>> even watching booktv. nonfiction books all weekend every weekend right here on c-span2. .. >> about social security and other retirement issues. >> this week on "the communicators," a visit to a technology show on capitol hill

hosted by the consumer electronics association. their big show is in las vegas during the winter, but every spring the cea invites vendors and technology companies to come to capitol hill to display its latest technology to policymakers. we spoke with some of those attending the show. >> host: and now here on "the communicators" on capitol hill we're joined by gary shapiro, president and ceo of the consumer electronics association which is putting on this show on capitol hill. mr. shapiro, what's the importance of getting these companies displayed for policymakers? >> guest: well, there's 535 members of congress, and they effect the future of innovation. we can't get them all to las vegas for the international ces. we'd love to. this is about one-one thousandth the size of the ces, so the important message we're trying to get out is there's great things happening. we're not asking for anything, we just want to let us innovate,

let us do our thing. those areas of technology where entrepreneurs are allow today go forward are ones which would work great in countries around the world. that's all the opportunity you want. let innovation flourish. and to policymakers or lawmakers come down to this? do they enjoy seeing this? >> guest: they're very busy, and they do like coming down. it's tough getting them to las vegas. we think it's very important that policymakers see what the real world is like so they can make informed decisions when they're actually making votes and doing other things that are affecting, basically, how you can build products, what you can do, who you trade with, things like that. great american companies like apple and google and others are -- we have them here in the united states, and we have great international companies here. but it's working. the u.s. is the world leader. we want to keep it that way. but it's important we have the right policies. >> host: when we walked into the displays here, we saw your table, the cea table, and you had your legislative agenda,

essentially, on that table including pipa, sopa, privacy, etc. what's this legislative session been like for you and the consumer electronics association? >> guest: honestly, we've add a phenomenal six months. we got the free trade agreements passed which is very important. we killed pipa and sopa which would have hurt the internet, we allow entrepreneurs to raise money without a lot of bureaucracy. plus we're moving on some other issues like strategic integration, which is very important, and we're hoping to do something about the deficit. we also got additional spectrum for wireless broadband, so you can have your wireless devices and take your products anywhere in the country, and they'll work. so generally, we think congress and the administration have done a pretty good job for the technology industry, and that's all positive. we still have a long ways to go, we've still got to chip away at some of these rules which

discourage starting businesses and some of the competitive disadvantages, but we're doing okay. we're pretty happy. >> host: we talked with one company here, qualcomm, and they talked about how they've developed new efficiency in spectrum use. is the onus also on the technology companies to be more efficient with their, with their spectrum products? >> guest: any technology company, including verizon and at&t, which has paid for spectrum has every bit of incentive to really use it well, and definitely there is -- it's not only an onus, the marketplace demands it. if you don't use that spectrum well, you pay literally billions of dollars for it, you're in trouble. and every day things are developing. but there are limits to some things you can do. it's not only about spectrum usage. we have products, software, google's here, intel's here, chips are getting better. we even have a product in which you can make anything in your home a prototype for just a few thousand dollars. it's called 3-d printing and

it's going to be the wave of the future. >> host: finally, gary shapiro, recent article in the politico newspaper quoted you as saying nice things about mitt romney. now, it's 2012, it's an election year. do you see a tech agenda by the obama campaign or the romney campaign at this point? >> guest: i think there's a tech agenda between the two campaigns that's actually very, very similar. they're both very pro-technology, they're both using technology. in their own ways they like technology. it's a clean industry, it's a growth industry, things are good there. i think i personally support romney because i think he's better for business, he's better for job creation. he doesn't rely on a big federal bureaucracy, and he'll rip away at it rather than keep increasing it. to me, the most important thing is getting jobs in the country, really it's a sense of business owners that they should be investing in the united states. right now under president obama, frankly, they're investing

abroad. you don't know what union rules you're going to be hit with, the tax rate is the highest in the world now in the u.s., you can't repatriate your money, you can't get the best and brightest people, so our members are being encouraged to invest abroad. and that is not healthy for the economy. if the economy doesn't do well, the tech industry doesn't do well. so my calculus, the most important thing to our success is the absolute health of the economy, and that's why i favor romney. >> host: gary shapiro, president and ceo of the consumer electronics association. web site? >> guest: ce.org. >> host: and on "the communicators" we're talking with joe kennedy who is ceo of pandora. mr. kennedy, for people who don't know, what is pandora? >> guest: pandora is permized -- personalized internet radio based on your favorite artists, songs or genres. and by giving thumbs up and thumbs down, refining them to meet your taste. >> host: when was it developed,

and what's the business model? >> guest: pandora's been in business for over 12 years. we actually launched the service about six and a half years ago, so there's a tremendous amount of intellectual property that's been developing over that entire time period. the music genome project is the foundation of intellectual property. and by put that all into pandora six and a half years ago. the business model is mic radio. it's primarily ad-supported, free to the consumer. we do have a subscription option. the great thing about delivery o over the internet is you can give the consumer that choice to enjoy pandora with advertising or pay $36 a year and enjoy it without any advertising. >> host: are you profitable yet? >> guest: we're not profitable. we're roughly break even last year. our revenues have been growing significantly. but we do face very significant royalty costs which is really one of the main policy issues that we're here in d.c. to talk about.

>> host: and what have you been telling members of of congress? >> guest: well, the big theme here is that radio is convergent. so consumers now in the home, in the car, on the go can listen to am/fm radio, satellite radio, they can listen to radio over a cable settop box, over the internet. and increasingly they're enjoying all of those choices. but the way legislation treats those different types of radio is wildly different. based on the different time periods when those technologies were invented. and as a consequence, internet radio pays far higher royalties than any other form of royalty. broadcast am/fm radio actually pays no royalties to performing artists and their labels. satellite and cable pay 8-15% of revenue. we've been paying 50% of our revenue in royalties. and so the theme here really is as radio converges, we need a level playing field that's

technology agnostic and recognizes that radio is radio. >> host: is there pending legislation? has anyone introduced anything? >> guest: there was legislation in the last session of congress, the so-called performance rights act. it passed both judiciary committees but did not come to a floor vote in either chamber. i think there continues to be interest in the topic, and i think a realization that it's the right thing here, that rationalization is appropriate getting a technology-neutral approach to radio. and so i think the time will come. >> host: one of the other issues, mr. kennedy, that capitol hill is dealing with in the tech world is privacy. and what about the information that you collect from people who use pandora? what do you do with that mftion? >> guest: we take a very, very conservative posture in terms of privacy. we only have your e-mail address, age, gender and zip

code. nothing beyond that in terms of your information. of and we don't sell it or share it with other entities. we do use the information about your age and your zip code and your gender to target advertisers, make it more relevant to you. but we don't, you know, we don't use geolocation, for example, even though we're used extensively on smartphones. we don't enable the gps tracking capability. we'll use the zip code that the user provided with us at the time of registration to provide broad geotargetting. we know you're in the washington, d.c. area. but we're not tracking you in terms of where you are this minute versus the next minute. so i think there's a lot that has to be sorted out from a privacy standpoint, and we're going to take a very conservative position on that until all the policy things are sorted out. >> host: where are you based? >> guest: we're based in san francisco, actually in oakland. an interesting story. we developed in an enterprise zone in oakland and now have

over 500 employees in, you know, in the heart of oakland that, quite honestly, doesn't have a whole lot of things in terms of businesses that size and scale. so we're very excited to be part of a city that, i think, really appreciates the employment growth that we've brought to it and has been very supportive of our continued development. >> host: venture capital? >> guest: we, we're venture funded. went through many rounds of venture funding. we went public just about a year ago, so last year in june we went public. we're actually traded at symbol p on the new york stock exchange, and so, you know, our overall progress is really quite good from a business standpoint. we actually have 125 million registered users in this country, over 50 million of which are active every month. so we've really become a significant part of the radio landscape. in fact, we now represent just under 6% of all radio listening in this country on pandora.

pandora's in most cities, pandora is bigger than the largers am or fm radio station in that market. >> host: what's your background? >> guest: my background, i really -- i spent the first part of my career at sat turn, the car company, trying to turn that model upside down and do great things for consumer, and then i came out to the internet world about 12 years ago and have used the internet as a mechanism to try and do innovative things that kind of create new possibilities for consumers. >> host: well, as you mentioned, mr. kennedy, a common use of pandora is smartphones, but you've got some other products displayed here. how else can one get pandora. >> >> >> guest: the products are really meant to show the full range. this, for example, is an alpine aftermarket radio. you can see it's connected to an iphone. it's each got thumbs up and thumbs down that alpine has built into it. so the consumer when using thisw

in their car, it is no different from using am or fm radio. we have a mock-up of a samsung refrigerator. there really is a samsung refrigerator that integrates pandora, and it's actually the percentage of people who buy this refrigerator who connect to pandora kind of integrated with an account is unusually high. so people really are enjoying pandora, you know, in their kitchen courtesy of this samsung refrigerator. and here we have some basic tablets. we're huge on smartphones, huge on the ipad. this is a barnes & noble nook, this is the amazon kindle fire. again, all of these connected devices that are entering our lives pandora's integrated into. in fact, of all of the companies displaying here at cs on the hill, i think half of the companies market products that integrate pandora into them. samsung tvs, directv as a, you know, satellite service

provider, samsung, you know, intel, audiovox, pretty much all have connected electronics today integrate pandora to enable this anytime, anywhere access that consumers want because that's how radio's coon assumed finish consumed. >> host: joe kennedy, ceo of pandora radio, has been talking with "the communicators." >> guest: thank you, peter. >> host: panasonic is one of the companies that has a december play here at -- display here, and peter fan nonis vice president of panasonic. first of all, mr. fannon, what do you do for panasonic? >> guest: i work on the technology issues, so the development of new technologies, figuring out what our global company can do here in the u.s. and how our r&d activities here in the u.s. can help the global company. >> host: where is panasonic based in the u.s.? >> guest: it's based in new jersey, just across the river

from new york, but we have about 5500 people spread around the u.s., maybe 10,500 in north america, and they're all involved in a combination of manufacturing, for example, for avionics, that's the entertainment and communications systems onboard airplanes to batteries and battery pack manufacturing down in georgia, avionics in california. marketing and sales activities, r&d in california and boston and michigan for electric vehicles, some of which we're showing here, for example. and in texas and a few others places. >> host: well, mr. fannon, what is it you wanted lawmakers, policymakers and their staff to see here on capitol hill? what's your display? >> guest: well, most folks know panasonic for the consumer electronics, the televisions at home, blu-ray players, things like that. but, n., under the hood, behind the scenes panasonic actually has a wide array of products including a range of

energy-oriented products. and that's what we're showing today. because all of us know that we have to be able to generate new forms of energy using new systems such as solar panels, and once you generate it, of course, we've got to be able to store it intelligently and then manage it. so along with the traditional forms of power generation in the grid, more and more people are actually creating their own energy at home. typically using wind power or, more importantly, solar. so in panasonic's case, for example, here in salem, oregon, we make these giant, heavy silicon ingots. it's a very highly-refined form of silicone with some other chemistry that then gets sliced into thin layers and turned into the how long yules that make up -- modules that make up solar panels. panasonic is the company with the single most efficient energy capture pass-through in its

solar panels, a little over 20%. and, of course, over time we hope to grow that so that more of the sun's energy is actually collected, sent down the system into your home and in storage. the other thing we're talking about alto we don't actually provide it in the u.s. yet -- we do this in japan and a few other places -- are home energy storage batteries. sun during the day, storage battery energy at night. and those batteries are, essentially, these. this kind of cell is a lithium ion cell. this same cell, 6800 of these packaged together in modules power a tesla roadster 250 miles on one charge. but these packaged differently make up modules like this that go into storage systems, small ones for the home, medium size for small businesses and very large units. for example, university of

california at san diego panasonic has installed a very large storage array that takes solar power off of the roofs on one corner of the campus, stores it, distributes it to the rest of the campus as part of the university of california's energy demonstration project. we're all learning from those and, of course, hope to make these efficient and effective. >> host: mr. fannon, is your solar business profitable? >> guest: our solar business, like so many others, is relatively new in this country but growing quite rapidly. because we have the world's most efficient and because we have a global supply chain, we're pretty well situated to be a good competitor. but our focus is not typically the home so much as it is the business environment. business-to-business sales. so panasonic solar panels were just installed at mariners stadium out in seattle. they power almost 50% of the need of infin onraceway in

sonoma, california. you'll see them everywhere in the business market. more announcements coming soon on that front. stadiums, public buildings, special venues. >> host: and, again, for lawmakers, policymakers, what's the importance of them seeing solar when it comes to -- >> guest: the importance for us is to understand that a nay shent industry needs care and attention, shouldn't be undercut or wrongly disadvantaged relative to other opportunities in the market. so we're very active in discussing how new energy proposals, new energy legislation moves through congress and what we can do as an industry to help government understand how this can play an important part in the growing energy needs and as a way to save fossil fuels for the time when we'll really need them. because ultimately, of course, those are sources that will run out. >> host: peter fannon, there's a rather eye-catching poster that

you have over here with some annual energy costs. could you explain what this is? >> guest: i'd be delighted. you know, if you still have a crt television, the tube tv types of years past, a 27-36 inch tube typically took over 300 watts for which you got standard television and maybe some okay audio. in today's large screen, flat panel tvs, you can get a 50-inch plasma or lcd tv that uses one-third of that power if you h dtv six times the picture quality, multiple channels of sound. imagers out of sd cards, connections to cable directly. a variety of new features, web connections to bring the web into any tv regardless of your provider, and all of that, all of that runs on less than one-third the power that your old tv used. an interesting part of that is

this product. finish as people get rid of their old crt t tvs, of course, you want to responsibly recycle them because electronics often have things that don't go in the landfill, and most places don't permit it anymore which is the right thing. so what do you do with the glass and other things? in panasonic's place, we take glass and spin it into glass wool. put it in a wafer of oil, vacuum out the air, and this nearly one-quarter inch thick insulation is 14 times more effective than the typical fiberglass in your home. so we're already using this kind of product made out of old tv screens in small appliances; hot water kettles, microwave ovens and the like. they simply contain the heat. but over time, of course, we

hope this kind of thing can become a useful output for recycled materials for things like old and now no longer usable televisions. >> host: and we have been talking with peter fannon, vice president of panasonic, about some of their environmental and solar products. thank you fur your time here on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you very much. great to see you, peter. >> host: and now joining us on "the communicators" is enrique mouchant, desktop fab is the name of his company. >> guest: we distribute and design 3-d printer technologies, so we have a 3-d printer right here, and all of the items on the table have been printed by this machine. >> host: now printed, these are full-scale items. >> guest: yeah. so you can picture this as a computer-controlled -- [inaudible] you take plastic, run it through the heater, and layer by layer,

build up a full 3-d item. >> host: and this is the printer right here. >> guest: yes. >> host: is this something that you made or invented? >> guest: no. we distribute this machine. >> host: you distribute this machine. okay. who invented this? >> guest: a company called bits from bytes out of england. >> host: and what is your role? what's your background? >> guest: electrical engineering. started my first business when i was 17, and through that, through manufacturing all those items, went off in prototype stuff and used 3-d printers to do that. so back at that time the machine were too expensive to own one. it seemed like more interesting work. >> host: so where is this machine built? england. >> host: in england. and desktop fab is had quartered in texas?

now, how is this mechanical hand printed, as you say, on this printer? how does that happen? >> guest: so all of these individual parts were printed on the machine and asemiened. so you still have metal bolts and electronics and motors inside, ball of the plastic was made here. >> host: on this machine? >> guest: yes. >> host: and are these commercially available at this point? >> guest: they are. they cost, this particular model, 3,930. >> host: how many have you soldsome. >> guest: several hundred, ini colluding the manufacturers. >> host: who would need a 3-d printer? >> guest: mostly hobbyists, small businesses or anytime you need to do interactive design. if you wanted -- [inaudible] would have been about $10,000. in parts materials from the machine it's less than 100. so you can go and very easily

prototype stuff, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. you just print out another one, and it's still cheap. >> host: so your role at desktop, are you inventers? are you distributers? >> guest: primarily distributers. >> host: do you consider yourself an inventer? >> guest: yeah. we do some r&d work. >> host: what kind of patents do you have? >> guest: none right now. >> host: none right now? okay. >> guest: patents are only as good as your defense attorneys and your budget, so -- >> host: why are you up here on capitol hill? >> guest: mostly to discuss the issues surrounding 3-d printing. right now there aren't enough of these in houses to be a big deal. but as the cost goes down and the technology proliferates more, all of these things are digital models. so if i hand you a cd and you give it to ten of your friends, you didn't own any of that music. likewise here you take a digital file and give it to tens or hundreds or thousands of people,

it doesn't matter unless they have something they can make that file with, and with this they do. so that ends up being the principle issue, how do you go and come up with an adequate solution for content protection and content management that takes into account people's ability to create so you don't hinder the technology but still take in owners' considerations as well. >> host: enrique, how long did it take to print, as you say, the plastic bunny? >> guest: 21 hours. >> host: okay. is this making something now? is it printing something now? >> guest: it's printing a three-chambered whistle. [inaudible conversations] >> host: and we have been talking with the president of desktop fab, enrique muyshondt about 3-d printers. [inaudible conversations]

>> host: congressman darrell issa is ear at the consumer electronics show on the hill. congressman, what are you doing down here in the rayburn cafeteria? >> guest: i'm seeing some products that were not yet available at the consumer electronics show in las vegas. it's an exciting, large show. this gives members of congress, most of whom will never go to that show, to get an idea of where consumer electronics is doing. a robot over here that's going to be use inside the hospital, give people video access to their doctor remotely or in the home. obviously, dish network, pandora, the very -- the 3-d screens that are going to be used at the democratic and republican conventions, hundreds of them, are here today. all of those kinds of items i think are excited to members of congress who are not necessarily tech-savvy. >> host: what are the policy implications? >> guest: well, one is available spectrum, whether it's for the wi-fi you use in your home

or the cellular network that you rely on as you drive down the road. and even beyond that, a lot of other white space. a lot of capability where there could be new and exciting products if we can allocate bandwidth. today particularly qualcomm is showing a new proposed standard that would allow video to be transferred over the internet or over your cell phone with same resolution, half the size of data meaning twice as much for the price. >> host: and less spectrum or the same amount of spectrum -- >> guest: exactly. you'd be able to do a given definition with half the spectrum. big advance. now we're looking at growth over two or three years that could double the amount of video. this new standard could allow us to double the video with existing spectrum, so there's a lot of exciting things that members of congress need to understand. >> host: do you think spectrum auctions will happen very shortly? >> guest: i do think they're going to happen shortly. i'm an advocate for spectrum expansion. sometimes i think we get involved in the term "auction," and we get focused on the money we receive rather than the real benefit to the consumer,

remembering that spectrum belongs to the american people, and it needs to go to the highest and best use, sometimes not the best profit. >> host: and finally, a lot of the issues, tech issues are now about elections and fcc, whether or not to post the cost of commercials, etc. as chairman of the government affairs committee, do you see any hearings going forward that might involve election issues? >> guest: we do see some that are going to involve it. the hatch act, this is where public officials speak and become politicized while using their offices, and that's certainly a problem every election year where people would like to leverage their existing office for the next office. we also do think that transparency, greater transparency in all of government be spending and spending on campaigns is essential. just this week the data act will be on the house floor, and it's going to make the recipient of all federal money completely transparent to all of us. >> host: congressman darrell issa, chair of the government affairs committee here at the