ahead this morning, the fight over net neutrality. and congress demandses answers from apple and google over what they know about where you are. from the powerful committee on energy and commerce, congresswoman anna ele seshew. with reporters howard mince and joseph mann of "the financial times" this week. good morning, i'm scott mcgrew. we delve this morning back into

one of the most important issues facing the internet. net neutrality. should it be enforced, and who should enforce it? a reminder, net neutrality is the belief that all data on the internet is born equal. so the ones and zeros that carry your e-mail go down the pipes just as fast as a google search result or a silly youtube video. it's an idea supported by both the obama administration and democratic lawmakers like anna eschew of the house committee on energy and commerce. >> i find that a little chilling. >> reporter: recently the federal communications commission, the fcc, decided it should enforce net neutrality, a decision republicans, generally speaking, do not support. arguing both, the fcc has no enforcement power in this matter and that the government

shouldn't be in the business of regulating the internet at all. congresswoman anna eschew has served in the house of representatives since 1993. among her accomplishments, making the electronic signature legally binding, increasing funds for internet access and most impressively getting tv stations like this one to stop turning up the volume during commercials. she is also at the center of the net neutrality debate as well. joseph men, howard mince of "the mercury news" joining us for the first time as a reporter. we welcome you. talk to me about why i should care. as you politicians argue net neutrality, why do i as a person at home care? >> well, the open internet is absolutely inseparable in terms of our understanding of how the internet works. every time you click on, you can move to where you want to go and access what you want.

that's the brief explanation of it. >> you're not talking about censoring the internet in the sense of well, i'm not going to let you go to that website. that's not what folks are saying. it's something more fine-tuned than that. >> well, we have broadband providers. and not very many of them. in fact, in many regions, in most regions of the country, there's not a great deal of competition because more than one broadband provider doesn't compete with another. they are really the gatekeepers of the internet. they are in business to make money. which i think is terrific. but there is a consumer part of this, and there is an innovation part of this. we know that this is -- the internet has really been the innovation engine for our economy. and so protecting the openness of the internet is absolutely

necessary. now, what's happened? why are we even having this debate? there have been broadband providers that have blocked. there are broadband providers that have blocked because they want to drive consumers to what they want to sell. and there is a list of those grievances and fines that have been paid to the federal communications system. >> this happens generally behind the scenes in that the consumer may not be aware that broadband providers slowing down your internet connection. >> that's right. >> and that's what you would like to regulate. >> well, i don't think private companies should be allowed to carve up the internet into fast lanes, slow lanes, or control what content a consumer has. and the internet has been

opened. it's the hallmark of the internet. and so while the word "neutrality" or net, net neutrality, which is what a professor came up with, is not very exciting to most people. there is a lot to it. and i think that consumers -- and they weighed in at the fcc -- over 1 million people weighed in with their comments. everyone from churches to consumer organizations. i mean, you name it. 150 organizations that really are the breadth and the depth of america weighed in and said, keep the internet open. that's the way we want it. including the catholic bishops of america. >> republicans, on the other side, say this will stifle innovation. you know, this is not an area that needs regulation, or at most, just a little fine-tuning.

i think recently they moved to undo what you had been working toward with regulations earlier. >> well, i'm doing a lot. i think this comes out of the republicans' distaste or disdain fore government, most frankly. because you can see it in many different manifestations. the move to disallow the epa from regulating greenhouse gas emissions is one of them. >> net neutrality, though, republicans, one of the ways you could boil down their argument is saying we don't want government involved in the internet. which as a bumper sticker, seems pretty reasonable. the government ought to keep out of the internet. is an awfully reasonable argument. how would you respond to that? >> well, i think this is -- in terms of the role of government, there's some things that people can do for themselves. and so i don't think the government should get into that.

if they can correct something themselves, move around it, whatever, then the government doesn't need to get into it. i understand that. i don't think the government is the answer to everything. but i do think that consumers and innovators and job creators need rules to the road. why? in this case? because broadband providers did commit these sins, so to speak. and this is a very light touch. the congress mandated, set forth and said that we need to expand broadband to every part of our country. and anything that interrupts that, anything that gets in the way of that, we have the responsibility to respond to it. >> what is the scope of the problem realistically, though? i mean, when you burrow down to the consumer? i mean, most of us really don't care how the soup is made. we just want that fast internet.

we want our video. we want our music. >> that's right. >> and how it gets there is not something that interests most of us. i mean, how much of a problem really is it? >> well, we're getting into the weeds of it. and the back story of it. and most people are not interested in that. as i said, we take for granted when we use our mobile phones and all the applications that are there and the videos that we can access, you know, over 200,000, you know, sites to go to. so this may not be the most interesting part of it. but it's still necessary. because if we don't protect the openness of the internet and allow it to be carved up by private interests, i think that there would be a near revolution in the country. and i said that on the floor of the house. >> so the concern is that you

could have vertically integrated companies as in the old vision of aol/time warner which didn't work out too well. you have the pipes and content and pipes together. they said, well, we don't want you to go as much to our competitors in the content business if you're going through our pipes. has that actually happened, or has most of the tinkering that's offensive to some been around, peer-to-peer sharing? >> well, theerre's been peer to peer. there's some that have moved to block, say, access to netflix and sell what they want to sell. and so there you have a private intere interest, really manipulating what the consumer should have access to. i think a really good example is google. i mean, this baby company that was born, were it not for an open internet, consumers would not have been able to move to

the technology that they thought satisfied them the most. if someone had interfered with that. so i think the american consumer knows every day what an open internet is. and we want to keep it that way. so these are very light rules of the road. >> we're going to take a commercial break. >> sure. >> and we'll be back with congresswoman anna eshoo in just a minute.

congresswoman anna eshoo of the san francisco bay peninsula, palo alto. joseph men, you had a question. >> i want to talk about privacy. this has been a growing issue, and it seems there are news pegs as we say in the industry every week. this week we've had two monsters. we've had apple admit for the first time that it is tracking the rough location of iphone users in order to serve them

better. and they were sort of forced to defend themselves after some researchers went public with their information. that attracted some attention from congress. then we also had the sony playstation breach. the fourth largest, i believe, breach of all time in terms of the number of records that mpwe accessed, people that use the playstation network and e-mails and passwords, birth dates have gotten out into the realm of hackers. this comes as congress is considering various pieces of legislation. it's not clear that sony is legally liable for anything, but does the fact that they are not reinforced you the need for greater federal privacy rules? >> well, there is great interest on the part of the congress and the issue of privacy, and there has been for some time. and there have been bills that have been passed. now the new iteration of privacy seems to be moving into the area of tracking. and you see some new bills being introduced in the new congress on this. in fact, just very recently,

this last week, the chairman, the republican chairman of the house energy and commerce committee wrote to several companies asking questions that need to be answered on their part. now, what will happen with this? first of all, we need to have hearings on it. and this needs to be bipartisan because it's really a nonpartisan issue. i think -- and i've always said that i think privacy's in the dna of every american. we don't want big government or big brother looking over our shoulder. whatever personal information we have, it's personal. only if we say it's okay that i'm giving these to you and i know ahead of time how you're going to use it. >> high tech would say, you know what? it's more complicated than that. we all agree, yes, you should be able to keep private things private. but we make a phone, and it's much more complicated than that.

is that the point of the hearing is to try to explain to congresspeople, listen, it's not quite as simple as we know where you are or we don't know where you are. a phone has to have certain abilities, and that's what's going on. >> well, all of these issues are complicated. but what it boils down to is what do you do? did i know about it? how is it being used? and why didn't you tell me about it? is that the case? then explain it. if that's not the case, then tell us. >> do we need legislation to make sure that happens? >> well, i think that most people think hearings are pretty boring. but believe it or not, you learn from the key witnesses, how things work. in this case, how they operate. what's the purpose of it? i think on the one hand, we need to know that what is private is really private and protected.

the other bookend to it is we don't want to stifle innovation. we don't want to stifle job creation. but we don't want to sacrifice one for the other. so you have to bring these values together. and that's why hearings are very important. if you don't have hearings and you simply jump to conclusions based on what we might have read in a variety of places, then you have bad legislation, and you have bad outcomes. but there's no question that the congress is more than interested in this. and i think that you will see -- we will see legislation that speaks to it. >> go ahead. >> the sony episode completely distinct, it's already a felony to hack in and steal information. >> absolutely. >> so what is congress's role in that episode? i mean, the idea that you can hack into a system like that -- >> mm-hmm. >> -- where there's all kinds of information available from

people who really aren't even thinking about the fact their information's out there in the ether? what's congress's role? >> as in a bank robbery, we have laws on the books. so it would be up to the department of justice to prosecute in such a case. >> that's after the fact. >> exactly. but where there is a gray area where it has not been addressed, then you have to shape a law around it. so i have no question that -- no doubt, rather, that congress is going to address this. what the exact outcome is going to be, i can't tell you because we haven't -- we're just about ready to begin this process. >> there is a time -- i'm sorry, joe, i'm going to interrupt real quick -- there's a time when i think where i go to a tech companies where i think, oh, boys, you're tickling congress or tickling regulation. i don't think they realize that. they went from a garage to very big very fast and don't realize

how close they are coming to have washington's hammer come down. do you get that impression sometimes? >> no, i don't. and let me tell you why. yesterday here in my district, one of the fcc commissioners, commissioner michael kopps, accompanied me to three or four companies here in silicon val y valley. some of them actually in garages. and the one message, the consistent message that they gave to both of us, as we asked them what was getting in their way, how we could help them, they said, maintain an open internet. >> back to net neutrality. >> otherwise we will not be able to conduct our business. >> if you've got a 30-second question and you've got a 30-second answer, we can do it. >> okay. >> okay. lightning round. >> let's see if i can crunch it down. now, i think there's kind of an agreement that if regulation on

privacy is come, that it will be something like there should be disclosure, there should be clarity about what's being collected and where it's going and how it's used. but i guess the down side to that is we already have these 87 tiny screens that nobody reads at all. i mean, not a single person reads. and you just click okay, and then it's off to the races. what are the prospects of something emerging that would, not in a really restrictive way, but would require sort of clear and more cogent communication? >> and congresswoman, about 30 seconds. >> well, what i would like to see, when i turn on my smartphone, is a very clear, this is what we do, do you give us permission to do it? whatever it might be. no tiny print. no small print. >> are you going to write that bill? >> just right up front. i'll be part of it. >> you are going to write that

bill? >> it needs to be a part of legislation. i wouldn't do a single-standing bill because i think the issue is a lot broader. there is a whole generation now that doesn't mind -- >> not reading. >> -- having their information taken. or used. >> i have to stop both of you there. congresswoman anna eshoo of the san francisco peninsula of the u.s. congress, thank you for being with us. >> thank you very much. up next on "press here," one of those little guys in the net neutrality ask.com joins us when "press here" continues.

welcome back. we were talking about net neutrality, the idea that a little guy's data ought to be just as important as the big guys' big guys like google. >> reporter: if google is the goliath in silicon valley, then

search site ask.com is david. except unlike in the bible, david probably will not win this one. ask, based in oakland, gets a fraction of a fraction of the traffic that google does, despite the fact that ask has been around since the very earliest days of the consumer internet. >> cooking questions? ask jeeves. >> ask has reinvented itself several times. first, dropping the name ask jeeves and then outsourcing its search function to concentrate on the latest hot trend, using real people to answer questions, what pundits call the knowledge market. doug leads is ceo of ask.com. he's also president of dictionary.com. both owned by barry dillers iac. i call you the little guy. >> we're actually the sixth largest property. we're not the little guy, but we

do have a fraction of google's traffic. >> just google's that much bigger. google's huge. >> microsoft and yahoo! are above us and then aol and then us. so we're pretty big. >> is that all ask.com or is that including dictionary.com? >> not even including diction y dictionary. just ask.com and the ask.com sites. we have various ways that we reach consumers, through our direct navigation to our site and through tool bars that we use. but when you get to an ask.com site, you're part of 90 million people a month that are coming to us. >> how do you get the tool bars out there? do you have deals with the browsers? >> we do. we have deals with a whole bunch of different types of downloadable applications. so one way that these innovators that really are coming up with new types of technology to put onto your computer get paid for that because oftentimes it is free, but bundling it into a tool bar that ask provides. >> what percentage comes from tool bars? tool bars, i think computers get

more sophisticated or we move to ipads is going to be less and less dependable as far as driving viewership. >> that's right. what we're really focusing on, why we switched to a q&a strategy is to really focus on what consumers come to us directly for as opposed to putting a search into a tool bar that happens to be on your computer. what we've seen over our years is that people continue to come to ask.com for the same reason which is to ask a question. that's a little different than the reason they go to google. >> but is it that much different? i mean, talk to me a little bit about that. because if i google something that is not necessarily in a question format, but i want the information, you know, i generally get a mountain of information. is it really that much distinct from what i get from ask.com? >> it is. and actually, you brought up the great point which is what you get from google is a mountain of information. and google's fantastic for that. that's why we all use google including our 90 million users use google, too.

what they come to us for, they just want to get an answer to a question, oftentimes right on the first page without having to click on a link, they ask a question and get an answer right there on the page. so it's a very different case, actually. >> this is very similar to what quora does which has become hip and popular. are you able to get that message out, ask is a q&a sort of site, too. >> we're focused on something a little different than cora is. cora is a live q&a site. while it's pretty good for doing what it does, it does a small thing which is answer questions about technology. product management. >> it has its niche. >> it's great in that niche and i'm a fan of it in that niche. we have, like i said, 90 million people asking us millions of questions every day. we have to answer questions about pipe fitting and about pregnancy and about all sorts of different things. and so we have a very different

sort of goal which is to answer all the world's questions han n than not just a certain segment. we do that by combining humans on some questions and search on others. >> humans where, in the ask.com tower in oakland or in india or around the globe? >> well, around the globe but mostly in the u.s. and they're coming from people out of this 90 million that come to us every month. several of them, you know, thousands of them now are signing up to help other people answer questions. >> like wikipedia model just because they're nice people. >> exactly. in fact, what we've seen is the biggest motivation of people answering question is give them a question they know something about and then saying thank you. when you say thank you to a person, they're more likely to write good content and more likely to come back and answer more questions. it's really been a powerful motivation. and unlike other sites out there that do this on a game model, we're not doing any of that. we're trying to offer a way for people to connect who need information. >> is there a point in which --

twitter famously didn't want to leave san francisco. because san francisco's cool. you're in oakland. oakland is a wonderful town. but as you try to bring in employees, you're in oakland. you're not with twitter. >> that says enough. you're in oakland. you know what? oakland's been great for us. we started in the east bay, you know, ask jeeves was founded in berkeley and came out of uc-berkeley, and we get a lot of talent from uc-berkeley, folks who are in the east bay and don't want to travel down to the south bay and don't even want to cross the bridge. and i'm one of them. so i live in the east bay, too. i think oakland's a fantastic undertapped resource for great technology talent. and we're happy to be a leader there. pandora's there, too. >> we were talking earlier about net neutrality and the need to sort of control how the pipes -- make sure that the pipes don't discriminate one versus another. now, there's sort of a parallel here. >> you're up against the clock, joe. real fast. >> does google need to -- need

some supervision to make sure it doesn't discriminate, and would that help the littler guys, if not david, then littler guys like yourselves catch up? >> i think google got where they are through innovation. but now i think it's time to take a look at what they're doing across the board. and, you know, i think there is access issues which net neutrality is all about. that really are, you know, important for the government to focus on. >> we have access issues of our own, and that is this is a half-hour program. doug leeds is the ceo of ask.com. we'll be back in a moment. than.

i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.