environmental damage, without problems that people are worried about. >> the leader of the opposition has said that what they are doing in france, i want to do in britain. [laughter] given recent events across the channel, does my right honorable friend agree with me that he is completely at odds with our long-term economic plan? >> i did not catch all of resident hollande's press conference yesterday. one thing i did notice is that the french proposals now are to cut spending in order to cut taxes in order to make the economy more competitive. perhaps the shadow chancellor and his new silent form will want to consider some of these ideas and recognized that this

revolution is making business more competitive to try to win the global race. that is a proper plan for the economy. >> order. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] been watching the prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. you can also watch any time online at c-span.org. >> tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. eastern, we will have evan sayet. he spoke recently at the conservative forum of silicon valley on his views on liberals and the news media. here is a brief portion from the event. >> is the mainstream media -- has the mainstream media. in every major story of our

not just wrong, but as wrong as wrong can be? this let me begin to prove by pointing out one of the good guys. chance to gett a rid stevens, he is an editorial writer for the wall street journal. many years back, he wrote a piece that began something posted this. historian looking back at the contemporary journalism leading up to the major events of our lifetime, looking for clues in that reporting as to the major events that were about to transpire will have found that reporting to be mostly useless. stevens is wrong. he is wrong and that he does not go anywhere near far enough. that reporting was not just

useless, but anybody who looked for clues at the time wanting to know what might come next around the world will have been led to anticipate exactly the opposite of what actually came to be. think of our news media as our personal intelligence agencies. they have operatives in the field, reporters sending back dispatches, articles. us with information, inside information so we can make good personal policy. fair enough? anybody who trusted the bs,nstream media, abc, nbc, c time, newsweek, the new york times -- everybody but fox. i am going to put fox to the side for a moment. we will talk about fox. anybody who trusted the mainstream media as a source for intelligence not only got useful

-- useless intelligence, they got intelligence that was diametrically opposed to the truth. >> you can watch the entire speakingh evan sayet about liberals and the media tomorrow on c-span. tomorrow, the next program in our first ladies series features barbara bush. in the white house, she focused on the issue of literacy, creating a foundation in her name that was dedicated to the cause. as matriarch of the bush family, she has earned the reputation of being the enforcer, a title she says she deserves. learn more about barbara bush and watch our recent interview when first lady's heirs tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. or a preview, go to our facebook page to see clips from our interview with the former first lady. we have also posted a question about family dynasties and the presidency and whether the office is better served for

someone new. go to c-span.com to leave your comments. >> c-span. we bring public affairs events from washington directly to you, putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, readings and conferences, and offering complete coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. >> next, a discussion about the future of the internet. following a federal court ruling last week that said the fcc improperly tried to regulate broadband internet providers with a net neutrality rule that tries to ensure that all content providers had equal access to internet subscribers and vice versa. this was posted by the

congressional internet caucus advisory committee. it is one hour and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] welcome. thank you for coming. today's briefing is about the internet committee titled circuit court decision on fcc open internet roles is it random or is it a law. such short notice the decision came on tuesday. we've been awaiting it and wanted to do a briefing as close to the decision as possible. this is the congressional internet caucus advisory committee. we take no position on legislation or regulation but the proposition that the internet is extremely important and that we should try to insure a sound decision making so what

we try to do in these meetings is any issue that affects the internet, we try to have a balanced perspective. a lot of perspectives on the issue and have a collegial issue on the topic. the so-called net neutrality rules lend itself to that type of debate. hosted in conjunction with the congressional internet caucus and its co-chairs, congressman bob goodlatte, congresswoman eshoo and senator leahy has less senator thune. i applaud the caucus for hosting the dates that pose a variety of perspectives on important issues with which they themselves may not agree so i want to applaud them for that. hash tag for today is #netneutrality and this is just the start of the conversation on the fcc open internet rules. the moderator today is david stone, general counsel for democracy and technology. david works for the center of technology, which is a civil

liberties first amendment organization. and david has agreed to try to moderate this as impartial and in as fair manner as possible. so i will hand it over to david stone. thank you. >> neutral, you might even say, tim. thanks to the internet education foundation for pulling this together as promptly. as tim said it was to stay the court decision came out, so it should be a great opportunity to get some initial analysis and initial reactions to the case means. as tim mentioned, i'm going to moderate. i will try to be impartial. we filed a brief in the case and that is why he mentioned that. to introduce the panelists to my left we have marked who is a partner at johnson and general counsel to the internet association, then we have got christopher yoo professor of law, communication and information science at the

university pennsylvania law school. to his left is matt wood policy director and free press and to his left is russell hanser at wilkins and barker and hamilton nbc. what i would like to do is offer a background of the fcc open internet rules and on a recent court decision, then i will turn it over to questions for the panelists. so in terms of background, there's been an active policy debate over what is often termed internet.org at neutrality going on for quite a few years. as most of you know it is a debate that centers on whether broadband providers of internet access, the internet connections that people use to get online, with the should be required to carry all traffic in a fundamentally neutral manner, without any kind of interference or favoritism. or on the other hand, they're imposing this kind of requirements would be unnecessary, or would impose actually harmful consequences for the carrier's ability to run their networks and run their

businesses. back in december of 2010, after a long set of proceedings and multiple rounds of public comments, the fcc adopted a set of rules on the topic which it called the open internet rules, and those devotee main components. there was a nondiscrimination requirement, there was in no walking requirement and there was a transparency requirement. now, the blocking rules prohibited broadband providers from blocking access to the lawful online content service. the nondiscrimination rule prohibited broadband providers from engaging in unreasonable discrimination among the online content and services. but interestingly, that rural exempted the mobile providers. so that was for internet access only. and then the transparency world require them to provide public disclosure regarding their network management practices. now, after the fcc put out rules, verizon challenged them in court and they made a number

of arguments including that the rules or arbitrary and capricious, said they were impermissible under the communications act and even that they were unconstitutional. this past tuesday we finally got a d.c. circuit decision that struck down the rules pertaining to the blocking and discrimination. it didn't lead to transparency rules in place. the court held that the act does give the fcc some authority over broadband providers. but it concluded that the antiblocking and anti-discrimination rules are inconsistent with the fcc previous decision to treat broadband providers as information services under the communications act. without getting into too much detail on that point, i think the details of the statutory framework are important here that the communications act establishes two broad categories of services. telecommunications services, which he will sometimes hear referred to as title ii services because they are regulated under the information act, and

information services. and the law also has a provision that says that providers of information service and providers in that category shall not be treated as a common carrier, which is a term that has a long history in the common law. and the core of the court's ruling on tuesday was that the antiblocking and the anti-discrimination rules amount to the common carrier for rules. and that means that the fcc cannot impose the inside looking and anti-discrimination on information services, which is exactly what the fcc had previously said broadband service providers are. so, in fact, there is a level at which the court was saying that the fcc cannot have it both ways. they can't decide that prague and is information service and then turn around and impose the kind of nondiscrimination requirements that have characterized the common carriage. with that background, i would like to turn the discussion over to the panelists. i think i would like to start with just the question of where

exactly this decision leaves the concept of net neutrality and nondiscrimination on the internet. is there any leeway for the fcc to call for some form of nondiscrimination or is that now basically totally out of bounds in the wake of this decision, i will start with whoever would like to start off on that. >> and full disclosure i do represent an intervenor in the case, intervening on the side of the fcc, the ( coalition. so, you know, as a matter of law, the decision means that there are no rules currently that would preclude bup internet broadband access provider from discriminating against the content or even blocking content. the court did uphold the transparency rule which means the broadband internet access still has information about the broadband internet access practices.

procedurally, the decision can be appealed to the full d.c. circuit. within 30 days if you are an intervenor for the government, it can later be appealed to the supreme court. and there is nothing of course to stop the fcc from animating several of the pockets that are currently pending around the net neutrality to do this. the court did uphold that the fcc has broad authority to come up with rules that would prevent them from blocking content, but there still has to be room to allow broadband internet providers to differentiate different content and to avoid being classified as common carriers. as a comedy severely limited in

that regard what the advocates have typically thought of as net neutrality rules. and if the fcc wanted to, it still has an open dhaka to classified abroad and internet services or some internet access service as a title to common carrier service in order to adopt nondiscrimination rule. so they do the title to classification. the fcc is precluded from the rule and the classical affect is that they can then charge providers new grant that hasn't been charged before to ensure that those providers can reach the subscribers for different tiers of service and video service to ensure that a video provider has ample bandwidth to be able to reach the subscribers and if theoretically, they could

certainly block the content that the isp felt was not appropriate for their subscriber to it so i think there will be some action, but what that action will be is not clear. >> it is a fascinating set of questions. i think that the theme of for this session is was it a win over a loss and i think the answer is yes. everyone found something to like in the decision and everything to hate in the decision. i think the fcc worst nightmare was on the goal to say that they had no authority whatsoever. and in that sense, the d.c. circuit agreed, and yes, the fcc still will regulate the internet. the second part of it is has the fcc exercised its authority in the proper way? and when we see words like common carriage and a title ii -- at the risk of oversimplifying, and anytime you

boil things down, it's the old rules that apply to the telephone network going to be applied. and what the d.c. circuit decision says is no. when you exercise the authority, you are not allowed to send these old rules developed from the 1934 act for a different type of context to the internet. and in that sense, that is the part that they have. and what they say is that it leaves very little room to bring in the service aspects of that regime. they will still explore them. and to offer predictions, one of the questions is in the appeal to the d.c. circuit. this consisted of two democrats and republican. currently my guess is this is i know nothing about the parties, they are probably not going to get a different result.

they don't like taking cases that don't have the authority on one side or the other side you might think because it's politically important and taking a lot of attention, they might take it in my experience, you would be surprised. sometimes the political nature causes the court to stay away from it, so there is a pretty good chance it won't happen. and if that is the case, then frankly, it is at the end of this long road that we have had where we are all waiting for the court to decide and the politics proceeded and it all became law. we are going to see the return of the congress'' rules and overlooking what should come next and the agency has a much more active role not going to happen. and if we turn it back to the policy-making relevance of waiting for the court to decide. >> i guess we will keep trooping down. thanks so much for having me here. i want to go back to one thing that chris said and two points

that are sort of in the name of the panel in the way that david said this at the outset. a little technical here but i would say that it's not that the fcc can't apply the common carrier rules using the power it has. it can't apply common rules using the power it chose to use here. and that is because as mark mengin, the fcc could go back and say you know, we are wrong. we are changing our mind. circumstances have changed, what everyone to use for justification and say that broadband internet access services should indeed be title ii services or common carrier services. there's a lot of jargon here but they are all basically the same thing. they could treat those services like the internet access that you and i have today like a common carrier service by classifying it as such, and then we would have a very different conversation about authority. and just to put it out there what we in the free press think the fcc should do there is a lot of debate about that. to agree with what chris said, there is a lot of political to come over that and the fcc action and the court action following up on that as well.

so, never over until it's over and even then, it's not over. the fcc that's one thing i heard one time. back quickly to the question as david raised and the panel put it, it is a win for the fcc. kress said yes, they win a lot. i would say that it is not neutrality. the rules are vacated and i think it is pretty clear that the fcc cannot reinstate them in any queen and understandably and frankly useful way for protecting internet users using the authority that they've been left. it is all for the net neutrality but it's not a total loss for the fcc to have some power and to have some authority to regulate broadband internet access. released to the word though to regulate access. that's what we think the nec neutrality rules do is to protect your access to the internet. as chris said, there's been some companies saying this, too. the 706 route protect the at the court stands up and the fcc has authority. that could allow them to regulate the internet, period.

meaning on some to say while we are seeing less broadband deployment because of something else out there in the internet ecosystem or some kind of more fuzzy term like that. the free press, and i think it is fair to say every net neutrality advocate or everyone i've talked to is not in favor of regulating the internet. we want to make sure your access to the internet is open and clear and broadband providers cannot block or discriminate against where you go and tell you what you can look at or how much it costs for certain website. you want facebook and plater? but on the social media platform and that is an extra $5 a month. that kind of thing when mark talks about the providers. so again, lots of the data and disagreement whether we need those kind of roles and it's important to note the fcc didn't lose all power here they just lost the power to do the thing we want them to do in this proceeding. and they might have the ability to do good things with the section 706 authority and the ability to trade at things as well. it's more of an open question. people say they want regulatory certainty, and i think it is anything but that because the

fcc has sort of an open mandate in ways to provide a broadband kind of like taking the fcc has a doctorate taking it to the internet. we know it when we see it. it will tell you later and you might not know beforehand if it is a bad idea, but we will come back and report something. i just don't know how they do that in a very useful and helpful way for the doctrine we care so much about. >> so, the last sohn was asking questions about 15 years ago when he was interviewing me for my first-ever communications blog. and i never really knew what he felt because i got the job and by the time i got there, he had left. [laughter] so, you know, contrasting evidence. so thanks for having me back. i want to sort of agree with that before i turn and disagree with him and probably a bunch of topics ultimately. and i agree with the court did is struck down. the thing that mattered to the free press the most, but resuscitated or at least they'd

found a great deal of fcc authority to do other things. so, that brings me to david's initial opening question, which was where does net neutrality stand? and that's the question that everyone's been asking the past few days, but i think it might be the wrong question. the right question is where do the internet stand, where does the power of the fcc to regulate the internet and an inappropriate way going forward stand? net neutrality is a particular means to an end. it's not the end. so, foley agreement neutrality as it has been traditionally perceived as a strong anti-discrimination component is unlawful under the statute under section 15351 of the statute, which says you cannot free them on common carrier service as common carrier. that i think is a very straightforward piece of the decision here. and there is very little question about that proposition. some question whether we should have treated rather than the

title to service but once you treat it as a title one service, that provision is pretty clear and that section of the ruling i think should be relatively uncontroversial. but where does the rest of the decision leaves the fcc authority and consumers? i think the rest of the decision is really a victory for the fcc in many ways. the fcc can do a lot as long as it doesn't pose strict common carriage obligations, and i -- many people have been contemplating what that means. and i think that it is wholly reshaping the field of the internet. and the amicus in the case wrote a brief to the national association of manufacturers to copy and e-mail me i like to think of this 50 shades of net neutrality. a great weekend reading. about my clients generally, fries and obviously argued against the section 706 power, but the isp generally accepted

this is the court ruling that there would be some fcc authority. so, then i want to go to mark's suggestion that there are no rules now on preventing discrimination. it's true there are no fcc rules now. there are other mechanisms though. i think the things consumers worry about with respect to nec neutrality is will my isp sabotage and indeed they are trying to compete with it principally in the voice service and video service, the things the isp tend to do otherwise. if they do, we have the entities right now of preventing it at the competitive theater, the federal trade commission does that. section five of the act gives the fc see the power to take action against the deceptive trade practices. that is what will exist. but the principal power that is going to stop discrimination that we sometimes hear about is the marketplace and consumers.

it is a fundamental matter just like any other business want their service of their product to be useful to their customers. the services in this case are useful to customers when they can use them to do the things that they want. we can talk about the competition which is a big question in the debate but most americans have a choice the vast majority have a choice between five or more but there is a choice and the customers are going to play an important role in preventing the kind of behavior that people said just as the worst possible. let me push more on what steps could potentially be. one thing that we have heard a couple of times in your comment is the idea of the reclassifications a one question i have is where would that fall, with the procedure to do that look like?

another thing that they had done previously for the rule was back and 2005 it had something called a policy statement that expressed the rule that users should be able to access the content of the choice. is there any evidence for the fcc to take for the reclassification. is their anything like another set of principles approach like it did before that could possibly be an option. >> there is an open dhaka -- docket. they proposed to the internet broadband service as a common carrier service and there was a substantial violence in the dhaka said that the fcc could reanimate that and refresh it. this also doesn't get a lot of