Net Neutrality Panel
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DEF CON 1924 / 122
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00:00
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
The panel that we put together today is sort of you know We have a bunch of questions that we're gonna ask and we'll have everybody up here discuss some of those questions and then towards the end We want to leave some time for your questions because I know you have like, you know, a lot of questions I bet you're here. So you're interested in this topic so
00:21
with that Here's the panel. I'm going to introduce myself. My name is Michael sheer I go by the pres 98 and I own my own small business and I'll be moderating the panel today All the way to your right is Abigail Phillips from the EFF I'm a staff attorney at the EFF where I focus on online content issues
00:46
Those are mostly around copyright, but net neutrality kind of fits in there, too Next to her is Todd Kimball. Hi everyone I am basically a small business infrastructure geek and kind of playing the role of the old guy who's been on the internet for a while and
01:02
Asking how things have changed and why is this different than 1994? And next to Todd is our Def Con virgin Deborah hi, I'm this is really loud that work. Hi, I'm Deborah salons. I'm at D salons on Twitter I'm a telecommunications attorney in Washington DC and my practice is primarily regulatory in front of the FCC
01:26
I'm supposed to give you all this disclaimer that I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer and I'm here to give you legal information not legal advice And the opinions that I'm expressing today are my opinions and not the opinions of my firm or the firm's clients
01:41
And this is her first F concert. It's my first time and my first First everything awesome Okay, so let's talk What do we want to talk about here is when I started looking into this issue of net neutrality a year or two ago First thing I want you know, you see all these people on YouTube videos
02:01
I support net neutrality or I oppose net neutrality and I couldn't really find Well, what is net neutrality and it turns out that that's not it's it's it's easier to ask the question than to answer it because You know, we can break it down to a very simple Statement say all bits are equal and I think most people would say, okay
02:25
That's a reasonable definition of net neutrality and that's net neutrality from a sort of, you know, philosophical standpoint But how do we put that into practice and putting that into practice is? Is one of the problems that we've run across and then secondly, why should we why you should care about this issue?
02:42
So I want to show you a little bit of the flood that's been out there over the past couple years Okay, so this is what the one I talked about this is the net neutrality all bits are created equal and this is the sort of the The most basic thing that you can say about net neutrality and that that content should be treated equally
03:01
Okay, I think most people can agree with that on a general concept Then we have save the internet save the world and now we're kind of getting into this Like well, you know, really like if we don't do this the world's gonna end or what what's going on here? We have
03:21
advertisements where companies are you know advertising Different plans at different levels of content at different prices and then we have headlines Some people have said if we adopt net neutrality It will be the end of the internet as we know it Some people have said if we don't adopt adopt net neutrality it will be the end of the internet as we know it and
03:45
Then we have the most extreme case This woman is named Tanya Devereaux and she ran for office in Belgium And she said she would take the virginity of anybody who supported net neutrality
04:00
Unfortunately We do have the virgin here So This is sort of what we're dealing with Net neutrality. Well, what is it? It's all of this or is it none of this? So what we want to talk about is let's let's let's start off Let's let's kind of go through each panelist and say well, what is net neutrality? What is it to you from a sort of?
04:25
Philosophical standpoint and then what is it from a you know, an actual regulatory standpoint Anyway, I mean I can give one thought I mean to me net neutrality is really about Consumers being able to access the content that they want on the devices that they want and when I say content
04:41
I also mean services applications content. So whatever that vehicle is that doesn't mean to me that Consumers might not pay more for more bandwidth But it does mean they don't have to pay more say to be able to get access to YouTube As opposed to not having to pay at all to get access to some other video service
05:04
in my mind net neutrality is you know, kind of the high level just You know at each end not being oh, sorry. My concept is just not being double-billed for stuff You know if you're paying for internet access either as a consumer or a corporation or you're paying for that bandwidth at one end
05:22
You shouldn't be charged for it at the other end Okay, and for the definition of net neutrality for me I thought this was actually a really interesting question when you're opposed it to the group because net neutrality means different things to different people so I was doing a little bit of research on the internet and the Definition that I felt most comfortable with was no restrictions by ISPs or government on consumers access
05:44
To networks that participate on the internet and for me as a practitioner Especially an FCC practitioner when the open internet rules came out people are calling them the net neutrality regulations and to me That's very ironic When you look at it and we'll get in more into that later in the panel
06:01
But those those regulations are actually promoting net neutrality when you take a step back You're like wait a minute. The government is actually getting involved and this is the first time the FCC's actually, you know Well, they've been attempting this but it's one of the first steps that the FCC is trying to regulate the internet So to me, I know it means different things to different people
06:21
But I think it's it's no it's no restrictions by ISPs or by the government Absolutely. I think one of the interesting things about net neutrality is is This community and and we'll talk about this a little bit later I don't want to put labels on the community as large but this community is generally
06:43
Libertarian and the fact that we're skeptical of the government. We're skeptical of government actions. We're skeptical of government overreach Yet When we how many Let me backtrack how many of you think in principle not necessarily in practice how many of you think in principle that treating?
07:07
Traffic equally is a good idea net neutrality in general is a good idea Okay, most of you and I think how many of you trust the government to enforce it Okay, so this this is what I'm getting at
07:22
We're We have a principle that we mostly all agree with but we want the government Maybe or maybe not. We want the government to enforce neutrality and I don't know if that's a good idea I'm not saying yes or no. I'm just sort of posing questions. So
07:40
Right. So and his so his comment was do you trust the government more than the ISPs? Because they may not want to enforce net neutrality and we'll get into that So, let me get a little let me give you a little background on the first so so that's Let's wrap up the first section. There is no agreed-upon definition of what net neutrality is
08:03
Comcast and Verizon will tell you something then that the FCC commissioners will have a different definition Than you or me or anyone else up here. So net neutrality is a concept but what in practice? What does that mean? For example, do you want ISP your ISP to block spam for you?
08:21
Well, is that a net neutrality violation? I don't know. We'll talk about stuff like that later So this in this next section will talk up a little bit about The government and the FCC and enforce sort of enforcing that neutrality so Back in about 2007
08:42
the 2000 yeah, 2007 the government and or the FCC enacted some FC Net neutrality guidelines and how many of you remember the issue where Comcast was caught throttling that torrent traffic? Most people remember that yes
09:01
Yeah, so the FCC Took Comcast to court and It turned out that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals said to the FCC that your guidelines You don't have the power to enforce them because Congress has never given you the authority
09:21
so what we're talking about here is an issue of Congress giving an executive branch agency the authority to do something which they they had not done at that point so while Comcast violated the FCC guidelines those the court said the FCC didn't have the power to enact those
09:41
And that's sort of the environment we're in now as a post Comcast where the FCC's authority is not really clear since then last December the FCC has enacted a new set of net neutrality regulations and Some people are questioning do they actually have the authority to do that? So let's talk a little bit about
10:01
The FCC's authority to regulate the internet in general and where might they find authority to regulate in net neutrality regulations Well, I mean, I was I will say The FCC in its most recent order that it issued December 23rd last year
10:22
They claimed they claimed authority to regulate using a very similar theory I mean, it's the the legal underpinnings are sort of arcane But a very similar theory to the same one that was rejected by the DC Circuit earlier So it seems pretty unlikely that the court because it's the order sure to be challenged
10:41
In fact, it already has been but then the court found that that challenge was premature It shouldn't be overturned again It does not seem like the FCC is going to successfully find authority under the Communications Act as it exists Using the kind of theory that they're using which is that it's not right
11:01
The internet is not regulated as a common carrier under title 2 but rather Through ancillary jurisdiction and that's jurisdiction that Congress has given the FCC to regulate Anything that's sort of related to other other things that it has definite authority to regulate under the Telecommunications Act
11:22
and I kind of want to bring in the English side of all of that the FCC is involved with us for those of you who you know might be kind of new To this internet thing, you know past 10 or 15 years The FCC is involved because the internet branched out from you know shared networks 40 years ago that were all
11:40
You know on AT&T this was all telco territory. So for years and years any Internet traffic long before there was a web was effectively regulated by the FCC because it's all on these public utility lines and things shifted in the 80s when AT&T was broken up and now that we have providers like Comcast coming in and you know Google owning all this dark fiber
12:03
So it's different from the old telco lines as well as all the wireless stuff That's you know one of the things that makes this problem different than maybe things were in 95 when the web started and We saw a similar sort of kind of restrictions on how you access data Yeah, I want to piggyback on some of the stuff that Abigail said
12:24
What the FCC is claiming for their jurisdiction is ancillary jurisdiction and it sounds like a lot of legal ease But just to kind of give you the background on this Congress well opponents of the open internet order would say that Congress hasn't given FCC express Direct authority over the internet. So to give you an example in the Communications Act
12:44
Title 2 is on telecommunications services. Title 3 is on broadcast and wireless and Title 4 is on cable There's no title for internet and the internet hasn't been classified as a telecommunications service So there hasn't been any direct mandate from Congress saying yes, you can go ahead and regulate this what ancillary jurisdiction
13:05
Is is an overarching statement as Abigail said in the Communications Act? That basically says the FCC may perform all acts make such rules and regulations and issue orders Not inconsistent with this chapter and may be necessary in the execution or functions. So it's just an overarching thing saying, you know
13:22
Congress might tell you to Regulate telecommunications, but you have a little bit more leeway than exactly what that what Congress says But they're taking it a little too far. At least that's my opinion. And I think that's the opinion of most people So I think what you're hearing would you sort of I think we kind of all agree may agree on this that
13:41
That whether you support Net neutrality regulations or not the concern at least among the panelists and I would say myself is that Maybe the process is is not working out so well in other words as an executive branch agency The FCC can only do what it's authorized to do by law and even people in Congress many people in Congress who support net neutrality
14:05
Are telling the FCC maybe you need to back off a little bit because we haven't given you the authority to regulate that So I think that's a concern a process concern in terms of in terms of what the FCC is doing Actually, can I add one other thought? I mean one of the concerns at least to me with with the way that the FCC is going about this is if
14:26
if what they ended up doing was merely regulating net neutrality or Regulating I mean apparently regulating net neutrality that might be okay But the theory that they're using is so broad That it seems like it would really give them sort of unbridled ability to regulate the internet generally and that's really scary
14:43
So even if you think net neutrality is great and you totally want regulation that would ensure that You don't necessarily want all the other collateral damage that could come from the FCC Deciding that it's going to start doing other things and I mean we've seen the FCC in the past Try to regulate indecency on the TV, for example
15:01
Would not want to see that happening on the internet for sure So if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile or they can they can keep using this this Justification to do other things exactly I think one of the other and I'm not the will obviously I'm at the lawyer one of the other provisions that the FCC maybe Secondarily is relying on is there's sort of a deregulatory provision
15:22
That's to that the FCC is supposed to try to get out of the way to spread book to promote broadband And that and that's are sort of using that as a regulatory rather than deregulatory Right, yeah They're they're charged with
15:41
With promoting broadband or information and services to throughout the country and I think they're piggybacking on one little thing that Congress said and saying oh Well, that means you know, we can regulate the internet. It's something that's very broad just to make sure that people To make sure that the information systems continue to to go forward. Excellent. Yes
16:09
okay, so Really sure Definitely concerns about the process And whether the FCC is sort of exceeding their authority
16:20
on this next slide I have a number of What people it what the press or whatever, you know, some people have talked about as potential Net neutrality violations. So what I want to do is talk about each one of them and then Have the panel maybe discuss What they think about it, is it a net neutrality violation? Is it something that the
16:45
potential net neutrality of late relations to take care of The first one which I already mentioned is is the Comcast and bit torrent traffic So if you remember back about four years ago I think the Associated Press had done an investigation and some other people have done investigation and found out that
17:04
Comcast was inserting reset packets Into a bit torrent traffic so that That you know, the towards were slowing down or not completing And this I think was probably the first big, you know, big media look at net neutrality in terms of
17:21
a violation so let's talk a little bit about what Comcast did does that violate sort of the principle of net neutrality and And is there is there a way that net neutrality regulations could fix something like that? Let me start off with myself I'll say that I think it's certain what they were doing is certainly a violation of principles of net neutrality
17:43
I mean, they're sort of interfering with traffic Interfering with a protocol. I don't know that that regulations could fix that but let's let's see what the rest of the panel says Just to back up just to back up one step just so that you know What the open internet rules say right now is what the the regulations are
18:00
Basically the net neutrality rules there's four principles and one is transparency They want network operators to talk about their practices and their management of their systems and and give consumers information about what they're doing Internet services can't block legal content and The next principle is no unreasonable discrimination
18:22
so therefore if you're a cable company like Comcast, you can't just say I'm gonna block Netflix just cuz and An overarching principle, which is the fourth principle is reasonable network management. So An internet provider can actually do some things that's within reason to manage their networks such as security spam spam
18:42
So I guess with the Comcast bit torrent case these principles came after that case but before the case there were some principles that were very similar to it that The FCC was relying upon and it was a policy statement. It was not regulations But what the Comcast a bit torrent?
19:00
situation what the courts and what the FCC was focusing on was reasonable network management and was it reasonable for Comcast to be blocking the bit torrent stuff and They didn't disclose it, right? So, um, one of the things that's in there that Deborah didn't go into is it This applies to legal traffic
19:21
Which when we're talking about bit torrent should be brought up because a lot of stuff that people do for bit warrant could be Although maybe not criminally illegal. There could be civilly illegal Yeah, actually I want to add to that point It's really interesting to me that the FCC rules don't actually necessarily
19:42
Prohibit or they they create loopholes that might have allowed what Comcast was doing And that's interesting because FCC of course tried to go stop Comcast from doing it the rule the rules Say no and reasonable discrimination. It's not clear. I mean, there's a specific section in the in the order that says you
20:03
While it while it's not forbidden by the order pay for prioritization is probably not okay So you look at that and you say okay well, maybe then Comcast couldn't do what it was doing, but there's also a loophole in there for Any any reasonable efforts to address copyright infringement So Comcast had merely said oh, you know
20:21
This was our reasonable effort to address copyright infringement because we happen to believe that you know A certain percentage of the traffic or a large percentage of the traffic on bit torn is copyright infringing Then it actually might have been okay under the FCC order, which is I think one of the significant loophole concerns. I Also think interesting about about the the four principles that she said is that this that both the third and the fourth one used
20:43
reasonable and I talked about this in my previous talk on on the fourth amendment, which has the word unreasonable is that is that What does that mean? Reasonable is and I use this I don't I don't even know who the quote belongs to but it's been said that Reasonable or unreasonable. It might be the most litigated word in the history of America in the history of America
21:06
What is reasonable and what is unreasonable and two of the four principles use that word? So so certainly You know these principles are that are interesting, but they're certainly they're destined for the courts Sure, and and actually in the open internet order the FCC specifically says that with reasonable network management
21:25
It's going to be case by case right like they give some examples as to what that could be But they say it's case by case. So it's not defined right and that's that's gonna be a problem So in this case, it's like obscenity and as far as these regulations
21:42
How do other things tie in like the digital Millennium Copyright Act, you know when you're talking about? Doing reasonable things to prevent illegal activity and the other laws that are in place that are a bit could be controversial And you know the things that big corporations effectively have for shutting down traffic Yeah, I mean it's a it's a great question. It'll it will encourage certain behaviors that might be
22:04
Over overreaching or overbroad in terms of stifling Traffic and activity where the law might otherwise actually provide some protection question several First off the point about reasonable unreasonable Legal illegal once you define legal then everything else is illegal
22:24
Which is great because they can make anything they want legal as long as they think of the kids and then everything else is illegal Second reasonable it's late and unreasonable. It's like being a little bit pregnant. I mean, let's be honest here. That's what they're saying. Okay third
22:41
Those were statements. Forgive me third question Why the hell are we talking about and my question is this we're talking about just American net neutrality The you know a significant portion of internet traffic is outside of our borders outside of our control Outside of the FCC and we have the arrogance to think that we control it all fascinating
23:05
What do you think about Well, I didn't I didn't do a lot of studying up on the international views, but I think that I Think that it's more open across across the world But one of the things that I did see in the FCC order and one of the descents to the net neutrality rules
23:22
One of the commissioners brought up the fact that look America is a leader in in the internet and in an innovation Well, that's what she said. That's what she said. Okay, that's what she said But you know if they're gonna if the FCC of this is in the dissent if the FCC is gonna go ahead and regulate this What kind of a what kind of a role model are we serving to other countries?
23:45
Because that could be dangerous too because then they have their own rules and where are we gonna be then? But I mean the point you raise is it is a good one and that is We're talking about regulating is only part of the Internet. Yeah, the traffic that's in the United States. What about traffic from Europe
24:06
To Japan or and and how does any of our stuff? Can we can we regulate that traffic if it transits the United States? Even if it's not I mean at B sides and forgive me for mentioning it But we were handing out zero bank cards and the zero bank cards gave you $400 with the free VPN out of Iceland Germany
24:25
Japan if they give it up into a dozen different choices including the u.s A couple of them but I mean so now that traffic is going encrypted across and gone and how does that affect net neutrality? I mean so as more and more people go to encrypted VPN traffic How is that going to affect or is the legislation gonna give a crap about it? And that's another question
24:41
Let me walk. Let me just walk through the rest of these violations and then we'll start, you know We can start talking about them individually No, no problem how many of you have Mistyped the domain name and Instead of it just not appearing correctly. You got your ISP search page with maybe some advertisements
25:01
Right along for the days when that brought up porn sites So Verizon has done this in the past and there's a lot of ISPs that do this now You type in the wrong thing and instead of just not resolving and giving you an error you get Maybe you were trying to search for this or maybe and it's a certain Well, some people have suggested that your ISP
25:23
By doing this is sort of messing with the DNS protocol and that's a net neutrality violation Let me walk through these all I want to speak on that really quick I've got some strong feelings on this this all started out in 2005 Vera sign who effectively owned the domain name system for years
25:45
Rolled out this concept where if you know you typed in something that didn't resolve they brought up the ad pages and at that point because They owned it and well because they owned the infrastructure and any DNS stuff had to go through them I was firmly against it that was breaking DNS DNS might be a sketchy protocol
26:04
You know, Dan is always talking about it. He's in what track two or something right now But you know, it's one of those things they were breaking it in this case Well, you're getting a service from your provider and if they're gonna redirect it That's kind of contractual thing. You can use other DNS providers. You don't have to use
26:24
You don't have to use the one provided from you. I know I haven't for years. So I Kind of I mean I agree with Todd on that one I don't I mean I have some problems with it or I certainly I think it requires some transparency that may solve the problems I don't see it as a net neutrality issue and partly I think it's nice to keep those net neutrality
26:43
Issues discrete because there may come a day when there really is some kind of regulation So let's let's only affect right and and you sort of mentioned the devil's advocate argument Todd Which was if you're a Verizon customer, you don't have to use Verizon DNS server, right? You could use Google or open DNS or so
27:03
Maybe it's a technical file. I don't know you can argue either way Well, let's see, you know, let's expand that to other services beyond just The DNS say you don't get it so much anymore But it used to be you've got an internet account you had an email account that went with it I mean the concept of all right, you know, I've got an email address and I had a pack Bell account for 15 years
27:23
I paid 20 bucks a month I didn't connect to them just so I could keep that address and people connect to me How would those sorts of things? I mean we with it opens a whole just big can of worms when we start getting into those services that are Available elsewhere, you know when you get beyond just kind of the physical infrastructure That's kind of what the limitation is with a lot of this and that's my feeling on
27:43
Okay, if we're gonna look at the net neutrality, we need to look at kind of the physical nature of it and those specifics Okay A while back Xbox Live started providing ESPN 3 streaming over Xbox Live It turns out that some ISPs like Time Warner Didn't want to we're blocking it
28:01
Has anybody had this problem in the past where you had Time Warner or another ISP and they blocked ESPN 3 from Xbox Live? Okay, maybe one a couple people We'll skip through this one just because what are they showing ESPN 3 is that the dwarf was it tossing? Okay, does anybody have us this is this is this I only do this if someone actually has a phone
28:23
Does anybody know Samsung fascinate a? Samsung fascinating cell phone one person only one person Okay, one of the one of the problem this was another issue that people mentioned the Samsung fascinating phone Which the search engine was locked to Bing and it is yours is yours locked to Bing
28:42
Okay That was another issue If can your can your wireless provider lock you down to using a certain search engine and whether is that in that neutrality violation? And then last one I want to mention and then we'll sort of we'll talk we can talk about any of them is
29:00
Metro PCS Metro PCS is a wireless carrier in Texas and they provided a couple different 4g plans One was like a $40 plan that gave you sort of internet and YouTube and then if you paid $50 you could have access to like Skype and and
29:21
What else Netflix and some other things so what they were doing was charging more for different types of content Which I think and as a principal most people would think that that's a net neutrality violation Charge charging people more for using based on the the type of content and I actually like to discuss that a lot because it goes back to
29:44
Years ago there you go back to the beginning of this fancy web thing and in 95 you had your options You know, you can have your AOL In my case, you know Netflix was the first comfort estaria netcom first company that came up with a flat rate actual web plan
30:02
But you know you pay less money and you get a shell account or you pay a bit more and you can actually use a web Browser and you didn't have to do links and stuff. And so looking at the historical concept. These are similar things I don't know whether it's good or bad and then my feeling, you know I'm not the attorney here is I've gone back for years on the common carrier clause and I always thought that was a good
30:21
Thing I mean that's kind of the original net neutrality thing and that basically from my perspective of managing networks has been All right, if I have the capability of filtering certain content and I filter that content then I'm Responsible for what's passing on my network I mean the internet is based on a lot of sharing and so you let other people's traffic pass on your network if you
30:44
are filtering that traffic and You're responsible for it. So the pity kitty porn comes across your network. If you're not filtering it, that's fine It's not yours if you are filtering it that kitty porn you own that kitty porn and it's you know You're going to federal pound you in the ass prison And I so that's why I'm a fan of kind of the common carrier stuff
31:03
Which we're kind of losing with things not being telcos and you know infrastructure changing and the legal wrangling stuff Well, I guess one one of the things out of all these The net neutrality violations that I think we should point out is in regards to wireless with the new open internet
31:23
Regulations wireless is treated differently Than wireline broadband services and the Commission gives a little bit more leeway to wireless services Because they feel like they want to be a little bit more hands-off since it isn't as developed or so the FCC says as a technology So with the four principles the transparency the blocking the unreasonable discrimination and the reasonable network management
31:47
Wireless companies have to abide by the transparency rules The blocking wireless companies have a little bit of a different standard than the wireline companies, right? I believe that what in the wireless standards they can block as long as they're being transparent about it. Is that correct?
32:03
They cannot block They can't block lawful websites and they cannot block Applications that compete with the providers voice or video telephony services. So therefore if you're a mobile Broadband provider, you can't be blocking someone else's VoIP service, right?
32:23
So in the arena where they actually have more authority, they're doing less basically Because the wireless spectrum is totally regulated by the FCC There's no question about that and it's also all those are still fall into the category At least as far as I know of traditional telcos So, you know on a couple levels they have way more authority versus just the standard internet these days, but they're doing less
32:47
I mean, I guess I guess what's going on with these rules is one of the The arguments against these rules is let the market let the market do this Let it play out and so the FCC is like well The wireline broadband's been around for a while the markets kind of done its thing
33:03
We can go in and regulate it and as far as the wireless goes, I will regulate it You know just half as half as much as the wireline We'll keep an eye on it and we'll see how it how it works out and they don't want to stifle any innovation There yet these regulations don't stifle innovation in the wireline, so it's it's
33:21
Kind of funny that way Yeah, I mean, I don't buy that distinction I mean plus like if you if you want to increase competition which in theory they do wireless is The area where we have none of that and particularly if this AT&T T-Mobile merger goes through I mean, they're gonna be two companies that own 80% of the market
33:40
I mean, it seems to me that wireless is maybe where where more would be Valuable it needs more of my in my mind It should have more regulation because it's a far more, you know, limited resource. The spectrum has already been sold So there should be more regulation because you can't have more Competition because well you it's not like I can go out and it's tough to buy
34:03
You know a hard line, but theoretically if I wanted to run over to my neighbor's house and throw some cat5 over there It's fine. But in the wireless spectrum is totally regulated and it's sold so you can't really buy much more I mean, there's another interesting issue there, which is tethering Verizon had recently asked
34:22
I don't know some app some either Android or Apple to take tethering apps out of its app store and There was a complaint that was filed alleging that That was in violation of the open openness rules that govern that particular
34:43
Spectrum that Verizon was using I mean separately just a question whether tethering is a net neutrality issue sort of an interesting one I'm not sure what I think I mean I think tethering should be permitted but I think the question whether net neutrality goes from content to devices is interesting the FCC thinks it does
35:02
We have about 15 minutes left. So we wanted to save the rest of the time for your questions I'll the only thing I ask is that you just try to make your question brief so that we So that we have time to get to as many people as possible If we run out of time, we can spend you know, some time in the in the question and the answer of room
35:20
But we want to get as many, you know questions as possible. Go ahead Mostly it's two brief statements slash question first going back to one of your previous statements where you were discussing the actual service provider Regulating the services if it's a part of the legal aspect You know your big three Verizon AT&T T-Mobile How are they actually able to be blocking Skype if there's actually a law or regulation saying you're not allowed to block service provider
35:48
So, how are they how are they blocking Skype if there's a regulation saying so well, these regulations aren't in effect yet They have to be published in the Federal Register and then there's going to be 60 days and then after that they will be in effect so I mean unless
36:02
Correct me if I'm wrong Abigail if that's my understanding I mean, they will surely be challenged Yeah, and so it could be a very long time if ever that we actually see them implemented So right now there's nothing right right and it's unless there's um My understanding is unless there's an official stay and the court grants the stay the laws will come into effect 60 days
36:23
Afterward so but if somebody challenges the rules Which they're most likely going to Verizon tried to challenge the rules and the court threw it out saying it wasn't right because It wasn't published in the Federal Register yet. Um Then I'm sure someone will stay the rules and who knows when Yeah, and the way they're written me if it's my network I can come up with total legal justification for throttling any traffic
36:45
I want to so, you know, it's it's you know You have good attorneys and you have good justification and okay is Skype is causing, you know unwarranted Consumption of bandwidth, you know, it's just it's unequal I can't provide the service that I'm contracted due to provide all of everyone. So it's
37:02
That's the loophole I'd go with if I wanted to pull that off and it was my network Right and and just to add to that if if I'm Verizon or Comcast and I and I pay to Put the infrastructure in Then then I might have my my claim that well, I paid to put this infrastructure in So why can't I have some reasonable control over what's on it? So it's a good question
37:23
I think I think what goes to heart of it is like you said the the regulations themselves whether the force that they have because they are be they're going to be challenged and whether or not you know Because if an ISP blocks that stuff now, there's not really because the rules aren't in place 100% yet There's not really an enforcement mechanism in place
37:43
The second question kind of goes more towards the copyright aspect when you look at things in the past such as Microsoft when they came out with the blue is either Vista or seven and the European Union actually stated you are not allowed to force your Browsers only to IE and they made it so that you know, you had to offer the services through IE Firefox Chrome, etc
38:04
At the same regards can't that be taken with net neutrality. You're regulating your services based on Samsung fascinating locked of being Verizon locking you down to using their certain services Comcast all your ISPs are doing the exact same thing How are they burying in as far as their legal regulations?
38:23
How are they different than Microsoft going out here and doing the same thing with their browsers? Well, I mean that would be another way to attack some of the perceived problems that come from net neutrality Which is to take an antitrust perspective and say let's try to increase competition here and maybe that'll improve some of the problems that they're the fallout that we would
38:40
See from not protecting net neutrality per se Thank you. Thank you. We have ten minutes Let's try to limit to one question per person so we can get through all of them Thanks. My name is Josh and I'm from Seattle and I appreciate in and I respect the panel and And I my impression was that most people are prone net neutrality and in the interest of getting both opinions out
39:05
I'm just wondering if you guys could elaborate the opposing argument about In my opinion why my why isn't my my dollar my vote enough to actually cause this to to affect a change I worked at a small ISP a couple small ISPs with less than 10 employees and in
39:24
Generally, we had people come to us because we didn't have any kind of regulation on our our network traffic and and I'd like to hear why that wouldn't work in the case of Certain service providers, you know throttling different services and people being unhappy with that and going to other ones
39:41
Thanks, my feeling on that is the last mile stuff is a limited commodity and and you know For a while with DSL it was open. I know in California that was turned around so that you know For a year or two there was under unbundled DSL and you know, you can still get DSL through other providers But then another ruling came through and said oh no, you know if you want to have DSL
40:05
Like AT&T can charge you for that and yeah that that point is kind of the last mile sort of the thing It's you know, who owns the lines and you know, if there are tariffs in place so that you know The reasonable rates for other competition. I think it's great I don't know whether there is anything like that for things like cable and that maybe someone else can answer that
40:24
Yeah, and that's because The government funded a lot of telephone lines being put in what a hundred ish years ago And so yeah, and that's a public utility sort of the thing So they were able to regulate that which is how the FCC got involved the cable stuff They own all of this you take a look at Google with their the all the fiber they have
40:43
Who knows what's gonna happen the next five years of Google, you know There could be a whole free second super-fast internet here 100 gigs to your door That totally avoids all the rest of this stuff. You just have to let them sniff all your bits and My I'm scared of Google, but since I know where they sleep at Burning Man
41:05
When that changes then well, I'll stop using them Hi This isn't my primary area, so I was just kind of hoping that maybe you could could answer a question Do you know if there is a push on? Either the congressional level or the international level to provide regulation in the net net neutrality or to expand the FCC's
41:26
Delegating authority or is it just going to be a court battle going out on a case-by-case basis at this point Well, there's been a push on boats on both sides meaning the Republican side and the Democratic side So the Republicans are trying to get a bill through Congress that would say the FCC can't regulate this The Democrats are trying to get a bill through saying that they actually have explicit authority to
41:46
But maybe it bound that authority and do you know if there's anything on the international scale just given the international Nature of the Internet. There's some there's some international net neutrality regulation. I think Chile has some laws I think the Netherlands does I think Japan does
42:03
I'm a bit more like on a treaty scale like everybody working together to try to I think it was mentioned in one of the recent EU Commission reports Yeah, just to add just to add that to my so I didn't hear exactly everything she said but
42:24
Generally speaking Republicans are opposed to giving the FCC power to regulate the Internet and Democrats are Generally speaking and because the house is controlled by the Republicans and in the sense control I don't think in this congressional session that we'll see Congress give the FCC any additional authority
42:42
And I even like three days ago when they were dealing with the whole budget crisis I saw some press about some of the senators some of the Republican senators were I Don't know if I think they sent a letter to chairman Genachowski of the FCC saying, you know You guys need to review these rules because President Obama came out with some kind of speech saying that all
43:01
Regulations that have been passed are about to be passed you need to make sure that they're efficient And they're saying hey, you guys have to look these over again. So I know that the Republicans aren't very happy with What's going on? And there is there is definitely some pushback there But you know whether or not it's a priority for Congress. It might be a matter that the courts get a hold of it first
43:23
Okay, so you guys started a lot with content filtering but it seems like from an ISP standpoint They're not filtering content because they don't like YouTube or Netflix. They just don't like the bandwidth suck that it is and For reasonable network management. Yeah, you can throttle some services to give priority to others, but then all bits aren't equal
43:43
How is the regular how are the regulations going to propose the ISP standpoint of overselling their bandwidth? They offer everybody X number of megabits But they really don't have the capability to give everybody X number of it megabits all at the same time So if you start using all of your bandwidth, then they look at you and they ask you
44:01
Okay, what are you doing with your traffic? Can we shut part of your traffic down because you're creating a problem on our network Even though you are only using the a lot of bandwidth that we told you you could have I think I might be able to answer this in the FCC order as far as reasonable network management goes They say that congestion can be legitimate
44:20
Reasonable network management, so I mean I think and I'm not a technical person It sounds like there might be some kind of congestion issue Well, it's like they oversold bandwidth It's been happened with cable from day one where things are oversold and unfortunately, I don't know I've looked through this briefly I haven't read the whole hundred eighty pages yet, but when it comes right down to it
44:41
I don't know that that's really addressed and I hate to say that's kind of one of those contractual things where you know Is there's the last mile things? We don't really have the competition on the cable side and you know Cable I mean wireless is piece. Well, why don't you know what, you know in on any of that? We are being cut off All right, okay
45:06
Who haven't asked questions, please come to question answer. Thank you to everybody on the panel for coming today And thank you for coming. I appreciate thank you