bill, the senate bill, 2014. the bottom line is that we now have a pathway to fix these problems so people do not go into debt, so people do not have to declare bankruptcy, said that when people lose a job or switch jobs, they are not left without health care coverage. >> one more call. richard from pleasant valley, independent line. caller: thank you. so glad to have gotten through. people like me, i got laid off august 23, 2008. the cut date was september 3, so i got no benefit whatsoever. i have been on cobra for almost nine months, i am paying $1,400 a month and get 1700 a month in unemployment. i am going to the poorhouse. i hope that they will go back a little bit if they extend it,

because how is it that been laid off longer makes you ineligible for the help? this is obscene in my mind. it makes no sense whatsoever. provided in the recovery legislation only applied to people who started being without a job since september of 2008. that is why we need health reform to fix this problem on a permanent basis. this is so a person like the caller does not experience this rightful indignation he has because by happenstance of two or three weeks, he does not get the relief that he desperately needs. .

>> tomorrow, author charles stevenson talks about how the war is financed. then, a discussion on president obama's plan for sending more troops to afghanistan with scott wilson of the washington post. also, and looked at by's economy and its impact on other -- a look at dubai's economy with andrew ross sorkin. live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> this week on "the communicators," discussion on fcc efforts to adopt formal

rules regarding net neutrality. joining us are representatives from the open internet coalition. >> gentleman, if you would, just give us a basic 101 about your organization, why it was formed, and who the members are. >> sure. i am in washington -- a washington lawyer who was asked to assemble a coalition of companies like a day, amazon, google, others, stakeholders,

consumer groups, civil rights organizations, people who use the internet to help advocate for the federal communications communication, policies that preserve and open the internet. >> yes. netcompetition.org was formed three years ago. it is pro-competition, free- market oriented, and it represents broadband interests. literally the entire sector. some include large companies people know, the two cable

using your line to connect to them to inspect the kind of content that is traveling over that line and make decisions whether to discriminate and favors certain content over other as long as it is lawful. that is actually the norm and telecommunications policy for decades and decades. it started most recently in the 1970's when there was only one phone company and someone went up to someone and invented a mickey mouse on the phone and wanted to attach it to an at&t line, and at&t said, no, you cannot do anything like that, you need to have one seamless network that we control. and then they said, no, you can attach any device at the fcc.

and that resulted in fax machines, modems, and the things that we know today that really resulted in the kind of internet we had today that had modems and i speak -- isps. >> let me answer your question. i think that basically what the rules do would say it is ok for content providers to innovate, but broadband writers cannot innovate on their own. they have to seek permission from the fcc before they can manage their networks in a new way in order to encounter a new threat or opportunity. i would like to go back and correct a record on a couple of things.

i was just reading regulations this morning, over 100 pages, and talking about how long they are is irrelevant. everyone in washington knows you can't change one word of a lot and create enormous regulatory concerns, and years and years of litigation and regulation. so these rules are long, they are very complex, if you see chairman bernard, she did not do neutrality in 1999 because he thought it would be enormous and take a long time. another thing mr. erickson said is that this is not the way that it has always been. dial-up internet has these nondiscrimination requirements. cable did not. it has never had nondiscrimination requirements. wireless since 1993 has had none of them, and satellite has not.

the fcc decided that vfl did not need to have it. so there's a lot of misinformation here were people are reading internet history and anyone who wants to can look at all laws and regulations. >> the rules themselves have been on a page to explain. at some point, you have to justify why you have them. rather than require going to the fcc to get. approval for things they want to do, they actually proposed in the rules to give network operators a lot of flexibility to manage to their networks and in fact have a system where there would be in after the fact

complaint system if it turned out one of the violators was violating rules. so the notion that anyone should have to give prior permission from the fcc to innovate is wrong, and we would of support that, either. we have had over 40 of the leading ceo's support the rules , and we have new companies like twitter and facebook support them, and we had venture-capital lists write letters supporting these rules. they engage, support, and invest not only and edge-based companies, but in many technologies, including technology that are part of the operating system. they believe that these rules will provide for a more certain

investments landscape. and i think it today's economy, having that certainty benefits debate -- benefits not only those venture-capital lists, but also the increased jobs, and it results in innovation. no one is talking about not innovating. we're supportive of that. we want to be able to innovate. we just do not want to be able to discriminate against certain contents. >> they are in the middle of the hearing portion of their proposed changes. our guests are here.

>> i wanted to turn the question back to the public. i think anybody on the street was asked about this that would have confusion, but they could identify with the internet. that term could perhaps be used by both sides. but could you talk a little bit about how you think the average person understands this, and further, what role is played by social networking, reaching out to consumers, average people, internet users, and what the result of policy changes might be. >> the way that i would explain it to someone on the street is, do you like the way the internet works? do you like the way that you can log on to anywhere and download the application, by any sort of

computer you want, hook into the internet, and have it work? we just want to preserve that kind of ecosystem. that is the reason that by far we have had five years and 10 different proceedings at the fcc all related to this rule making happening right now, and there has been hundreds of thousands of consumer filings that support an open internet. and that is because they want the internet to work the way that the internet has been designed to work. the other side essentially argues two things. one, we agree with you, but trust us, we will not do those things, we will not discriminate against the content and applications. but we have seen a couple of high-profile examples where that has not happened, where operators have discriminated against content. when that happens, it stifles innovation. i know that two companies i work with have been hurt because of that kind of behavior stifling

innovation and the marketplace. it shields venture-capital lists from investing in technology, because they wonder whether that will be tolerated. almost universally, comcast was thought to be doing the wrong thing, even by many of mr. cleland's members. and yet, that proceeding took eight months to get to resolution. in venture capital, eight months is an eternity. so having rules that say you cannot do that will provide a lot of certainty, and most members agree with that. but the debate that we come down to is over a couple of definitions, and we will have an open proceeding about how to define terms, but we want to define them in a way that provides network operators with the way to manage networks and have flexibility. but for the average consumer,

but this is really about is that if you liked networks, you do not want it over time to look more like cable television, you should support the rule making happening at the fcc. >> if you are a consumer, you do not know about this issue, it is a problem. so why do that if nothing is going wrong? some consumers have no idea about this issue. and it is largely made up political issue. 2006, one of the people actually framed this politically. let me just let you know how made up and politically friend does is. he said the villains of the broadband service providers who own the winds and control access. their prime is the threat to freedom and equality for the sake of profit. the heroes are companies like google and spokespeople. that is how this has been

framed. it has been a demonization campaign, and it is simply not true. so for example, on comcast, you know, comcast was trying to manage network congestion on the internet. they ended up doing that in a way that when the fcc looked at it and decided they did not like the way they were doing it, they were trying to satisfy the equality needs of the vast majority, 90% of the time, because a few band with hogs were shutting down the internet by downloading illegal movies. so comcast is demonized for doing something where they are trying to serve and fulfil their contract to provide quality service. now, let's go back to -- you know, if you want to preserve the internet, leave that alone, do not regulated. do not pass legislation. but i'm concerned about is that this is a big change. that neutrality, if you formalize it, it will work and change.

and you will switch from a user- driven internet to the fcc- driven or fcc-centered internet. he will go from a privately run internet to a more government- run internet, you're going to run from a voluntary bottom of the internet like we have today, and it will become more of a governmental coerced top down, and you will run from the efficiency we have on the internet today to the inefficiency of government bureaucrats and their systems. so this is a horrible precedent, and it also is a horrible precedent around the world. can you imagine, we say that we're to preserving the internet to preserve free speech, and the cubans, the chinese, the iranians say, we can have an open season on our people as long as we use the code word open internet or net the neutrality. we can