helpr seat, we will not are most vulnerable. because only we the people know the way to achieve our dreams, not the government. that is why freedom is so important. to make certain that the promise of america is never broken. i hope you learn more about our plan to restore representative government. next on c-span, the communicators looks a recent court ruling regulating the internet. then, general daniel allen talks about army readiness and modernization efforts. the radio and television correspondents association has its annual dinner in washington, d.c. brian some of the washington post, what did the

court of appeals decided on net neutrality? ruled 2-1 to of high -- upheld the regulations. you had what was ultimately a pretty big victory for the regulatory agency. host: what does that mean practically? brian: it means the sec can move implementing its rules more aggressively. without worry of further legal uncertainty. some petitioners decided to appeal or ask for rehearing, but i think we will leave that to the folks joining us today. host: brian some is our guest sung is our brian guest reporter.

fred -- fred campbell and matthew wood join us. matthew: i have long been -- fred: i have long been opposed to net neutrality. what the court to did here was applying a statute -- a statutory scheme known as title ii that gives it a lot more power than just net neutrality. for a long time, no neutrality was about whether a broadband provider can block a website or discriminate. has gone further than that for the first time, and send it the scheme that

the telephone network applies. that opens the door for additional regulations that were not part of the net neutrality debate. scc -- fcc is considering things that were not really part of the debate until recently. of additional opportunity for regulation of internet providers that i think was, and even a few years ago with this decision. not too surprisingly, we disagree with a lot of friends -- fred's take. wass not surprised, but i .leased with the win we need it was a great thing. we think the other consumer

protections were good thing. it is necessarily getting into the weeds, we think it is treating broadband like a communication service and making a distinction between the carriage and the content on the internet. the speech rights are not the speech rights of the cable companies, but the people who rely on the network, who are hundreds of millions if not billions of people. the discussion let us to the right place on these particular rules. -- : brian: i would be curious to know what you think about the dissent, and the arguments he made.

matthew: i don't think we need to focus that much on the dissent. authority statutory to make the decision. he was following an earlier supreme court decision. he questioned the fcc's reason for doing so. it is a factual conversation. in some ways, it is not the courts place to make factual determinations, they have to defer to the agencies understanding of technology. we think that is executive with the got right here, based on earlier court cases. i think the strongest plate -- point he made overall is that this is a paradigm shift. if you go back to the original communications act, it was designed to regulate the

monopoly telephone network. it was designed to protect consumers from a monopoly. fast-forward to the early 80's, says we can see competition developing here, and if we have competition the protections in the act will be taken care of by market forces. in other words, if there is enough competition provider cannot discriminate because customers can go to someone else. under -- andhere that judge williams raced in his dissent, is that the fcc did not rely on the rules. legal standard terms, it was arbitrary and capricious. you want to regulate broadband providers like you do the monopoly telephone network, you

need to do a finding that there is a lack of competition. if there is competition, consumers will be protected from discrimination by people switching providers. what's the fcc did that the court proved, is that we don't need to make a finding of competition, but we note that switching costs are high, according to the sec, -- the fcc, and we don't think it will protect consumers. that is the paradigm shift. that is not really a traditional competition analysis, it is something new. the questions become, there are switching costs and other what does, and switching costs figure in -- where do switching costs figuring.

matthew: title ii and these rules have applied in competitive markets. 1996, congress overhauled the communications act, but it is left in place the summation provisions. they protect people from things like blocking or undue dissemination by the provider. the rationale is that there is lack of competition, and i think many people will say they don't have many choices for broadband. many competitors there are, we have had in place and throughout this rural offerings -- title ii is neither new nor outdated.

there is a long-standing tradition even in them headed if markets to have these provisions. host: turning to the majority provision -- by --arts could be used to poke holes in the argument? what we usually see on appeals to the full circuit is some kind of circuit split. the supreme court could take the case, but it might not do now with the hobbled supreme court. there is important question of law in play. i'm sure some of the cable and phone companies will be tempted to seek further review, i don't know that they will get it. they are unlikely to win in the itikely event that you get

to be reviewed by a higher court. it is not a guarantee that they cannot get a review, is that they do not have that to look to , to suggest the supreme court must have some kind of split to the appellate court. fred: do you agree with that? with her -- the only opportunity for circuit split. the court could decide to take it without that. matt is right, they don't have that to look to. much of the opinion references the earlier court decision overturning the previous net neutrality rules. if they tryremember to appeal that to the supreme court, but in any event it did not end up there. the supreme court review is not

a given by any stretch. it is hard to say will happen. the one interesting issue that i saw in the majority opinion that creates new law and is arguably inconsistent with the existing law was the first amendment question. that was entirely clear. that could pique the supreme court's interest. what they did there, and i felt an amicus brief on the first amendment issue. the court said, what you have a common carrier, the first amendment does not apply. what is assumed that analysis is force broadband providers to become common carriers. the first amendment says you cannot force someone to make their network available on a common basis. that was the argument i made.

it gets a little bit more, getting. the net part of the opinion does not hold up. --lied what the court said it was implied, it was not clear. carriers have held themselves out from being common carriers. the court said, if the broadband provider decides -- they're going to make a certain amount available, by their own terms, the rules will not apply, and in my violate the first amendment of the fcc tried to force the law. it raises a question, my first thought was facebook in india, where they made their service available for free, and they --

rulednderstand it, india against it because the providers were getting paid by facebook. the question left open is that it appears from reading the court, it is permissible in the u.s., and it might be anything they can do about it. is something the supreme court might want to look at. matthew: we have a lot to discuss here. facebook was struck down on net neutrality grounds is an inaccurate decision. i think what the court did in some respects, it did leave out of option, because some kind curated internet service, where , not are special choices

that the company would be violating the first amendment, but that it might have first amendment rights. perhaps that would trigger the first amendment. think it is fair to say that the court left that for another day. they don't like to deal with constitutional issues if they don't have to. the service might not be a broadband internet access service, and it might trigger further first amendment review. i think the answer is not clear. what kind of rules would be subject to? matthew: i think factually all be hard to get that for an isp to get there. there are some specialized services that connect to a certain source, but we're talking more of an editorial choice -- maybe a family

friendly isp or something like that that offered access to the internet but not a single source. brian: through no conscious system -- decision of their own, do they create a different category? if they put themselves out there as the speaker, suddenly they lose liability protection that is always protected isps. they are now liable for the speech of others. fred: there are two providers out there doing this now. they're relatively small. article onaw review the first amendment issues and did quite a bit of research. there is a small isp in new york city that markets itself as friendly to the jewish faith. notlocks -- in server does allow subscribers to opt out --

it blocks sites that are inconsistent with the moral principles of its faith. they do provide a curated service. i was thought it was interesting there was never a net neutrality complaint directed them. but they are small, and it may not be the main focus. but it is happening now. the point on and not being clear, this is also the kind of thing that can be brought up later on in what the corporate as applied challenge. the court may decide that these rules as written do not obviously violate any constitutional writer or provision. were to take action against this isp for their editorial decisions, they then could say that as the statutes may apply to me, is violating my first amendment right. it is an issue that may or may not come up again. it is happening to some small extent out there.

does net neutrality rules this collocated in court more competition? matthew: it encourages competition and services we can reach on the internet. encourages them to innovate, and not only compete with alsoband providers, it allows them to come up with a next innovation. i don't know what we would put in that category, everything we can think of seems so ordinary, but the power that we see in social matt media -- social media, that is very new. yet today it seems such an important part of people's lives. to allow innovation without gatekeeper control that isps otherwise have.

host: netflix put out a statement supporting this, saying that netflix will be able to reach consumers without i is be interference. netflix is not really an edge provider, is it? netflix does something where they directly connect with the eyes be providers using facilities spread around the country, and they have their own backbone delivery networks not necessarily owned by them, that the lease. google does that. there is another thing that judge williams brought up. there is a concern that some companies could get an advantage , and by that amy edge companies , that are not the last mile isp that you subscribe you to get access to the internet. large companies will pay the isps to get an advantage in

delivering their traffic to be faster and higher quality, and he will harm competition on the edge. the largest providers are already getting a significant speed advantage by owning their own backbone facilities and paying for prime interconnection points that a lot of smaller providers cannot afford, or they are paying a third-party. on,ntages are still going and this was raised with the fcc. you have to address these cach ing networks. and the fcc did not want to address it. true.w: some of that is i think netflix is undoubtedly an edge provider. a lot of people like to talk about net neutrality as a battle between companies, netflix on

one side and comcast on the other. really we are talking about the rights of comcast customers. anything, -- is anything that their carrier does it appears with their traffic, to be able to say what they want and do what they want online. of thet that some netflix content might move more quickly, like men neutrality is a speed limit -- that is not really true. i think people understand that intuitively. they buy different speed packages at home. someone might have a faster connection than someone else. oris about interference roadblocks of the cable company puts in the way, and doing something to improve the quality of your own stream, if netflix has more service than i do, for example, the concert that you more quickly than i can.

i don't see that as damaging to my service. fred: let me use another example. the fcc's there he is that broadband service providers have an ability to block or charge providers to deliver traffic. the fcc says that will reduce the number of providers who want to provide traffic, and therefore the isps themselves won't have as much and for structure. it is saying the isps are their own worst enemies. there doing things that will hurt them in the long run. that paradigm shift, that virtuous circle the fcc talks about, it does not necessarily apply to isps. who else stands as summit between the consumer and an edge

service? , put this in the fcc record but the other thing is that if you use the mobile internet, and a lot of consumers are only using mobile devices. is 96% market share, and it is really only android or iphone. both of them charge application developers to be able to be on the platform, and the charge consumers for the phone, at least in apple's case, and they save you want to have your app on our phone, it has to be on our store, and they charge 30%. says they arefcc worried there will be excessive prices charged to the edge

providers. space is exploding. it doesn't seem to be swinging the app providers at all. put that aside, the theory is that -- if there is part of allot communications, what is in it -- why does it not apply to the people charging upstream? brian: i want to talk about the implications this ruling will have on legislation for net neutrality. there is been talk in the run-up to this decision about whether or not republicans and democrats can come together to write rules or legislation to proceed the regulations. what is it means that process?

matthew: i think it means you have have the law in place. the fcc has leverage now. upon are going to improve it, there are ways to talk about doing that, the we're not going to allow the protections to be swept aside in order to make way for a compromise will not protect people as well as the loss we have in the books now. laws we have on the books now. i want to open up the discussion about other gatekeepers, not makers. app that is an interesting conversation. but the virtual cycle they went back to title ii, and trading isps as

characters. -- carriers. that withoutnotion good content online, we will see a dip in broadband investment and see fewer people taking up broadband service. what we see now is that carriers are indeed different, and may disagree with that analysis. they are gatekeepers that the fcc are charged with keeping online. keep the cable and phone companies from interfering, but it does not mean that apple does not have a role. it does have a role. it does mean that comcast cannot favor its own video to prevent people from switching to someone else. not necessarily be the isps shooting themselves in the foot.

comcast or verizon or whoever can keep a lot of money -- make a lot of money by keeping people. it is in the best interest to keep people paying for cable tv, and even in the broadband investment, they make out well because they are keeping people tied to the court. the question i was positing is best fred: the question i was asiting is is the isp -- summary has a platform they have to access, i don't see a difference. there is a historical difference because the networks work differently. my spirits it has been a race. question, thethis answer is that they don't have jurisdiction over mobile operations. -- e was a time -- brian:

you think the sec has jurisdiction over mobile operations. fred: some years ago, there were people who support net neutrality, who said they did not have jurisdiction, and said use your title i authority. they went to congress and proposed bills. no one is saying anything about these other gatekeepers. no one wants to talk about. far, we're seeing that there is no intention to regulate online services using the net neutrality rules, do you see that changing? fred: -- thehew: fred suggesting distinction has been raised, i think the argument -- has been

erased, i think the argument is that it has been taken up by new players. people'snot prevent privacy from being abused by we should nothaps -- we -- i'm interested in this conversation, these are the kind of things that have been swept why by the sec. and common sense understanding of the solid authority, but it does not mean we should sweep with the protections we have in favor of a new regime that has yet to materialize. host: what is the practical effect of the decision? can continue to

play a role in decisions, and that is a good thing. courthaving lost in before because they went back to a solid legal foundation that was written for them in 1996. rather than something that is inextricably entwined with content, we are happy that the but whathe authority, they will do with it has yet to be seen. that is not a scary thing, because they should be involved in the conversation. rules when it doesn't have the facts yet, but having the power to protect people from unreasonable discrimination. fred, same question. fred: i think we will see the law continue to expand. --e you set the president,

president, you will see complaints. strict prohibition. we will see people filing protests to various business models, which will get the fcc involved, sort of the way the internet is packaged and sold by ifp's. you do have a risk that some will try to expand this to other gatekeepers on the internet, because they will be developers that don't want to pay 30% anymore, and they have got pretty good arguments. we are in the same position as we were with ifp's. will start tos develop more, and maybe we will get a better impact of what it will be. host: what are you going to be looking for? >> everybody will be waiting to see how the internet industry responds and whether that or not they will look to escalate this case, and if so, how?