>> "the new york times" nonfiction bestsellers lists continues with "guantanamo diary." and growing up in taliban-controlled northern pakistan. and wrapping up the list, eric foner provides a history of the underground railroad in "gateway to freedom." and that's a list of this week's best nonfiction sellers according to "the new york times". >> host: michael paul, what does net -- michael powell what does net neutrality mean to you? >> guest: it's kind of an abysmal term. when i was chairman in the early 2000s, it always meant to me first and foremost the rights of consumers to enjoy the full blessings of what the internet really promises which is really complete and open platform that allows them to go where they want do what they want in a way

that they want and attach innovations to the network in a way that they want in order to bring the internet more fully into their lives, and i think it's a really important principle. i thought so when i first gave that speech, and i think so just as strongly today. >> host: how has the argument and the positioning evolved in the last 15 years? >> guest: you could write a book about it. i mean, i think it's sort of the law of unintended consequences. i think it started off as an engineering principle. i think then it became articulated as a principle of guidance and public policy and i think it worked really well for the country for many years, and with each successive commission, there seemed to be an upping of the ante, and during the martin chairmanship it became a declaratory ruling and applied probably in a reckless way that led to be overturned in court, became part of the 2008 obama campaign, became a rule that had to be

promulgated as a political imperative. and i think that's where things, to my mind, got off the rail. because i think in an effort to do something defensible, put in place a sustainable rule, the commission's own power and jurisdiction came under question and clearly was rejected twice by the courts which has driven this notion of, well, we were blue widgets before if we just change the name and make you red, then we will expand the commission's power and it'll overcome the jurisdictional difficulty it had with the rule. today now we're talking about a regime that will be much more broadly about regulating the internet than just sustaining net neutrality rules. i don't think that was the intention, i don't think that was the intention of most advocates during this proceeding, but it is where we're headed. and i think that's the fatal step that we're dealing with today. >> host: joining our conversation here on "the communicators" is brian fung of the washington post. >> thanks for having me peter.

mr. chairman i just wanted to pick up on something you were just saying about sort of where things went off the rails. did you ever anticipate, you know when you were developing the principles that things could get this far? >> guest: no. if you really went back and looked at the speech i'm a big believer that if you set the culture and the tone at the beginning of a new environment that these guiding principles can really cause those initial business decisions and those initial engineering decisions to bend in the right direction and, therefore, avoid the need for greater intervention. and the goal was a little bit to shoot across the bow of the industry and say these are really things that the american consumer's come to value. engineer faithfully to them, and you will prosper, they will prosper, and there'll be no need for the government to play a heavy regulatory role. and if i can say so in my own judgment, i think it was wildly successful. no matter what the rhetoric of net neutrality and i don't mean this as a political point but

the reality is there has not been any demonstrable patterning practice of any of those principles being violated in the marketplace even though no legal prohibition has existed that would keep a company from doing so. it was profitable or compelling to do so. so today most of my ceos would say if i tried half of what people are saying i'm interested in doing, i would be completely hung by my customers. the outrage would be intolerable for us as a company. and they made some preceding decisions over the last 20 years of building networks in a very different way, i think that would be a really radical business shift to start doing those things. so i think i didn't anticipate. i expressly sort of argued that they shouldn't be but, you know, i think it's a cautionary tale that regulation tends to grow and expand, not contract over tame. and i think that's going to be the reality with title ii as well. >> so when you sort of go into a little bit why you sort of took

on the net neutrality issue in the first place and if you had to do it all over again, would you? >> guest: yes, i would. i mean i'm starting to feel hike an old guy. -- like an old guy. i was at the commission when the internet was more or less invented as a commercial enterprise. this was something we hadn't seen before, and there were really these organic questions about what was this thing? it was so different, so exciting so innovative so dynamic. we wanted to make it thrive. we wanted it to explode. we wanted the investment to go to the network. we wanted consumers to get it. so, you know, a lot of fun conversations about what its nature was. great engineers like dale hatfeld and orrs who were teaching us, and this end-to-end principle was really valuable. tim wu who i considered to be a friend, someone i knew in those days, i knew he was talking about it in legal scholarship. in many ways it was some of his

thinking that made me think i should speak out on the subject. very glad i did, and i still do. if you'd asked me then just as you have asked me now do i think the government should regulate the internet under the telephone-era platform, i would have vehemently opposed that then as i do now. and by the way, i think back then so would virtually everybody of every political stripe. >> so under you you sort of laid out these principles. under kevin martin there was some additional action. now it seems like net neutrality's sort of been picked up by mostly democrats on the hill, president obama, chairman wheeler as a standard sort of for internet policy. how would you suggest making the case, republican case for net neutrality at this point? turning back to -- >> guest: look republicans, first of all are no different than democrats in the idea that they want their messages to be heard. republican kids want to go to

nickelodeon.com just as much as democratic children do. we all want to use our iphones to check the weather and do the fun things we do. and these things aren't partisan in, you know, the services and compelling aspects of it. even the republican party and conservative movements on the far right also have a real, vested interest in being able to communicate effectively. so i don't think the substance is particularly partisan. by the way, i would disagree with the characterization that only democrats picked it up. even if you look today at the legislation being proposed by the republican congress, every one of the staunch net neutrality principles has been advocated by the community pushing for this are incan'ted in those proposals -- incorporated in those proposals. on the substance of net neutrality, they're identical to the president's statements. candidly, it was the president's intervention that i think turned this into party political

partisanship that's unfortunate. >> so to pick up on the legislative bit, a number of democrats seem to be balking at the bill over concerns that it would restrict the fcc's authority. if the bill were to sort of remove -- i guess the question would be, you know would you support a watered-down bill that perhaps strips out the provisions about section 706 or title ii? >> guest: two quick things. look legislators legislate and that's a negotiated process. my appeal to the democrats would be not that you have to swallow what these guys put at this table, but they put an offer on the table. come to the table and tell them what would have to change to make you support it. i think that's what's not happening yet and should happen as responsible government. and i think there's plenty of room where i understand walden thune and others are to negotiate the specifics of those details, they just need a

partner to be willing to sit at the table and do that and that hasn't happened yet and i'm still hopeful that it does. so that's number one. i think number two, when i testified in the house recently on net neutrality i expressly said my industry wouldn't object to the prohibition of 706 being removed. i do find the court's interpretation of it relatively expansive and not so as -- so sure as an independent matter i would agree with it. be i think it's -- but i think it's a bridge too far to take it away. we have argued all year that you could adopt net neutrality under that provision, so i wouldn't be supportive of us to say now we don't want it. to be honest, i think a lot of legislators think it's what the tech community wanted. what no one's talking about is the breadth of the way 706 has been interpreted, there is no reason why the commission couldn't reach the conduct as

well. no reason you couldn't reach google facebook, am, ebay or other -- amazon ebay or orr content companies. and that, you know, is a worrisome interpretation of the statute. i think a lot of people on the hill thought possibly reversing that was something that would attract the tech community. but if they don't show an interest in it -- >> test talk about the litigation for -- let's talk about the litigation for a second and what seems to be an impending court case involving the draft rules here. >> guest: uh-huh. >> what's your sense for what the litigation risk is here? does the whole thing get thrown out? just a part of it? which parts? >> guest: i don't think -- an honest person can't fully assess that yet because we haven't seen the order. the order is supposedly 332 pages long. every one of those words matters, every one can potentially result in legal error, any one of those provisions cannot be based on a full record of proper notice any one of those things can be

an illegal analysis that doesn't pass the standards applied by the courts, so it's hard to say. i will say this: it is a massively complex set of legal terms that are going to be embodied in this odder. they're going to completely -- order. they're going to completely throw out 20 years of interpretation. in the 2000s when it was classified differently, i'm not so sure we believe the internet's changed as much as they need it to change in order to change the definition. they're going to preempt state legislatures in a way that runs contrary to court cases by the supreme court. they're going to do the first untested global forbearance exercise that has ever occurred at the commission on a record that is intention with that record on the adoption of the rules. i mean, there are lots and lots and lots of grounds in there for challenge, and, you know what the prospects of any one of them winning or all of them winning, we don't know yet.

but i without bravado i'm pretty confident i think there are going to be really serious arguments against aspects of what they've done. the interesting thing is i'll sum up quickly here, is it's kind of a jenga game, right? a house of cards. we're told all these pieces are dependent on each other. oh we're reclassifying but only for net knew centrality except we're going to keep a few rules that have nothing to do with net neutrality we're not regulating the internet, you know, that's a whole lot of stuff that's got to hold together. so you can say, well, one piece can be instrumental to the whole regime, you know? is this commission prepared to reclassify if they couldn't do forbearance? world they reclass -- would they reclassify if the court says, oh no, you can't forbear from these nine things? this is why it will be a litigation circus and go on for many years. >> host: well, michael powell, as president and see i don't

have of -- ceo could you see your group being party to litigation? >> guest: i should say our board hasn't made that decision but i think it's highly likely we would. this shift is so dramatic we have been investing this industry's invest over $1.2 trillion over the course of the last decade on the assumption that that investment was going into a network that was regulated as a light touch regulatory environment. the shift to a completely different regulatory environment puts those investment-backed expectations at risk. it changes the nature of the way you have to run the business. i think it's just too dramatic, too serious a change not to ask the court to review the propriety of what the commission did particularly when so much of it rests on whether they have the authority to do it in the first place. and i think this is why, back to brian's question, it's really tragic to see people dismissive of the legislative process as if it's somehow evil trying to

subvert the objective. the problem is fcc authority. well if congressional authority is unclear then congressional action is the solution. this whole thing can be fixed with a sentence even if congress wants to. and save us all the headache, time and expense and uncertainty that is associated with it. presently, it's become so highly politicized, people are profiting politically from different aspects of the controversy, and i think that's clouded our policy judgment and has not allowed us to sort of seek really sane solutions to. to this. i don't believe this fcc should make such a monumental decisional change without the direct input of the united states congress. they are an independent agency. all of their authority's dearrived from the will of congress -- derived from the will of congress. i don't think the commission attempting to build that role for itself without additional input from the congress is a constitutionally-appropriate way

to go about this. all of that can be cleaned up and fixed if people will sit down at legislative table and find a solution. >> should the fcc release its draft can rules to the -- draft rules to the public? >> guest: you know i -- first i would say with respect to the commission, it is their prerogative. i will say that nothing as a matter of law, prevents them from doing so if they choose. other administrative agencies do it and have done it. i would say this is probably the most serious regulatory decision of the commission in over 25 or 30 years. it's highly controversial. it has enormous public interest in it. and i am sort of frustrated, as i'm sure you are as a reporter listening to people's dueling interpretations of what is in it or not in it. we have wall street and capital markets trying to guess whether it means this or doesn't mean that. all of that certainly could be improved by letting the world know what's really in it and what's really not. i certainly would welcome it if they were willing to release it.

the chairman's correct in saying, you know, past practice is generally not to do so, but it's also equally true that nothing prevents him from doing so and maybe with something this controversial that has had four million comments filed about it and enormous interest maybe we should all know what's in it that we're fighting about before it becomes a law. >> if you were in chairman wheeler's seat right now, would you release the draft? and if not, you know, can you think of any examples from your tenure where you might have considered doing so? >> guest: i think it's a tough question, you know? but i think, you know, just to cut to the chase, i think i probably would do it. i think i would seriously consider doing it. and why? because i think it would help them as well. meaning, i think right now what you're getting is an enormous amount of hardening of positions around people's spin about what's in it or not. the chairman continues to insist things like it doesn't have rate regulation, other commissioners say it does. why don't owe let people see it -- don't you let people see

it? what would the harm be? usually you're worried it harms the internal deliberations which i think is a fair thing to be concerned about. but to be candid, i don't think this particular order is going to have much internal deliberation. the republicans are strenuously against it. if you take their own words they're not engaged with the chairman, or he's not engaged with them on the substance, so there's really nothing going on there. i can't speak for the democrats but it's widely perceived that they're in lock step with the president on this. so what, you know seems to me that it's the public's turn to hear. >> host: michael powell, did you see ajit pai's press conference the other day -- >> guest: i did, yes. >> host: and what did you think about that? >> guest: it's unusual, but i think it's completely legitimate. i mean i think, you know, every commissioner has a right to be heard on their views of the issues every commissioner has a right to hold a press conference and has a right to go through the order.

i think he's trying very cayfully to -- carefully to abide by the rules of the commission. his picture of it kind of thing i find humorous. but, you know, i think ajit pai is a very, very smart person. i think he's a very competent and skilled lawyer. i think he works hard. i think he is probably one of a handful who probably genuinely dug through the order. you may or may not agree with his political predilections as he approaches it, but i i think you have to respect the seriousness of his work. and when i look at the press release or the words or arguments he made with a few exception, i think they were substantive criticism. and if everybody wants healthy debate, then what's wrong with that? this is one of those cases where it seems like people like diverse diversity of voices until they're not the ones they like. the sneer campaign that i -- smear campaign that i see being launched against him is as

despicable as anything he did more so in my judgment and why don't you take on the ideas? why do you have to disenfranchise the person? i don't have any respect for anybody who's doing that. >> host: so let's say title i is the law of the land and the internet is under title ii, how does that affect your member companies like comcast and cox, etc. >> guest: again, details matter. a couple things i would say though is look it really really does change how you run a business. if you're todd rutledge, your team brings you a new innovation. everybody acts like networks are just dumb railroad tracks. networks get rebuilt every 8-24 -- 18-24 months. there's an enormous amount of science and engineering and revolution that goes into networks. not just ios 8.1 that's an innovator. when the industry goes to

gigabit, it's going to reengineer. so when engineers come together, their producting people marketing people here's what we'd like to do, here's the big leap, here's the engineering change, here's the marketing plan here's where we'd have to price it, whether you like it or not ever one of those decisions gets colored and has to be filtered through a regulatory screen that yesterday they did not, right? tom rut language or -- rutledge, anybody could make those decisions based on the cost of thening nearing and because the regulatory costs are low, they can spend more money on bigger regulatory leaps -- i mean network leaps than they might have otherwise. but starting the day after you can't to that. just take rates, for example. you know, i respect the chairman saying not trying to regulate rates, but it's not accurate because now your rates are subject to two in one just and

reasonable review whether you like it or not. you can be sued over your rates. so when your team brings you a new price, you as a ceo have a fiduciary duty to ask yourself is this price going to be legal? and right now he or she will have no idea because the commission hasn't said what's reasonable yet. all you know is they could decide it wasn't. so you have to decide what your going to put in the market or not. so it's the day-to-day. i'm sort of frustrated with those who act like well it's not going to be an explosion on day -- of course it's not going to be an explosion. companies are not going to stop investing on day one, of course they're not. but it is going to create a pall across all business decisions. and the historical proof of the depressing effect of these kinds of regimes far exceeds any proof that anybody professors that it doesn't. we could -- proffers that it doesn't. we could sit here for hours and i would have 20 examples for

anyone that i could come up with i assure you. it has not been a history of a regime that promotes risk taking or anything. innovation without permission is critical ingredient well networks need innovation without permission too. and if every this innovate -- they have to innovate with permission the velocity of their exchange will slow down just as it would in the software world. >> so you were drawing a distinction between the valley and the app universe, the app universe is, obviously, sort of much closer to consumers. i think, you know, you see companies hike netflix or amazon or google are very well regarded by consumers whereas i think, you know, it's probably safe to say that many consumers don't find your industry as popular. in that light, you know, is there a connection between the

popularity of an industry and its success at, you know lobbying or success at deriving policy victories in washington? >> guest: well, if i understand -- i'm not sure i understand the question, but i would say, look, the only thing that affects consumer popularity is how you treat a customer what your relationship is with that customer and whether your providing them -- you're providing them quality services that they value. i don't think any neighbor of mine thinks two wits about what policy issue's going on or how their industries are fairing or not fare -- faring or not faring. i also would dispute the suggestion that, you know, the app skies are closer to the consumers. i think quite the contrary. cable companies walk right into your house. nothing's more intimate than that. cable companies are the ones that send you the bill. cable companies are the ones that you call whenever you have a problem even if it isn't their

equipment. you bought your linksys router which was made in silicon valley, but you're going to call comcast because it's not working. i think they're the one -- i would concede your point. part of the tougher relationship with them is about that intimacy. they're in your house. they make you have appointments. they have to fix it. they send you the bill. google's never sent me a bill as a consumer. i've never met a google customer service rep. have you ever called google for customer service support? ever called facebook? i doubt it. has anybody? they are very, very distant other than their products from people very distant from the consumers. and i think that's the genius of both their service, but also, you know, the reality of the product they're providing. but i think the thing people need to remember, this is a symbiotic system. each needs each other. if i up plug your cable, you're not going to use google or facebook or am. they need that network.

and what's really depressing about this debate is it's driven a wedge between two sides of an ecosystem that desperately depend on each other's thriving. and there's always been this historical commitment to all of them wanting government out of their business light regulatory environment for the internet as a whole. that has now been breached, and you've driven this wedge and said this side of the -- and we're going to try to live out from under it. first thing i'll say is, stay tuned, it will not be long before they have things come after them. ask uber ask air b&b any company that's running into regulatory environments. this will come to haunt them as well. so they're very popular that distance works to their advantage. but that bill we give a consumer, some portion of that dollar that we get goes to making that internet go from 50 megabits to 100 megagets which gives bag to -- makes google a lot of money. so they need each other.

>> host: michael powell last question. can you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the capable industry and what's -- cable industry, and what's its future? >> guest: let me start with weakness, and i think brian hit on it. customer service right now is completely unacceptable. i think the industry needs to really not double triple, make a ten-year commitment to the recovery of that relationship. i think it's -- i don't think it's because they're bad people, i think it's a consequence of their growth a consequence of networks that essentially, have been built for a different every rah that are being innovated. there's a lot of glitches in getting it to digital, getting it to hd, getting it the broadband, and i think there have been a lot of growing pains, and i think our customer service has suffered. there could be more investment in the innovation of the product as the industry moves from a hardware-centric box structure it'll move to a software-centric one like comcast's x1 has started to and that'll allow

faster more media-rich entertainment packages -- i mean, interfaces that i think consumers will appreciate. and lastly look we're a middle class industry. we depend on selling lots of service to lots of americans. we can't survive selling to some high elite or some niche. we don't have virtues of some businesses that you could sort of go up market and survive. we have to have 85% penetration. we have to have 80% penetration. so affordability is a critical issue, you know? it has to be priced at a level that americans can afford and make a value judgment. and i think i think it's more affordable than it gets credit for, you know? quickly, i read about things like the dish offering the sling offering. right. now add up the whole bill, add up $20 worth of broadband plus some dvr capability buy netflix and hulu and i guarantee you it'll quickly be the same price as the entry-level cable packages. i think on a per-channel basis

there's a lot of value. it's why consumers, despite complaining about it, buy it in droves. and, you know i think cable still has a really bright future if it can solve these problems and give consumers the value they're asking for and innovate so that youth and new generations will find the product more compelling than previous generations. that's their challenge. they'll either sort of live up to it and thrive or they won't. and they'll be disintermediated. that's what competition and markets do. of. >> host: michael paul is president and see i don't -- ceo is former chairman of the fcc. brian fung with washington post. gentlemen, thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> thank you. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and

festivals happening around the country. >> let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll be happy to add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> more now from booktv television for serious readers. timothy shriver talks about what he's learned throughout his life from people with intellectual disabilities including his aunt rosemary kennedy. this is about an hour and five minutes.

>> hey thanks for coming. we're really happy that you've joined us to celebrate the great work that tim shriver has done for his entire career his entire life and help him launch his book. so this is a special event for us. i have a few words just so for those of you who don't know much about mr. shriver, just give you an idea of, you know, who this gentleman is. just let me just say that tim will first, speak and then we'll have an opportunity to do question and answer, and we'll have a microphone down there and people can come up and ask him questions. and after which there'll be a book signing in the rectory right next door. you're all welcome to participate in that. for those of you who didn't get a chance to have your book signed at the reception you'll be right in the