win the customers.
Speaker 1: You've got them all, So where's the incentive to do better.
Speaker 1: It's a very complicated thing. And of course things got
Speaker 1: even more messy because the FCC agreed that cable based
Speaker 1: ISPs would fall under Title IE, and this angered other
Speaker 1: types of ISPs like DSL providers. Right, so a cable
Speaker 1: company that was an Internet service provider would be a
Speaker 1: Title one service, but a DSL company that provided Internet
Speaker 1: service would be considered a Title TiO entity, which meant
Speaker 1: the DSL companies were saying, hey, you're giving cable companies
Speaker 1: an unfair advantage. You're not imposing these rules on them,
Speaker 1: but you are on us. Where's the logic in that?
Speaker 1: So the whole matter went to court, and things kind
Speaker 1: of flip flopped around for a bit. At one point,
Speaker 1: the court found that the FCC had misclassified cable ISPs
Speaker 1: and said that they had to classify cable companies as
Speaker 1: Title TiO because they were clearly telecommunications companies and not
Speaker 1: just information services. And then the cable industry appealed this decision.
Speaker 1: The whole thing ultimately went to the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, led by Clarence Thomas, overturned that decision
Speaker 1: and said ISPs belong in the realm of Title I,
Speaker 1: that the FCC did not make a mistake. Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: at some point allegedly said he regretted that decision, which
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that he's capable of self reflection
Speaker 1: should be a matter to celebrate, I guess, but doesn't
Speaker 1: change the fact that that decision became the president. So
Speaker 1: cable companies were Title IE, DSL was Title II. Now
Speaker 1: by this time you had lawmakers in the US realized
Speaker 1: that without certain protections in place, it was possible that
Speaker 1: the whole Internet would become a fragmented, broken landscape, that
Speaker 1: some ISP customers could have one experience and others would
Speaker 1: have a much more inferior one because of these various
Speaker 1: throttle rules and blocking and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe one ISP has access to most of the Internet
Speaker 1: and another one doesn't, or maybe a powerful company potentially
Speaker 1: stifles another one, thus killing innovation, doing the opposite of
Speaker 1: what everyone was hoping the Title I classification would do. So,
Speaker 1: the FCC came up with some basic ideas that would
Speaker 1: form the foundation of net neutrality. So this was around
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, pretty late in the game, almost
Speaker 1: a decade after the Telecommunications Act was passed, and these
Speaker 1: net neutrality principles were fairly straightforward. One said that a
Speaker 1: customer should be able to access whatever information they want
Speaker 1: on the Internet, provided that the information is legal. You know,
Speaker 1: there were exceptions for stuff like pirated content, for example,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that you could access everything no matter
Speaker 1: what your ISP was, but rather, if it was legal,
Speaker 1: the ISP should not block a customer's access to that information.
Speaker 1: The bit about using whatever device you wanted was in
Speaker 1: those guidelines too, that an ISP shouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: say no, you can't use x device. You have to
Speaker 1: buy why device from us. That would be against the
Speaker 1: principles of net neutrality. Plus consumers should be able to
Speaker 1: use whatever applications they wanted, again, assuming those applications are legal,
Speaker 1: and other similar principles like the basic ideas behind net neutrality,
Speaker 1: and they're great, but it didn't change the fact that
Speaker 1: the FCC didn't have the actual authority to enforce these
Speaker 1: principles on any entity that was designated as Title I. Also,
Speaker 1: by this time, DSL companies had successfully campaigned to become
Speaker 1: reclassified under Title one, so we no longer had DSL
Speaker 1: as Title II, and cable was Title one. Now both
Speaker 1: were Title I services. So in other words, the FCC
Speaker 1: was saying, hey, everybody, you got to play fair, but
Speaker 1: they didn't have any actual authority to make anyone play fair.
Speaker 1: It's like if a teacher were telling a kid you can't,
Speaker 1: you know, no running, and the kids that you're not
Speaker 1: my dad. This became really clear in twenty ten when
Speaker 1: the FCC lost court cases where the agency had tried
Speaker 1: to assert limited authority against Comcast and was found that
Speaker 1: they couldn't do that. Now, the case was that Comcast
Speaker 1: had been discovered to have throttled and perhaps even blocked,
Speaker 1: some BitTorrent traffic on its networks, and that obviously goes
Speaker 1: against the principles of net neutrality. Now, quick word about BitTorrent.
Speaker 1: BitTorrent is a protocol for decentralized file sharing through peer
Speaker 1: to peer connections. And to put it simply, imagine you've
Speaker 1: got a network of ten computers. They're connected to each other.
Speaker 1: Five of those computers have a specific file on them,
Speaker 1: and your computer has just joined this network. You're the
Speaker 1: tenth computer. You don't have that file. So what you
Speaker 1: do is you download a torrent of that file, and
Speaker 1: that torrent allows a file train between you and the
Speaker 1: five computers on the system that currently have that file.
Speaker 1: Whatever connection is best is the one that's going to
Speaker 1: be active. If that connection for some reason slows down,
Speaker 1: it can switch to another one. That way, you download
Speaker 1: the file as quickly as you can through a distributed
Speaker 1: decentralized peer to peer network is a quick way to
Speaker 1: transfer large files, and as files propagate across the network,
Speaker 1: it gets easier and faster for new devices to download
Speaker 1: that file. Now, there is nothing inherently illegal about that.
Speaker 1: It is just a way to distribute files. You can
Speaker 1: use BitTorrent to download all sorts of stuff, including free
Speaker 1: software that has no restrictions on how it's shared, so
Speaker 1: BitTorrent is just a means of conveyance. That being said,
Speaker 1: one of the most popular uses of the technology was
Speaker 1: the downloading of copyrighted material hiracy in other words, So
Speaker 1: despite the fact that BitTorrent is really just a protocol
Speaker 1: for filed transfers, in most circles, it became synonymous with piracy.
Speaker 1: And so I imagine that that's why Comcasts started blocking
Speaker 1: BitTorrent traffic on its network. And that means it would
Speaker 1: affect you even if you weren't a content pirate, you
Speaker 1: were just using BitTorrent to get some legitimate file. There
Speaker 1: was a whole lawsuit about that, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: when the FCC stepped in and said, hey, Comcast, you
Speaker 1: did a bad thing, and Comcast was like, yo, you
Speaker 1: can't say that because we're Titled I, you have no
Speaker 1: power over us. And the courts ultimately found that indeed,
Speaker 1: the FCC had no power over Comcasts because years earlier,
Speaker 1: the FCC decided that companies like Comcast are Title I
Speaker 1: entities and by definition, the FCC had no authority over them.
Speaker 1: So things were starting to look like there needed to
Speaker 1: be a big change. We'll talk about that more when
Speaker 1: we come back from this break. All right, we're up
Speaker 1: to twenty ten. That's when the FCC introduced some new
Speaker 1: principles elected under a policy that the FCC called the
Speaker 1: Open Internet Order, and these largely followed the earlier net
Speaker 1: neutrality principles that were set out in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: saying that ISPs need to be clear and transparent about
Speaker 1: their services so that customers can make informed decisions when
Speaker 1: choosing an ISP or when evaluating their existing ISP, like
Speaker 1: they couldn't just hide stuff away in other words, Also,
Speaker 1: the FCC reiterated that ISPs should not block any content
Speaker 1: or devices from their networks. They also introduced similar rules
Speaker 1: for mobile carriers that were now offering ISP services, and
Speaker 1: there were some other stuff in the guidelines too, But
Speaker 1: the rules didn't magically change ISPs from Title IE to
Speaker 1: Title two, so you could say the guidelines didn't even
Speaker 1: really mean anything because the FCC still lacked the ability
Speaker 1: to enforce the rules. Yes, technically ISPs needed to be
Speaker 1: more transparent, but when the FCC doesn't have the authority
Speaker 1: to enforce those rules, then if they're not transparent, there's
Speaker 1: not really anything you can do about it. So it's
Speaker 1: like a rule that doesn't have any bite to it. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm skipping over tons of stuff here, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: what we saw over the following years was a kind
Speaker 1: of impasse. The FCC tried to find various workarounds to
Speaker 1: try and enforce rules against ISPs, using language that had
Speaker 1: been drafted back in the nineteen thirties to try and
Speaker 1: justify its actions, saying, hey, because of the way this
Speaker 1: is worded in nineteen thirty that means that we can
Speaker 1: actually enforce this rule against a Title I service. Courts
Speaker 1: were not entirely sympathetic to this strategy. It felt a
Speaker 1: lot like someone trying to stretch a definition in order
Speaker 1: to give legitimacy for their actions. So it just seemed
Speaker 1: like there wasn't really a way forward unless there were
Speaker 1: a total change in how the government treats ISPs, namely
Speaker 1: that ISPs collectively would need to go from the unregulated
Speaker 1: title IE Information Services category and then be reclassified into
Speaker 1: the Title to Telecommunications Services and Common Carrier category. As
Speaker 1: you might imagine, such a move would be pretty difficult
Speaker 1: to pull off. The telecommunications industry is enormous, It is powerful,
Speaker 1: it is willing to spend a whole lot of dollars
Speaker 1: to lobby for favorable laws and regulations. If that weren't
Speaker 1: the case, we would not be in a situation where
Speaker 1: most Americans have very few choices when it comes to ISPs,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have stories about how existing telecommunications companies
Speaker 1: campaigned to keep news services from gaining access to things
Speaker 1: like utility polls, which happened in the early days of
Speaker 1: Google Fiber, or opposing things like municipal Wi Fi. So
Speaker 1: around twenty fifteen, the FCC, with encouragement from then President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, set out to reclassify ISPs as titled to entities.
Speaker 1: The industry immediately began to sue FCC to challenge this move. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the goal was to say that the FCC didn't have
Speaker 1: the authority to reclassify ISPs, that it would need an
Speaker 1: Act from Congress, and that would at least buy the
Speaker 1: telecommunications company some time to you know, grease the wheels
Speaker 1: and make sure Congress remain lenient toward them. It essentially
Speaker 1: would mean that net neutrality would be dead in the water,
Speaker 1: because unless you have an overwhelming majority in both Houses
Speaker 1: of Congress and a sympathetic president, getting any legislation to
Speaker 1: pass that would enforce net neutrality would be incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1: But the FCC was going ahead with this plan, and
Speaker 1: all of this as it was going on, had politics
Speaker 1: shifting once again, because around this time that's when Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who made it very clear he was staunchly against reclassifying
Speaker 1: ISPs as Title two, became President. Trump, while he was campaigning,
Speaker 1: said that the move to classify ISPs as Title two
Speaker 1: would somehow have a negative impact on free speech, particularly
Speaker 1: free speech from conservative voices. I don't know what his
Speaker 1: logic was, if you can call it that, on that argument, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how being classified as Title I would
Speaker 1: suddenly make ISPs incapable of carrying conservative viewpoints. I don't
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect there. I just don't understand it as
Speaker 1: a justification for saying they shouldn't be Title two. There
Speaker 1: are other arguments that I've heard against classifying ISPs as
Speaker 1: Title two that at least have some grounding to them.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the grounding is for that argument.
Speaker 1: The new FCC under Trump's administration got to work rolling
Speaker 1: back the changes of the previous FCC, So that's one
Speaker 1: of the big challenges of the US as well, right,
Speaker 1: because you have these agencies, these agencies like the FCC
Speaker 1: where the role of the FCC it comes under appointment.
Speaker 1: When position opens up, the current president can appoint someone
Speaker 1: to that position. Often they have to get approval like
Speaker 1: depending on the agency. But that means that as administrations change,
Speaker 1: the nature of these agencies change, so the politics change,
Speaker 1: the priorities change. In the case of Trump taking over
Speaker 1: in the United States, it meant that the new FCC
Speaker 1: had a diametrically opposed opinion about net neutrality, and the
Speaker 1: whole reclassification of ISPs to Title two hit reverse. The
Speaker 1: new FCC chair a Jitpi, pushed for ISPs to go
Speaker 1: back to being Title one and to strip away many
Speaker 1: of the rules that applied to net neutrality in the process.
Speaker 1: ISPs would still technically need to follow transparency rules, at
Speaker 1: least they're supposed to. But then again, when you don't
Speaker 1: have an ability to enforce a rule, then the rule
Speaker 1: is kind of just there for show. Right. If an
Speaker 1: ISP wanted to, they could be transparent and say I'm
Speaker 1: going to throttle this traffic from this other provider. That
Speaker 1: would also be fine because again they just would be
Speaker 1: disclosing what they were going to do, but there were
Speaker 1: no rules to prevent them from doing it, so they
Speaker 1: could just say, Hey, I'm gonna do this thing that
Speaker 1: you don't like, and there's nothing you can do about it,
Speaker 1: but I'm at least telling you about it, because I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to like you could do that. But yeah, why
Speaker 1: even bother disclosing if there are no teeth to the rules. Anyway,
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration, the FCC's moved to put ISPs
Speaker 1: into Title iiO classification when it totally in reverse. And
Speaker 1: as we know, Trump then got voted out of office.
Speaker 1: I mean, he disputes that, but the courts sure haven't.
Speaker 1: And then with Joe Biden's administration, the tides have changed
Speaker 1: yet again. A couple of years ago, Biden signed an
Speaker 1: executive order that told the FCC to go back to
Speaker 1: getting net neutrality rules restored. Congress has also tried a
Speaker 1: couple of times to get a law going that would
Speaker 1: create a stronger framework for net neutrality and to remove
Speaker 1: some of the ambiguity of the FCC's role and the
Speaker 1: extent of its authority. So some of these would give
Speaker 1: FCC the express authority to do things like reclassify ISPs.
Speaker 1: That has been one of those matters that cable companies
Speaker 1: have argued that the FCC doesn't have the authority to
Speaker 1: make that determination. Even though they made the initial determination
Speaker 1: of who goes into what category, they're saying the FCC
Speaker 1: doesn't have the authority to change that. So there have
Speaker 1: been a couple of attempts from Congress to get laws
Speaker 1: passed that would clear this up and make it less ambiguous,
Speaker 1: but they haven't really gone anywhere. They've never passed both
Speaker 1: the House and the Senate and then been signed into law.
Speaker 1: There's always been opposition in one House or the other,
Speaker 1: or just a lack of gumption to move the legislation forward,
Speaker 1: so it hasn't gone anywhere. Typically, support for net neutrality
Speaker 1: falls along party lines. Democrats aren't generally favorable toward it,
Speaker 1: Republicans are generally against it, or rather Republicans are generally
Speaker 1: against government regulation. Now, for being fair, you can definitely
Speaker 1: see examples throughout the history of the United States where
Speaker 1: regulation did have negative consequences, but you can also see
Speaker 1: plenty of examples where a lack of regulation led to
Speaker 1: huge problems. So I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: it's complicated, and we humans are good at mess and
Speaker 1: stuff up. So I don't think it's as easy to
Speaker 1: say that regulation is good or regulation is bad, because
Speaker 1: it has to be designed and enforced properly, and that's
Speaker 1: a big that's a big if. Personally, I am in
Speaker 1: favor of following rules that create a fair playing field
Speaker 1: across all ISPs and content providers. I do not think
Speaker 1: it's fair if an ISP decides it will only carry
Speaker 1: a content provider's content if they pay extra. For example,
Speaker 1: that this tiered internet approach I think is a bad
Speaker 1: thing where they say, yeah, we'll carry your streams, but
Speaker 1: you have to pay us extra if you want it
Speaker 1: to go fast. I don't think that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, it might not be a huge impediment to
Speaker 1: a big company that's got a lot of resources, but
Speaker 1: to smaller ones it could absolutely prevent them from being
Speaker 1: able to be discovered by the customers of that particular ISP,
Speaker 1: and it could be a death sentence. Like imagine if
Speaker 1: a restaurant opened on a road and the roads were
Speaker 1: all suddenly converted to private ownership, and the owner of
Speaker 1: that road said that the restaurant has to cover the
Speaker 1: costs of people going to it, Like it has to
Speaker 1: pay for people to be able to drive down the
Speaker 1: road and park at that restaurant. That would probably be
Speaker 1: the death knell of that restaurant. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the similar concern about the tiered approach. And also, like
Speaker 1: I said before, another big concern is that a lot
Speaker 1: of ISPs are also enormous content providers themselves, So what
Speaker 1: stops them from giving themselves preferential treatment while trying to
Speaker 1: restrict everybody else. So once again, let's talk about Comcast.
Speaker 1: It is a huge telecommunications company, it's an enormous media company.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven it became the parent company to NBC Universal.
Speaker 1: So if Comcast decided to give its own streaming service,
Speaker 1: you know, like Peacock a boost and then throttle traffic
Speaker 1: from Max for example, that's the streaming service from Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers Discovery previously known as HBO Max, well, that seems
Speaker 1: like a pretty clear anti competitive move right, And generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the US has policy that's against companies behaving in anti
Speaker 1: competitive ways. At least that's the ideal. Whether the government
Speaker 1: actively pursues that ideal tends to depend upon whom's in
Speaker 1: charge and their opinions toward regulation. Right now, we're seeing
Speaker 1: a much more active FCC as well as an SEC.
Speaker 1: Like all the initial agencies out there that are related
Speaker 1: to things like fairness in the market, a lot of
Speaker 1: them are taking a much more firm stance against anti
Speaker 1: competitive behavior Right now, that's the current attitude in US government,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it's going to be the same.
Speaker 1: In another couple of years, it may completely change. That's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why this is so complicated is
Speaker 1: because there's not a steady through line of support. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of the update on net neutrality. The matter
Speaker 1: is extremely complicated. I'm not going to pretend that I
Speaker 1: have a handle on all the nuanced components. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I do think there's some logical arguments that criticize net neutrality,
Speaker 1: or at least how government regulation can create new problems
Speaker 1: while trying to address existing ones. I just feel like
Speaker 1: end consumers in the US tend to be the real
Speaker 1: victims in this war. And now we should probably talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the scandal that actually prompted
Speaker 1: this whole episode in the first so, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the attorney General for the State of New York has
Speaker 1: been going after several companies that sought to skew the
Speaker 1: public comments around net neutrality back during adjut Pie's crusade
Speaker 1: to reverse the reclassification of ISPs as Title II services.
Speaker 1: So when the FCC makes these kinds of determinations, when
Speaker 1: they're about to vote on something, they will often open
Speaker 1: matters up for public comment. This gives the general public
Speaker 1: the opportunity to share their thoughts about issues in communication
Speaker 1: systems that ultimately will affect them. Now. Typically, the FCC
Speaker 1: will create a website for an issue, and then it
Speaker 1: will urge people to go to that website and to
Speaker 1: leave their thoughts there. These sites are open for a
Speaker 1: set amount of time, and at the end of that time,
Speaker 1: the comments are closed off and the FCC reviews them
Speaker 1: before they make their vote. They have no obligation to
Speaker 1: obey public opinion, but the idea is that the FCC
Speaker 1: can take that public opinion into consideration before they vote
Speaker 1: on a matter. If they say, like, Wow, the the
Speaker 1: US public is overwhelmingly against this, that might make them
Speaker 1: think twice into voting it into action. Well, when it
Speaker 1: came time to open up public comments on repealing the
Speaker 1: title to reclassification of ISPs. It appears that the broad
Speaker 1: band industry turned to some generating firms to help get
Speaker 1: public support for nixing net neutrality, for reversing that decision
Speaker 1: or reversing the reclassification. Allegedly, the broadband companies were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: can you like generate some messaging that is going to
Speaker 1: convince yahoos on the Internet that they don't really want
Speaker 1: net neutrality, And so they paid these companies to do that,
Speaker 1: and the companies allegedly said, yes, we can do that.
Speaker 1: But instead what they allegedly did, I mean, the New
Speaker 1: York Attorney General Office said they absolutely did it was
Speaker 1: they impersonated around one and a half million people and
Speaker 1: they went to the FCC website and posted support for
Speaker 1: appealing net neutrality rules. By the way, this was actually
Speaker 1: suspected while it was going on. There were folks who
Speaker 1: were keeping an eye on those public comments, and there
Speaker 1: were lots and lots of articles back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: that many of the comments that were being left supporting
Speaker 1: this move to strip net neutrality rules were actually bogus,
Speaker 1: that these were fake comments that were supporting an unpopular policy.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General's office had secured agreements with three different
Speaker 1: companies to hand over more than half a million dollars
Speaker 1: in fines for participating in this scheme. Now, if you
Speaker 1: ask me, those three companies got off lightly because I'm
Speaker 1: sure you would be upset to find out that some
Speaker 1: company somewhere had posted something online while claiming to be you,
Speaker 1: particularly if they were saying something that you adamantly disagree with,
Speaker 1: and you might wonder how bad could it all be?
Speaker 1: Like one and a half million impersonated people, That is
Speaker 1: a lot, there's no denying that. But how bad is
Speaker 1: that in the overall scheme? Of the comments that left
Speaker 1: on the FCC well, according to an investigation, there were
Speaker 1: around twenty two million comments left on the FCC request
Speaker 1: for public comment, and an investigation in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: uncovered that out of those twenty two million comments, eighteen
Speaker 1: million of them were fake. So the vast majority of
Speaker 1: comments left were fake ones trying to skew the results
Speaker 1: and not trying they did skew. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the comments left were left in
Speaker 1: order to create this message that the public wanted the
Speaker 1: title to reclassification repealed. So yeah, it is a rigged game.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the definition of a rigged game.
Speaker 1: It is rigged, and the penalties for rigging the game
Speaker 1: are minuscule. Half a million dollars spread across three companies
Speaker 1: is nothing. Plus even with that, it doesn't reverse the
Speaker 1: decisions that were made, even though those decisions at least
Speaker 1: partly relied on fake public opinion to justify the decision,
Speaker 1: So the results of that fakery are still in play.
Speaker 1: Like that doesn't change at all. You're like, shame on
Speaker 1: you for fooling everyone. But the decisions that were made
Speaker 1: based upon those false comments those stand so also interesting.
Speaker 1: By the way, at the time, back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: when all this was happening, ajit Pie resisted calls to
Speaker 1: investigate the comments. But then, I mean, if fake comments
Speaker 1: are in support of your position, I guess you don't
Speaker 1: have much of an incentive to investigate if those comments
Speaker 1: are real or not because they're supporting your side. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an ugly business. Again, Personally, I'm in favor
Speaker 1: of net neutrality. I am interested in some of the
Speaker 1: arguments against it, and again, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: that comes back to how government regulation has been poorly
Speaker 1: designed and implemented in the past often can lead to
Speaker 1: corruption as well. Well, I mean, it's it just comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that some people will see a
Speaker 1: system and figure out how they can personally profit off
Speaker 1: of it, even if it means everyone else suffers in
Speaker 1: the process. So yeah, fun times. I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: ever going to say net neutrality is totally dead, nor
Speaker 1: am I ever going to say it is protected forever
Speaker 1: and ever, because as we have seen over the last
Speaker 1: two decades, things can change quickly and dramatically, so I
Speaker 1: suspect it will really depend upon whomever's in charge and
Speaker 1: what the prevailing attitude towards the concept is at the time.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure in ten years, if I'm still doing
Speaker 1: this show, I will revisit this and have yet another
Speaker 1: look back on net neutrality. That's it. I hope you're
Speaker 1: all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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