a look inside the fcc meeting room, where it's set to get under way in about 15, 20 minutes or so at 10:30 eastern. we will have that live for you on c-span3. in the meantime, a discussion on the issue of net neutrality and the proposed fcc rule changes from last week a panel of industry analysts on the changes, what they could mean for investment, innovation and consumers. >> so i'm with the american consumer institute. we're a 501(c)3 educational research group. it's a pleasure to be here. today thank you all for coming. of importance is on thursday, the federal communications

commission holds one of its december open meetings, and deals with one of several very important topics. and the issue today is the order to restore the internet freedom, which includes a number of important provisions. one is classifying broadband access services as an information service as it was before. removing the ambiguous internet conduct standard and the brightline rules, re-establishing the private mobile service classification for mobile broadband, and promoting internet service provider transparency among other things. the transparency issue is very important to us. it helps to get consumers to make better decisions. but there's a lot of noise out there, confusion, misinformation on what this will mean for consumers, and today we have a

panel of experts that will address the issues. but first, i'd like to introduce a special guest to give remarks, and we're so glad you are able to make it, and join us today. the fcc commissioner was unanimously confirmed to the senate and took office. commissioner brendan carr. before he became commissioner at the fcc he served as general counsel for the s.e.c. and prior to this he was lead adviser for the wireless, public safety and international issues. and before that he worked as an attorney for the fcc's service of general counsel. prior to joining this commission in 2012, commissioner carr was an attorney for wily ryan, dealt with a lot of issues, including telecommunications and communications regulatory law. the full bio for all of our speakers today are available on your chairs. so i won't go any further with this. i just, you know, this is a

wonderful event. i think there's a lot to be learned on this issue. and let me just say, you know, here to talk about and give remarks on what we're -- you know, what this will mean to the public in general, it's my great pleasure to introduce commissioner brendan car. >> thanks for that kind introduction. it's great to be with you today. sort of offer some brief opening remarks before turning it over to the panel. happy to talk a little bit about the fcc's restoring internet freedom proceeding. in my view, this is a really great moment for consumers, for innovation, and for freedom. in two days, the fcc is going to vote to reverse an obama era fcc's unprecedented decision to

apply title 2 regulations to internet access services. this two-year experiment has failed. we've seen investment in broadband decline. we've seen isps pull back on deployments. and we've seen innovative new services kept on the shelf. all of this has harmed consumers. before the fcc's 2015 decision consumers enjoyed a free and open internet. this wasn't because the fcc had title 2 in place. it didn't. it was because the fcc had this long-standing approach. for 20 years, we abided by congress' direction a bipartisan decision that the internet should be allowed to flourish free from heavy handed government regulation. this was not a complete laissez-faire environment, this was not no-holds-barred. you think back to 2015, that's the framework we're going back

to. consumers were protected. innovators were allowed to innovate. and we saw the internet in the u.s. become the greatest success story that we've seen. we have $1.5 trillion in investment, businesses of all sizes from start-ups to large corporations, launched and succeeded. i'm really excited. after this again two-year detour we're going back to that same regulatory framework that tried and true approach. now if you step back and i'm sure you've seen, i've seen, there's a lot of colorful rhetoric that surrounds the fcc's decision. in some extent the fake news stories about what the fcc is doing are trending faster than the real ones. so i want to try to dispel some of that. obviously the passion that's out there is really understandable. this is the intersection of the government, and the internet. americans cherish the free and open internet.

they cherish their experiences. i think we have to bust some of the myths that are out there. a lot of what i'm seeing is what i call the great title 2 head fake. which is attributing to title 2 things that title 2 simply does not do. one of the ones i've seen a lot of and maybe you've seen it as well is this portuguese internet meme, where the cablization of the internet. it's this claim by repealing title 2 isps will be free for the first time to charge you for bundled access to the internet or make you pay for website or packages of websites, similar, the allegations of what goes on in the cable space. this is not true. the fcc's title 2 decision specifically determined that isps want to offer bundled or curated internet packages, they're allowed to do so. so the fcc's decision repealing title 2 does not change the law on the legality of those curated services. another claim you may have seen is that the fcc's vote is going

to raise rates for consumers. that isps will charge consumers a lot more. again this isn't true. the 2015 fcc decision, the majority went to great pains to state that their approach was not going to result in rate regulation or government control of the rates that are charged to consumers. so again we're not opening the door to isps having different ability to charge consumers than what is currently in place with title 2 in place. another claim that i've seen is that isps are now going to be free to block websites, or throttle, or create fast lanes and slow lanes on the internet. again, title 2 is not the thin line between where we are, and that conduct taking place. if you look at the d.c. circuit decision that reviewed the fcc's 2015 decision, it expressly said that isps can block, they can

throttle, they can do fast lanes, under title 2, provided that they disclose to consumers that they're engaging in that conduct. the court said there's no dispute that that's the case. so again, repealing tight tl 2 is not going to change the law. with respect to that sort of conduct. we've also claimed that the fcc's decision is going to be legally unsustainable, or is somehow unlawful. again, this is not the case. the supreme court in 2005, in fact the only time the supreme court has spoken to the regulatory classification of the internet, upheld the fcc's 2002 decision that found that broadband internet access service is a title i information service. so again, that claim doesn't withhold scrutiny. i also want to take a second to again emphasize that we aren't experimenting with some new or radical approach that is going to give isps free rein to do whatever they want on the internet.

the title i framework that we are voting to put back in place includes robust consumer protections. one that i'll start with is one of the d.c. circuit found persuasive which is market forces. when the d.c. circuit observed that isps are free to engage in blocking and throttling under the title ii framework it said there's a reason why isps aren't doing it, the d.c. circuit said it's fear of subscriber losses. market forces. i know there's many people that won't accept market forces, as a solution, either in the broadband market or otherwise, so the fcc in our title i approach we're not relying purely on market forces. i want to highlight a couple of consumer protections that are staying in place. first, consumers are actually getting back strong consumer protection provisions. the federal trade commission is our nation's premiere consumer protection agency. in 2015, when the fcc voted to move to title ii that decision

as a legal matter stripped the ftc of 100% of its authority to protect consumers with respect to isps. that was a loss for consumers that they're getting back as a result of this decision. second, the federal trade commission has been the nation's premiere privacy enforcement agency. it has brought over 500 enforcement cases, including against isps. again, when the fcc voted in 2015, it created a doughnut hole where consumers had immediately fewer online protections than they did before that decision. that doughnut hole is where we are today. after the vote on thursday, consumers are going to get back strong, online privacy protections that can be enforced by the ftc. third the federal antitrust law. the sherman act makes clear that an isp enters an agreement, that involves anti-competitively

blocking or throttling websites, that's going to be per se unlawful under the sherman act. section two applies to vertically integrated isps. so it's vertically integrated to discriminate against another provider that's unaffiliated in terms of its content, that's subject to being found unlawful under section two of the sherman act. fourth we have state attorneys general and state consumer protection laws that will continue to apply. this is one where there's been some confusion. the fcc's order which is public makes clear that state level net neutrality laws are preempted, as a matter of law, because they would conflict with the fcc's decision in its title i decision. at the same time it's clear that general state level consumer protection laws, as they would apply to isps, are not preempted. so consumers get to continue to benefit from those protections.

and then finally there's a transparency rule. the fcc is adopting a rule that is likely more robust than what you would see purely from an ftc based regime. so consumers have full disclosure about the services they're getting and if providers don't live up to those disclosures, the ftc is in power to take enforcement action. again, there's also this claim that somehow the ftc's regime is going to be more difficult to enforce because there's this claim that it doesn't have rules unlike the fcc's approach. again, i think this point misses the mark. at the fcc we have a law which right now are the fcc's title ii rules but they're not self-enforcing. you then take enforce action against that standard. the same is going to be true after our vote, with the ftc. the ftc has legal standards, precedence out there. i've walked through some of what they are. again just like the fcc would, the ftc can take enforcement action to ensure that consumers are protected.

so again, i think that this is really a great moment for consumers. we're getting back to the same regime that governed for 20 years, a regime that had robust consumer protections, a regime that saw online providers, edge providers, launch and thrive, consumers benefit, consumers being protected, so this is not some sort of new experiment with an tiernly radical new free market approach. there's robust consumer protections in place. i'm really excited about it. again, this is a two-year detour that the fcc was ultimately pushed into as a senate commit founded through political pressure from the white house, who is not a place the senate committee found in terms of full title ii that the fcc was going to go based on its own independent judgment. i think it's great we're getting back to what had been a long-standing bipartisan consensus. with that i'm happy to take a couple of questions. putting back my old former general counsel hat on. i'll say that we are in the sunshine period of the fcc which

is a period that prohibits lobbying of decision makers, during this period. so, to speak in legalese for a little bit. you cannot make a presentation to me that goes to the merits or outcome of the fcc's proceeding. if you have a question that you don't think falls within that feel free to ask it. if you are not certain, probably best not to say anything and then we can transition to the panel. thanks. >> questions? >> i think that it may think it's difficult to ask a question that is completely devoid of presentation, so i think your caution was probably perhaps well taken. anyone have a question that's not a presentation? i think probably some would be presenters but that wouldn't be appropriate as you know. >> right. thanks very much. >> so everyone, thank

commissioner carr. >> thank you commissioner carr. sounds to some extent we have some regulations that were put in place to fix something that was not a problem, and without any evidence of market failure, to justify a remedy, and all in the name of benefiting consumers, but with that, it seems like there's no surprise that we've seen some declining investment since 2015. so how do we get there? you know, what what are the various aspects of the provisions of the order? what does the fcc need to do? how will we restoring internet freedom affect consumers, investors, innovators? does congress ultimately need to have a role in all of this? so there's a number of issues that like, you know, teed up to

be considered, and with that today we have an expert panel to clear up some of these and other important questions on restoring internet freedom. moderating on the panel today is randolph may. randolph is a founder and president of the free state foundation. earlier he worked in policy research for a think tank and practiced communications and regulatory law at a major law firms and prior to this he served as assistant general counsel and associate general counsel for the federal communications commission. again the full bios have been distributed. so randy as always it's an honor to have you join us today. >> steve, first of all, thanks very much for organizing this program. obviously couldn't be more timely. and thanks to the american consumer institute for all of the work that you do.

so we're going to jump right in, and what i'm going to do is just introduce the panel, and just by their affiliation, and then i'm going to ask them to speak initially. no more than five minutes. and less than five minutes will be fine. maybe even preferred. because we're going to make sure we have time for questions. and unlike with regard to commissioner carr, you can absolutely -- well i don't want to put it that way. but you don't have to be quite as careful in asking your question to these noted panelists. >> this meeting is available online at c-span.org just search net neutrality. we'll take you live now to the fcc meeting room. those net neutrality rules up for consideration today by the five member fcc, federal communications